La notte delle anguille. Donne, lavoro e relazioni di genere nella Laguna di Venezia

In the Venetian Lagoon, “the night of the eels” refers to a conjunction of sirocco winds, moonless darkness, and a storm-conditions that trigger the movement of eels. At the same time, the mystery of this species, with its late maturation and uncertain gender, evokes the possibility of shaping one’s own singularity. The life stories of women born between the 1930s and 1940s reveal gender as a social construct and its power in organizing life on the island of Sant’Erasmo in the northern Lagoon: the invisibilization of women’s labor, the secrecy surrounding menstruation, the expropriation of bodies belonging to a generation devoted to reproduction and hard work. From this emerge asymmetries grounded in the presumed lesser female capacity to tame water. Yet at the same time, against the lived experience of “gnènte” (nothing), memories of “rowing and lipstick” recount ruptures with established models and creative practices of subjectivation.