Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

Our walk is not a mere virtual game; it reflects that awkward feeling
that arises sometimes in real life when one feels suddenly and unexpectedly ‘in
tune’, almost in symbiosis with another person, never seen or met before and,
in this instance, recognised through the written word, so close to our ‘I’ that
it seems the two individuals merge into one life experience. It is intriguing
because, objectively, it should not be possible to compare my life to Eva’s life,
her experience of migration to mine. Nevertheless, I felt that she was my sister
in many situations, a feeling that seemed to develop and grow in many directions
from a subtle shadow of remote alikeness. While I was reading her book,
I could observe how the ballet of similarities and differences started to vibrate
and to plait around us a thread of thought that I, night and day, mutated into
long imaginary dialogues as if I was really wandering around the streets and
the parks of a European city with the author of Polish-American-Canadian-
English origin.
The core of our utopian dialogues had already become stable enough to
leave the shadows of that protected space represented by the inner mind and
to be transformed in a written text. Before the dialogue begins, I would like to
outline a sparse factual framework:
Eva emigrates from Krakow, Poland; I emigrate from Zagreb, Croatia,
then Yugoslavia.
Eva emigrates in 1959 aged 13, together with her family. When the ship
Battory sets sail from Gdynia and the crowd crammed on the edge of the quay
disappears over the horizon, Eva feels a tearing pain that could reflect ‘the end
of the world’.
I commute for more than ten years between Zagreb and Trieste, crossing
the borders between the two countries (two states then; Yugoslavia, Italy, nowadays
three; Italy, Slovenia, Croatia – with multiple boundaries). When I decide
really to leave Zagreb, it is 1979 and I am 32 years old. Once arrived in Italy,
I try with all my might to ensure the continuity of my life. I do not have any
‘end of the world’ feeling.
Both of us emigrate from a socialist country to settle in a capitalist one.
This takes place in very different moments, in very different conditions. In
spite of that, our displacement reveals subtly similar threads.
We both study in our birthplaces subjects that we will not be able to
practice in our receiving societies. She studies music, I study urban sociology.
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