"Multitasking is a deception: it is your mind and body adapting to a patriarchal model"

BarcelonaMemory is not impartial. There are many silences, invisible people, and biases. Who is remembered and who is not, and why this happens, is a fact that can generate great debates and help imagine new paths, as could be seen this Tuesday at the Pedralbes Monastery. In a new session of the Pedralbes Dialogues, organized in collaboration with ARA and under the intellectual direction of philosopher Daniel Gamper and the moderation of Antoni Bassas, the following question was addressed: Does memory have a gender?

The invited speaker, Anna Mastromarino, professor of comparative public law at the University of Turin, reflected on who systematically remains outside official narratives and how these marginalizations can be combatted. The fact that Mastromarino is a jurist and constitutionalist is no coincidence.

"Constitutions are places of memory –defends Mastromarino–. They are like a love affair: they want to explain what we have been, what we are, and what we will be. They are rooted in the past, but at the same time they are normative and want to play a central role in our lives." However, she warned that there is nothing idyllic about these texts: "They are spaces of power and conflict, and it is better that way, because if there were no conflict it would mean that we all do not decide. Democratic constitutionalism only works if it protects minorities and feeds pluralism".

The deception of 'multitasking'

Continuing with the metaphors, the professor assured that democracy is like riding a bicycle (not electric): "Either you pedal or you fall." And, according to her vision, women are pedaling very hard uphill. "For too long we have lived under legislation that was not transformative, but rather made it easy for us to remain exactly in the role that society had given us," said Mastromarino, who also criticized how the female body has been attempted to be governed, culturally and socially, to reduce it to the function of "generating new generations." In this regard, she was forceful: "Multitasking is a deception: it is your mind and your body adapting to a patriarchal model that demands you achieve everything."In official history, women have often appeared as satellites of male power: the "wife of" or the "mother of." "Of Cleopatra we know her hairstyle or that she was with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, but not her opinions or what she did. Of Anne Boleyn we have the drama, but not the political life," she lamented. Faced with this amnesia, Mastromarino spoke about the concept of artivism, which uses the body as a place of memory. She cited the example of women in Colombia and their "emotional cartography": different initiatives that through art show that war not only happens in the physical territory, but also leaves marks on the body.

To re-signify, therefore, is not to destroy history, but to make it polyphonic. If the statue of the journalist Indro Montanelli (who married a twelve-year-old African girl) is kept, his condition as a pederast must be made explicit, perhaps by placing the figure of the girl next to him, she says. This transformation, however, is not simple. "It generates strong resistance because perhaps too much is being pushed from the other side," pointed out Daniel Gamper. When elements of power are touched, the reaction from those who hold them is usually immediate.

Mastromarino recalled that feminism and patriarchy are not a matter of sex: "It must be understood that feminism and patriarchy are not strictly related to being a man or a woman, but to structures of control. There are women who have no interest in dismantling the patriarchy, while many men have already understood that changing the structure generates advantages for everyone: it makes us less racist, less homophobic, and less conflictual."