The book Fare Femminismo (Doing Feminism), edited by Nottetempo, invites us to reclaim a radical feminist genealogy: one made of desire, practices, and gestures of freedom. In the history of feminisms, the narrative of practices has often been sidelined. Yet, women’s politics, from the suffragettes to the present day, stands apart from all other movements because it has been able to weave together a unique and spectacular militant creativity with thoughts and words.

This is a collection of stories intertwined with theoretical elaboration: of how feminisms have organized funerals for traditional femininity and released mice at wedding fairs, invented devices for abortion by rummaging through aquarium shops, destroyed property or works of art. Of how they have displayed bodies, vulvas, and menstrual blood in public spaces, occupied courtrooms to challenge the law in the places of its application, transformed silence, vulgarity, or anger into action, and devised systematic refusals, strikes, and boycotts to transform themselves and the world.

In the face of the worldly success of a part of feminism, of a movement crowded with experts in gender issues and restricted to the demand for civil rights, this book represents an invitation to reclaim a radical feminist genealogy: one made of desire, practices, and gestures of freedom. From which to draw upon to bring them back into the world.