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AbstractThe present paper is the last of a series of three papers, constituting a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the “Catalogo no. 2 – Le madri di tutte noi”, published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provided the written commentaries on the original texts. The Yellow Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an interesting example of a political use of literature. After four decades from its publication, it still proposes inspiring and fresh suggestions for feminist political action and critique, while representing an interesting occasion for researching the philosophical roots of feminism. In particular, the debate on the literary “mothers,” i.e. on the female authors that can contribute to the formation of a feminine symbolic, shows the kind of concerns of difference feminism in Italy (especially during the Seventies). The text offers, in other words, the opportunity to enter a world that nowadays – with the new, varied streams of feminism and the battles over the neutralization of sexual identity – is less frequent, and nevertheless we find it important in order to understand the social, political and cultural power of feminism. The project is composed like follows: Paper No. 1, In search of a feminine symbolic, by Angela Condello, already published on Law& Literature and Paper No. 2, From Novels to the Figures, themes and strategies for a political practice. Paper No 2 is structured in two parts. Part One, entitled “Interest in Reality.” For every woman’s autobiography, by Silvia Niccolai, is already published in Law & Literature; Part Two is the present paper: coauthored by Angela Condello and Silvia Niccolai, it addresses issues of sexual difference, identity and ambiguity, and the theories behind the idea of body and life at the core of the Catalogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is Paper No. 1, and forms part of a series together with Paper No. 2 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice – Part I), and Paper No. 3 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice – Part II; Sexual difference: an occasion for being). Papers No. 2 and No. 3 are forthcoming in Law & Literature. The three papers constitute a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the "Catalogo n. 2 – Le madri di tutte noi," published by the Milan Women's Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provide the written commentaries on the original texts. The Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an fascinating example of the collective work of feminist groups of women, the themes they addressed and their methodology. In particular, the debate on the literary "mothers," on the female authors that can contribute to the formation of a feminine symbolic, shows the kind of concerns of difference feminism in Italy (especially during the Seventies). The text offers, in other words, the opportunity to enter a world that nowadays – with the new, varied streams of feminism and the battles over the neutralization of sexual identity – is less frequent, and nevertheless we find it important in order to understand the social, political and cultural power of feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at unveiling the relationship between transgression and individuation, by looking at the common roots that such concepts share in law and literature. The main objective of such endeavour is to conclude that unveiling the interconnections between transgression and individuation actually reveals further potentialities in transdisciplinary legal scholarship, especially in terms of its relevant pertinence to core legal-theoretical questions, such as interpretation and adjudication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that normativity is like a threshold that separates norms and reality. Exemplary cases are this threshold, in action. The exemplary in law is the particular narrative (e.g. Obergefell, Brown, Google Spain) that gains the value of a model by happening in a specific time and by performing a specific change of paradigm. The article proceeds through three steps: the story, its time, and the gesture that makes the story exemplary in relation to a specific time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes an attempt to reexamine a crucial issue of legal theory from the perspective of philosophy of language and of social ontology: by analyzing a jurisprudential case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, we explain how Searle's account on rules in The Construction of Social Reality constitutes an important starting point for the clarification of the old jurisprudential debate between conventionalism and interpretivism. In a nutshell, we show that Searle's framework, while strictly conventionalist, makes it possible to conceive of the distinction between the semantic content of rules (their intended purpose) and their extension, by drawing a parallel with the idea of 'deep conventions' (and 'essential rules') as well as with the semantic conventions in natural language. The paper thus touches on the broader problem of the relations between legal concepts and nonlegal values (law and morality). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphor can be compared to analogy because they both have, additionally to their rhetorical competence, an epistemic force. Through analogy legal concepts are reproduced according to similarity; reproduction is always a new production and thus analogy and metaphor in law have a poietic force. The reproduction and production (poiesis) of legal concepts through metaphor by analogy concerns the interference between classificatory operations in law and legal epistemology: in every categorization of the unknown by means of the known, legal ontology and legal epistemology intersect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Introduction, we present some of the themes currently at the core of law and literature and law and humanities scholarship in Italy. In doing so, we aim at relaunching a peculiar style in Italian law and literature scholarship, by giving value, peculiarly, to its rhetorical and humanistic roots, and especially to what can be traced back to the tradition of Italian thought, across various generations of scholars under the common purpose of depicting forms and modes of the relationship between the dishomogeneous codes of individuality and universality, across diverse methodologies, namely the literary and narrative forms, aesthetics and myth, and the intimate and collective dimensions at the core of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]