Abstract

C arla Lonzi's writings challenge current notions of history and temporality that she reinvents in their relation to subjectivity. In Autoritratto (1969), Lonzi questions official art historical narratives, largely based on formats such as the monograph, or the chronological succession of (male) artists, movements, and categories. In her subsequent feminist writings, she develops an anti-dialectical understanding of historical time where history itself is understood as a male construction from which women are structurally excluded. As she writes in Let's Spit on Hegel (1970), feminism interrupts both chronological continuity and the monologue of (patriarchal history). This essay addresses these issues by focusing on Lonzi's writings across the 1960s and 1970s and the way she explores alternative modes of knowledge production. I particularly focus on her uses of reproduction technologies (recording, montage and photography) in order to shape a different temporality, her notion of the "Unexpected subject" (Soggetto imprevisto) and the link between past and present, and finally her ideas about women's history (including women artists). This essay is partly based on archival research and previously unpublished material.