Carla Lonzi, La duplice radicalità, 2011

A crucial figure in the renewal of Italian art criticism in the 1960s and a leading figure in feminism—both for the radicality of her critiques of established thought and her theoretical analyses—Carla Lonzi continues to pose crucial and timely questions through her writings: the critical act, the relationship with the artistic fact, subjectivity, the body, sexuality, and abortion are among the most relevant key themes of her theoretical development. Although Self-Portrait marks the culmination of reflection on art criticism, and Spit on Hegel and The Clitoral Woman and the Vaginal Woman usher in a new era of investigation into feminist consciousness-raising, certain theoretical constructs are common to these two fields of analysis; they are not justified solely by the context in which they were conceived, but rather—in various forms—pervade Carla Lonzi’s entire intellectual journey.