Guardiamola in faccia. I mille volti della violenza di genere

This book is the product of the project Let's face it: the thousand faces of gender-based violence and of the papers presented at the conference by the same title held at the University of Urbino on 23 and 24 October 2019. Consistently with recent developments in research, the volume offers a multiplicity of perspectives aimed at capturing all forms of gender-based violence, identifying the complexity of the contexts in which it is rooted and envisaging effective prevention and countering actions. The volume is made up of four sections. The first presents more academic works dealing with the history and anthropology of violence and with its media representations. The second collects contributions illustrating the phenomenology of violence in Italy with up-to-date figures and revealing its implicit forms as they appear in language and cultural productions. The third section collects the contributions of activists and operators who daily engender initiatives to prevent and fight gender-based violence in their places of work or academic contexts. The fourth section presents the output of female researchers and students who are devoting the initial stages of their research experiences to different aspects of gender-based violence. In a sort of dialogue between academic contributions, visual artistic works and (self) narrative forms, they range from the analysis of the features of gender-based violence in migration processes to its presence in collective contexts which allegedly fight against it, up to its interiorized forms which cause eating disorders. The decision to compare different approaches and experiences has allowed us to construct an articulated and multifaceted volume. On the one hand it unveils the thousand faces of violence; on the other, it shows the abundance of reflections on the matter. In order to deal with a phenomenon such as gender-based violence which, by its very nature, exceeds each single perspective, disciplinary partitions must be overcome. In this sense, the volume also aims to be an operational suggestion, a tangible example of how it is possible - and urgent - to open a comparison and a dialogue, not only among authors, but also with readers, starting from questioning one’s own preconceived certainties and prejudice. It suggests a dialogue between the unavoidable partiality of the individual analytical and operational efforts, so as to allow the identification of contact points, prompting fruitful interchanges and developing effective synergies.