La storia interrogante di Anna Rossi-Doria

The essay analyses the route that led the young Anna Rossi-Doria (originally a historian of the Southern Italian peasant world) to become interested in women’s history (conceived as feminist history) in the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus is on her historical research method, taking stock of her theoretical and practical experiences during her passionate participation in the feminist movement of the 1970s. Her interventions and writings of the 1980s and 1990s stem from a questioning of history based on some crucial conceptual dualities – universal/particular, equality/difference, history/memory –, which are intended not as opposing couples, but as ambivalences in which each term defines and enriches the other. At the end, the essay emphasizes the importance of this approach both on her studies on the Shoah experience and memory and on the problems related to the issue of “universal rights”, respecting the rights of minorities.