Avere potere su se stesse: politica e femminilità in Mary Wollstonecraft

Through a careful comparison of texts, from the best known, such as The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, to the most ignored, such as the novel The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria, this book proposes a new and original interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s work. The questions posed to the political thought of the English author are formulated with respect for historical distance, but at the same time they develop in close connection with the more radical debate that characterizes contemporary feminist theories. The interplay of temporal distance produces a double gaze, whose lucidity also searches the past for answers to the theoretical questions we are constantly asking today. Mary Wollstonecraft’s thought shows, in this reading, that she was able to disrupt the order of oppositions fundamental to political reflection: from the dualism between the domestic sphere and the political space to the opposition between the natural state and the civil condition.
Preface by Adriana Cavarero