The uncomfortable feminine: counter-narratives to the imaginary of foreign, muslim, romani woman

Abstract

The paper aims to delve into certain forms of the “uncomfortable feminine” not corresponding to dominant narratives: a woman, moreover, foreign, Muslim, Romani – a concentration of suggestions that “challenge” social convictions and conventions, which is why their life experiences clash with the possibility of being converted into magnets of stereotypes, preconceptions, prejudices, up to acts of discrimination and racism. The goal is twofold: unmasking, on the one hand, some of the key notions that, by resorting to comfortable and stereotyped narratives hence easier to understand, veil the subjectivity of different people; on the other, providing counter-narratives capable of shaking, though only in part, the monolithic representations that reign over a different and often uncomfortable feminine in the social imaginary. The enterprise requires an effort on the symbolic-conceptual and pragmatic-operational levels in an intercultural, intersectional and decolonial perspective in order to retrieve knowledge and practices functional to change.