centers in Verona: the Hannah Arendt Centre (with Olivia Guaraldo) and PoliTesse (with Lorenzo Bernini), each of which collaborated with and supported the publication of this volume. Thanks to Bonnie Honig for reading and commenting on the entire draft. Thanks also, of course, to all of our contributors for their timely editing and responses, to Margaret Ferguson for her comments and enthusiasm, to Karen Bouchard and Matthew Martin, who went well beyond the call of duty, along with other librarians at Brown University to help with sourcing images, and to Tom Lay, Eric Newman, and Aldene Fredenburg at Fordham University Press for their endless patience and encouragement. Finally, this work is dedicated to Adriana Cavarero, whose exemplary generosity, care, and spirit of collegiality continue to provoke, support, and inspire our intellectual endeavors.
Notes
1 We are indebted to Mark Devenney, Joanna Kellond and Bonnie Honig for their incisive and generous comments on earlier versions of this introduction. We take full responsibility for any remaining errors.
2 1. See Adriana Cavarero, “Scenes of Inclination,” in this volume, and Cavarero, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, trans. Amanda Minervini and Adam Sitze (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2016).
3 2. Cavarero, Konstantinos Thomaidis, and Ilaria Pinna, “Towards a Hopeful Plurality of Democracy: An Interview on Vocal Ontology with Adriana Cavarero,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies 3, no. 1 (2018): 84, https://doi.org/10.1386/jivs.3.1.81_1.
4 3. Cavarero, Inclinations, 99.
5 4. Ibid., 174.
6 5. See, for example, the rise of religious and political opposition to what is called “gender ideology”; Judith Butler, “Judith Butler: The Backlash against ‘Gender Ideology’ Must Stop,” New Statesman, January 21, 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/01/judith-butler-backlash-against-gender-ideology-must-stop.
7 6. Janice Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference’: Sexual Difference in the work of Adriana Cavarero,” Feminist Legal Studies 6, no. 1 (1998): 108.
8 7. In sidestepping the “liberal”/“difference” debate, it could be argued that Italian feminism also sidestepped the question of race and racialization raised by black feminist scholars as a crucial rejoinder to this very debate.
9 8. See “translators’ note” in Cavarero, In Spite of Plato, xx.
10 9. Gisela Bock and Susan James, “Introduction,” in “Beyond Equality and Difference”: Citizenship, Feminist Politics, Female Subjectivity, ed. Gisela Bock and Susan James (Abingdon: Routledge, 1992), 5.
11 10. Ibid., 6.
12 11. See, for example, Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. Paul A. Kottman (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 20, 50; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 178–79.
13 12. Cavarero, “Towards a Theory of Sexual Difference,” in The Lonely Mirror: Italian Perspectives on Feminist Theory, ed. Sandra Kemp and Paola Bono (London: Routledge, 1993), 196.
14 13. Ibid., 203.
15 14. Fanny Söderbäck, “Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born,” Hypatia 23, no. 2 (2018): 278.
16 15. Diane Elam, Feminism and Deconstruction: Ms en abime (London: Routledge, 1994), 174.
17 16. This could be taken to imply that Cavarero’s work was in conversation with Gayatri Spivak’s strategic essentialist position developed (although later disavowed) in the 1980s. However, at the time it was developed, Spivak’s work was situated in the very school of thought that, during the 1980s, Cavarero sought to resist: poststructuralist theory.
18 17. Cavarero, “Diotima,” in Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader, ed. Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991), 183.
19 18. Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, Difference (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 32.
20 19. See Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 115 and nn. 4 and 43, where she cites an unpublished essay by Cavarero: Cavarero, Rethinking Oedipus: Stealing a Patriarchal Text, paper at the U.K. Society of Women and Philosophy Conference, 1996.
21 20. Again, see Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 115 and nn. 4 and 43, citing Cavarero, Rethinking Oedipus; Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 116; Alison Jardine, Configurations of Women and Modernity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985); Susan Feldman, “Reclaiming Sexual Difference: What Queer Theory Can’t Tell Us about Sexuality,” Journal of Bisexuality 9, no. 3–4 (2009): 259–78, 260, 116.
22 21. Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 116.
23 22. Ibid.
24 23. Adriana Cavarero, “Who Engenders Politics?,” in Italian Feminist Theory and Practice: Equality and Sexual Difference, ed. Graziella Parati and Rebecca West (London: Associated University Presses, 2002), 88.
25 24. Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 94–95.
26 25. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this point.
27 26. Feldman, “Reclaiming Sexual Difference,” 275n6.
28 27. Bock and James, “Introduction,” 6.
29 28. Ibid., 6.
30 29. Gill Jagger, “Beyond Essentialism and Construction: Subjectivity, Corporeality and Sexual Difference,” Women Review Philosophy: Special Issue of Women’s Philosophy Review, ed. M. Griffiths and M. Whitford (1996): 141.
31 30. Richardson, “ ‘Beyond Equality and Difference,’ ” 116.
32 31. Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 123, 209–10; and Janell Watson, “Feminism as Agonistric Sorority: An Interview with Bonnie Honig,” Minnesota Review, New Series, no. 81 (2013): 102–25, 111–12.
33 32. Watson, “Feminism as Agonistic Sorority, 102–25.
34 33. Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, 208
35 34. Ibid.
36 35. Watson, Feminism as Agonistic Sorority, 106.
37 36. Cavarero, In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Áine O’Healy (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), 4–9.
38 37. Ibid., 3.
39 38. Cavarero, Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender, trans. de Lucca and Deanna Shemek (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), xi.
40 39. Arendt, Human Condition, 176.
41 40. Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. Paul A. Kottman (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 49.
42 41. Ibid., 58.
43 42.
