AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

142 STEFANIA DONZELLI
institutions, such as media, educational systems, churches, etcetera, that
contribute to justify oppressive power relations (Kehoe, 2003).
Gramsci highlights the role of history in informing human knowledge,
discourses and practices. He recognises that “objectivity always
means humanly objective which can be held to correspond exactly to
historically subjective: in other words, objective would mean universal
subjective” (Kehoe, 2003: 14). It may be seen in line with the feminist
post-modern concept of situated knowledge. Moreover, Gramscian
thought will allow me to stress how linguistic activity can be conceived
as praxis and recognizing how the activity of researching is an exercise of
political agency toward emancipation (Kehoe, 2003). Beside this, the
concept of hegemony will thus make me think of the real, or better, to
the representation of the real, not as a fixed reality, but as a space for
resistance and negotiation (Gledhill, 1997: 348). Media representations
become thus a site for struggle and justify my intention of analysing the
way in which feminist organizations represent rape/victimization.
Until now, a criticism that I faced, in relation to my epistemological
position, addresses the assumptions on rape and victimization that are
explicated at the beginning of this work. In this case I do not think appropriate
to support my assumptions with reference to the literature, for
two main reasons. First, these assumptions do not aim to construct a
generalization, as I made clear by the repeated use of may; on the contrary,
they simply recognize that what I described may happen. Second,
these assumptions are based on my personal experience of life and the
one of the people I met, so I do not see the need to refer to academic
literature in order to make them accepted by the reader. What I found
important is only to acknowledge the presence of my experience to avoid
any generalization. Moreover, the claim that my personal experience
could not be objective or free from biases falls in front of the observation
that “according to post-modernism, objective understanding of human
development is fundamentally impossible” (Diamond, 2006: 471).
Another criticism that has been moved to my epistemological position
is related to my use of Gramsci. Even if I am conscious that other
authors, more in line with the post-modern paradigm, have treated some
of the elements of Gramscian theory that I will use in this context, I do
not see the necessity of substituting Gramsci. In fact, I am very familiar
with this author since he bases his theory on the analysis of Italian his-