Tuesday, November 25, 2014

2 of 3: The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

Hi again dear Earthlings:

as promised, here goes the second visit of my mentor and initiator Franca Rame.

Enjoy!

The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

The second visit was on the occasion of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Dario, in 1997. His awareness of his wife’s talent and lack of embarrassment at publically recognizing it turned on my interest in them again. I never had the shadow of a doubt that the Prize was deserved. I just realized how often collaborative efforts are overlooked in the arts and humanities. And was

impressed with his eagerness to redress this. I thought, “well, perhaps now he knows his wife is an author, and they’ve co-evolved as a dyad to feel comfortable about it.” This compelled my attention for an article on the integration of their respective creative energies in works that neither could have managed without the other. The result was the article “From The Lady Is to Be Disposed of to An Open Couple: Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s Theater Partnership.” In Open Couple, I felt an affinity for Franca’s character, and her obsessions with her partner’s affair-persons. Their pheromones were in the air, and “pussies” were hiding everywhere: in a shoe, on the soap bar. She sensed their sadness and felt called to rescue them, as I also have in my early experiences of amorous inclusiveness. This guided me to appreciate the rhetoric of polyamory, a responsible form of non-monogamy that assuages competition and rivalry. The lovers of one’s lovers are called “metamours,” or lovers by interposed person.

In the interim period between then and now, I became interested in the creative output of their son Jacopo Fo. I designed a research project around the intentional community

of Alcatraz, visited repeatedly and wrote about it. I was curious: “how would someone growing up in a theater family handle communal life?” As I found out, Jacopo invented Alcatraz as the answer. It combined the joy of living in nature with the expanded sense of “family” that theater companies are organized around. It offered education in the arts of loving and sexual expression within a closed dyad. And training in the arts of keeping one’s personal ecosystem healthy and well balanced. It was for me a step in the path of exploring forms of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness that respect the integrity of dyadic relationships, and their respective cultural variants. That resulted in the article “Holistic (Dis)Organizations: Gaia at Alcatraz, Italy,” in the open-source journal Rhyzomes, 2005. All of this helped me assess a cross-cultural understanding of intentional and open lifestyles and eventually coalesced in my overarching interest in Ecosexuality.

To be continued a week from now. Come back for the "second visit" on December 2, 2014.

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

1 of 3: The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

Hi dear Earthlings:

"Long time no see," as the sage said. Yes, I'm back and I bring you news of one of my

mentors and initiators: late actress, writer, activist, and senator Franca Rame, much missed, also wife and lifetime collaborator of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, who dedicated the prize to her.

This article was a request by fellow Italianist Donato Santeramo, for the first (of many i hope) collection of writings about Franca Rame. I accepted. It was also the third time she visited my life. She's welcome back any time, and the article will appear in three "visits" here too. Enjoy the first one!

Thanks for your patience. I am well and happy to be back. Much more good and exciting news to come. Namaste.

The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

Franca Rame is coming back into my life. For the past three decades, she has inhabited my imagination in one way or another, as we shared the same living planet. As a young woman, I looked upon Franca and Dario as an enviable dyad: two people with equally magnanimous souls and talents, yet differentiated enough to grow together as they grew apart. It was difficult for me to behold that. I felt the danger of flying too close to the sun, as the daughter of a successful and honest politician whose first wife imploded in their relationship as a conventional couple. I was searching for alternatives, and, as a young woman and mother, Franca represented a role model for me when I was healing from my own mother’s early death from cancer. Later, I learned to diversify my emotional investments and overcome the fear of same-sex love. As a happy sexigenarian, I welcome this visit. I remember feeling the void the day from Facebook I realized the ultimate recycling had happened for Franca. May this first in-absentia volume initiated by younger colleagues be the time for me to reflect, in my wisdom years, on the wisdom of engaging with Franca when my career started.

I am grateful to the collection for hosting my 1984 interview with Franca Rame, a long- winded “confession,” oral-history style. It may be a measure of the divine feminine manifesting its power to

know that, in late life, Franca became a senator. I imagine her ambling the halls of Palazzo Madama where I felt intimidated when I was young. It is sad that she felt compelled to resign, in the same way that my father had felt compelled to reject executive positions in his own time. I’m happy to write this introductory reflection as I’ve become more cognizant of Franca’s initiatory role in my life. Aside from the sadness of parting, this third visit is an occasion to confirm Franca Rame’s legacy as initiatory and magic.

The first visit came about three decades ago, in the mid eighties, when my focus was separating Franca’s work from Dario’s, for recognition of hers, in a gender dynamic infected with male dominance as a cultural standard. I wanted her to admit she was an author and she wouldn’t. “Why did I do it?” I’ve often wondered. It was dissertation time, and I felt called to something that far exceeded my comprehension. I didn’t dare to presume I could interview Franca. And yet she wanted it. I was healing from my family tragedy, as the beautiful and auspicious couple my parents formed had imploded with my mother’s demise. I was exorcizing her destiny as I removed myself from the position of emotional recipient for, and physical obstacle to my father’s healing from that trauma. At 27, with a young child of my own, I had picked up the pieces of my life and moved from Rome to Riverside, California to get my doctorate. As dissertation time came about, a grant funded my trip to Florence for the appointment with Franca. My blended family at the time was composed of my young Italian daughter and the fellow student who was my French partner. They were waiting for me back at UCR. In retrospect, I was moved by my own path of seeking a place of co-creativity out of the masculine shadow of patriarchal domination and fear of inadequacy.

