LUCCIOLE #8 - CLAUDIA FAUZIA

A newsletter by Voice Over

The story of this newsletter helps us open new gateways of imagination and connect political struggles that might seem distant from each other. The lens we always wear is that of intersectionality, which refers to the overlapping—or intersection—of different social identities and the corresponding discriminations, oppressions, or dominations they might face.

In other words, you cannot be feminist3 without considering how race, gender, and class interact to shape people’s lives. But this reflection is complemented by another one from Claudia Fauzia—this issue's firefly—who argues that feminism, if it is truly intersectional, must also address what is known as the "Southern Question."

But let’s take a step back.

What is intersectionality? Intersectionality is a concept rooted in feminist and anti-racist movements that links different factors of discrimination. No person can be defined by just one identity category, and discrimination—based on gender, race, and class—does not affect everyone the same way, because depending on the combination of these categories, individuals face different types of discrimination. We’ve written extensively about this in this newsletter.

But what does the “Southern Question” mean?

The Southern Question, according to Marxist and Gramscian analysis, is the historical product of Italian unification, which led to the economic and political subordination of the South to the industrial North. For example, Gramsci argued that the alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie of the North and the southern landowners, a parasitic agrarian class tied to feudalism, maintained “feudal residues” and effectively prevented the social modernization of the South.

Claudia Fauzia explains: “The Southern Question is not just an issue of economic backwardness but also a political issue of cultural hegemony, linked to class relations and capitalist domination. It is part of the dynamics of global colonialism. In this sense, the South is another 'South' to be made similar to the hegemonic North, which is white and northern.”

We chose to feature the voice of Claudia Fauzia because, within the imaginary she creates—feminism, southernism, class struggle, and alliances of the margins—there are forgotten stories of resistance that don’t conform to the dominant narrative of the South but challenge it, offering us the chance to imagine a different political and cultural horizon.

This is her voice. 

The Voice of this Issue

Claudia Fauzia is a gender studies expert, trainer, and advocate of “femminismo terrone” (Southern feminism). After obtaining a degree in economics, engaging in activism in Colombia, and studying gender in Bologna, Claudia embarked on a path intertwining feminism, anti-southernism, and social justice, from which the concept of “femminismo terrone” emerged. In 2024, she wrote "Femminismo Terrone: For an Alliance of the Margins", co-authored with Valentina Amenta and published by Tlon. If you missed the interview we did with her, you can listen to it on Voice Over’s Instagram page.

The Voice of Claudia Fauzia

“The margin is a radical place of possibilities. Small community experiences, at the margins of power, can propose alternatives to power itself. I believe that people from the South, from any South in a political sense, can offer the system a different way of seeing things.”

When asked to introduce herself, Claudia Fauzia answers without hesitation, “I am an economist, graduated in women’s gender studies, and I advocate for ‘femminismo terrone.’ This describes me today.” There is no doubt that, over the years, Claudia Fauzia has developed a theoretical framework on the intersection between feminist issues and geographic issues, offering an innovative and necessary feminist and decolonial perspective on the South. It all began with a social media post in which she wrote, “If feminism is intersectional, it must take on the Southern Question.” Over time, her work of study, research, activism, and advocacy expanded, culminating in the book Femminismo Terrone: For an Alliance of the Margins, written together with Valentina Amenta. In it, the authors reclaim the South as an active political subject, recognizing the South as a crossroads of histories—of oppression and exploitation but also of resistance. “In general, all Souths are margins of power: for example, the peripheries of large cities, the global South, rural and inland areas, or even Southern Italy, the periphery of Europe and the nation-state of Italy,” says Fauzia. For her, the Southern Question must be understood within the dynamics of capitalism, class relations, and radical proposals. “I think that people from the South, from any South, in a political sense, can offer the system a different way of seeing things.”

The reflection on the “margin as a radical place of possibilities,” developed by the authors, draws from African-American feminism by bell hooks, who said, “Marginality is a radical place of possibility, a space of resistance. This marginality, which I have defined as spatially strategic for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse, is present not only in words but also in ways of being and living. I was not referring to a marginality that one hopes to lose—leave or abandon—as one moves closer to the center, but rather to a place to inhabit, to stay attached and faithful to, because it nourishes our capacity for resistance. A place capable of offering us the possibility of a radical perspective from which to look, create, imagine alternatives, and new worlds.”

It’s no coincidence that Claudia Fauzia chose to return to live in Palermo. “I felt inside me the need to give back the opportunities I was given. It was as if I felt that the entire community, not just my family, had made it possible for me to experience things and get where I am now.” And by living in the South, she proposes a different way of thinking, imagining, and telling things. “I decided to stay in the South, and I think I’ve given up many things, but I’ve also gained so many more. We must learn not to look at the South as ‘not yet Milan.’ There is always the comparison of a South that must, in some way, resemble the North. It’s as if the line of development is straight, and the South is always behind. But that’s not true: every context, people, and community has its own path to follow.”

To overturn this imaginary, Fauzia invites us to read geography differently, upending hierarchies: “Instead of Europe, we should place the Mediterranean, as a body of water, at the center of the discourse. Sicily no longer becomes the South of something but part of a basin that includes North African countries, the Maghreb, Spain, and Greece.” To this geographical reading, Fauzia adds another element: the stories, the narrative of representation. “The South is generally told in a two-dimensional way: on one hand, it’s a place where people are prone to violence, crime, and the mafia, as Benedetto Croce suggested when he wrote ‘it’s a paradise inhabited by devils’; on the other, it’s eroticized, romanticized, and exotified. For example, women are represented as dark-haired, curvaceous, hot, ready to be taken by someone. When you try to tell a different South, for instance, the feminist movement or queer revolutions in Sicily, they generally don’t believe you. And so, a vicious circle is created, preventing the South from escaping its stereotypical representation. That’s why the strategy is to multiply representations: I am feminist, bisexual, socialist, but I am deeply Sicilian. And I put that at the top of my identity tree, even politically. I want to underline it, and my accent should be heard. Otherwise, we continue saying that there is nothing here, that the South is patriarchal, homophobic, and made up of parasitic people who don’t want to do anything. And that’s not true. There are many other stories of struggle and resistance that need to be told.”

Other Resources to Explore

If you want to learn more about feminism and the Southern Question, we recommend reading:

• Mar Gallego - Feminismo Andaluz, for an intersectional experience and stories of people belonging to multiple realities at the same time.
  
• Carmine Conelli - Il rovescio della nazione, to understand how the idea of a barbaric and backward South originates in European colonial history.
  
• Vito Teti - La restanza, for reflections on the right to migrate and the right to stay, and Il senso dei luoghi, for thinking about the vitality of abandoned places.
  
• Franco Cassano - Pensiero Meridiano, for a re-reading of the South as a subject of thought and a center of rich and multiple identities.
  
• Alessandra Dino and Gisella Modica - Che c’entriamo noi. Racconti di donne, mafie e contaminazioni, to trace the collective roots of complicity and ambivalence regarding the mafias in micro-stories.
  

4 Recommendations from the Voice Over Team

• The documentary : Produced by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, it won the Best Documentary Award at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscars.
  
• The book , by Andrea Colamedici, Maura Gancitano, and Harper Collins.
  
• The play by Gabriele dal Grande, telling the history of migrations in Europe from the future perspective.
  
• The book , by Diletta Huyskes, blending theory and life stories to provide a fresh perspective on new technologies and how we can use them.