From witches to motherhood. Luisa Muraro, the free spirit of Italian feminism

She was brusque and made no effort to come across as likeable, but with those blue eyes brimming with intelligence and irony, and with her free-spirited, fresh courage, Luisa Muraro was Italy’s most important feminist. She was the one who read everything, kept abreast of world events, yet remained unaffected by them. Indeed, it was she who influenced everything, opening up new avenues of activism, research and thought.

Her courageous independence became apparent straight away, when she didn’t hesitate for a moment to throw away a promising academic career as a philosopher at the Catholic University of Milan to go and teach in primary schools, to experiment with that educational reform project that developed around the ‘Erba voglio’ group.

After moving to Milan in the 1970s, she became one of the leaders of the feminist movement: in 1975, she played an active role in the group that founded the “Libreria delle donne” (Women’s Bookshop), which still exists today as a fertile ground for discussion and debate. Whilst she resumed teaching philosophy at the University of Verona, founding the ‘Diotima’ group – a sort of think tank for Italian feminism – her first book, the highly successful "La signora del gioco", was published. In it, for the first time, the culture and knowledge of witches were interpreted as a persecuted form of women’s culture. The book sparked a veritable craze – and that now legendary battle cry which echoed for the first time at demonstrations back then: “Tremble, tremble, the witches are back!”.

But Muraro was already one step ahead: she began her long quest to uncover female voices within the Christian tradition, seeking to rediscover the feminine soul of a culture that appeared to be purely patriarchal. On this long and rich intellectual journey, she did not ally herself with renowned academics – of whom there was no shortage – but with an elderly, isolated outsider with whom it was not easy to deal: Romana Guarnieri. Her companion on this adventure was the discoverer of one of the most important mystical texts in the Christian tradition: the book by Margherita Porete, who was burnt at the stake in 1300 and whose works had been – fortunately not entirely – destroyed. Muraro discovered that Porete’s words, though anonymous, had inspired the writings of the German mystic Meister Eckhart, which form the foundation of the German philosophical tradition.

Thus, these two original and astute scholars jointly rewrite the history of the Middle Ages and that of philosophy. Meanwhile, Muraro never ceases to reflect on feminism, proposing an original version of it – one that would come to be known as ‘difference feminism’ – which moves away from the emancipatory tradition – that is, demanding the same rights for women as for men, thereby effectively making them similar to men – to instead courageously re-evaluate feminine specificities, first and foremost motherhood, understood also as ‘maternage’, that is, a relationship of love and guidance towards younger women. It was not enough for her simply to secure new spaces and new roles for women: she wanted to rethink everything, from the very beginning. For her, this was the women’s struggle.

Her latest political work – "L’anima del corpo. Contro l’utero in affitto", published in 2016 – revisits the theme of the richness of motherhood for women, and the danger of being deprived of this unique power in exchange, on the one hand, for a little money, and on the other, for a seemingly small measure of freedom.

I don’t know whether Luisa would have liked this tribute: she preferred sharp exchanges to praise, well aware of the uniqueness of each of her battles, but she would certainly have been delighted by this tribute to her relationship with Romana. Right up to the end, her solidarity with other women was always generous, intelligent and wholehearted.