The train from Rome to Florence ran in the dark night. I was alone in the compartment when my mother visited. The apparition was very tangible. I kept my cool even as it occurred to me I was probably hallucinating. She said: “this is what you were meant to do. Go for it! It will save your life.” I’ve rarely talked about it. Yet it was this visit that summoned my strength as I met Franca. I’m now 5 years older than Franca was at the time, and 12 years older than my mother ever was. The results of that moment of meeting were the article on Theater that acknowledged Franca’s entity as a co-author, the interview in Italian on Leggere Donna, and its translation into English on Feminist Issues.

To be continued a week from now. Come back for the "second visit" on November 25, 2014.

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality - EcoSexuality (2 of 2)

Entry: Ecosexuality

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Cont'd

As an emerging movement, Ecosexuality sustains the initiation of the human species into a new phase of its evolution: from a needy child accustomed to depending on a mother’s resources, humanity is called to evolve into a responsible adult who treats the planet that generously hosts human life as a lover deserving all reverence, equality, and reciprocity in love. The scientific origins of the movement can be traced to what is known as the Gaia Hypothesis: a new epistemological paradigm that establishes the interconnectedness of all life forms as a new foundation for knowledge or episteme. This integrated, self-sustaining web of life is made of interconnected ecosystems and generates its own homeostasis. A key principle in this new style of amorous expression is that bodies are ecosystems, ecosystems are bodies: equally deserving of love, care, and affection.

As a new galvanizing force in cultural transformation, ecosexuality also means different things to different people. Two avatars of the movement, performance artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, expressed their ecosexual vision in LoveArtLab, a seven-year project involving a series of ecosexual weddings where the artists married the sun, moon, sky, rocks, coal, snow, sea, a lake, and other nature entities. In these 17 performative events around the world, they “changed the metaphor from Earth as mother to Earth as lover,” and vowed to “love, honor, and cherish the Earth until death brings us closer together forever.” This work seeded a number of cultural environments with the intent to “make the environmental movement more fun, sexy, and diverse.” The bride-artists integrated activism for marriage equality with the affirmation of ecosystems, natural elements, and forces of nature as participants in the generation and fruition of the force of love. The practice of ecosexual weddings extended to the 1^st EcoSex Symposium, which was organized as a honeymoon after the Purple Wedding to the Moon in 2010 in Los Angeles. More symposia have come together in subsequent years, along with convergences, workshops, festivals, courses, digital discussion groups, more weddings, and intentional communities dedicated to the exploration of ecosexuality as a central trope for the organization of cultural action and energies.

A definition of ecosexuality would be premature at this point, and would limit the cultural trope’s transformative potential, which is largely untapped yet. One way in which ecosexuality has been described is as “the style of love that reaches beyond genders, numbers, orientations, ages, races, origins, species, and biological realms to embrace all of life as a partner with equal rights.” This description has been adopted in the introduction to a forthcoming reader tentatively entitled Ecosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth. It has the effect of supporting amorous practices that interpret ecosystems as bodies, and bodies as ecosystems in an interdependent network of interconnected nodes that auspicate a new planetary consciousness.

Sources

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena. Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena and Lindsay Hagamen eds. Ecosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth. Contributed volume. Forthcoming.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena and Robert Silber. “Ecosexuality: A Course in the Arts of Conscious Love.” Varallo, Italy. July 16-21, 2011. Poly Planet GAIA. http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/2011/01/ecosessualita-un-corso-sulle-arti.html, November 28, 2013.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena, et al. “Ecosex at U Conn. Course Production from Spring, 2013 Seminar in Ecosexuality and the Ecology of Love. Storrs Campus. http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/search/label/EcoSex%20at%20U%20Conn: November 28, 2013.

: Novemebr 28, 2013.

Cordova, Gabriella. “EcoSex Symposium.” Portland, OR. June 29, 31, and July 1^st, 2012. http://www.ecosex.org/index.html: November 29, 2013 Dixon Luke, Annie Sprinkle, and Beth Stephens. “1^st International EcoSex Symposium.” Colchester, Essex, UK. July 14-18, 2013. http://ecosexlab.org/, Novemebr 28, 2013.

Ecosexual. Definition in Macmillan Dictionary. http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/ecosexual.html, November 28, 2013.

Ecosexual. Definition ins Wikitionary. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ecosexual, November 28, 2013.

“Ecosexuality, a new sexual identity where you are lovers with the Earth.” Examiner.com. April 10, 2012. N. A. http://www.examiner.com/article/ecosexuality-a-new-sexual-identity-where-you-are-lovers-with-the-earth, November 28, 2013.

Iris Weiss, Stefanie. EcoSex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make your Love Life Sustainable. New York: Ten Speed Press/Random House, 2010.

Sexecology. Wikipedia definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexecology

Sprinkle, Annie, and Beth Stephens. “Ecosex Symposim I.” Highways Performance Space. October 24, 2010. http://www.loveartlab.com/PDF/ecosex_sym1_program.pdf, November 28, 2013.

Sprinkle, Annie, and Beth Stephens. “Ecosex Symposium II.” Center for Sex and Culture, San Francisco. June 17-19, 2011

http://sexecology.org/ecosex-symposium-2/, November 28, 2013.

Sprinkle, Annie, Elizabeth Stephens. LoveArtLab. www.LoveArtLab.org, November 28, 2013.

Stephens, Elizabeth. “Becoming Eco-Sexual.” Canadian Theater Research: 144 (Fall 2010): 13-19.

Windward Community. “Surrender: An Ecosexual Convergence.” June 14-16, 2014. Windward, WA. http://www.ecosexconvergence.org/, November 28, 2013.

Wagner, David. “Beyond Tree Hugging.” San Francisco Chronicle. 7/16/2011.

Our Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality is complete for the moment. But everything always already is a work in progress. Would you like to add an entry? Let us know. . . .

Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones. Thanks you for listening and opening up. Stay tuned for more coming. With all good wishes for a happy spring and summer. Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ Website: www.serenagaia.com

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings
Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse