ABSTRACT: Professor of Italian literature in Syracuse and translator, the fact that she speaks Italian is a "way of confronting my cultural identity". She was born from a family of Swedish immigrates that strongly encouraged her to integrate in the American society. She came to Italy to study music and she settled here to have a "counterbalance" to her "Swedish identity". The subject of identity recurs constantly in her research. Hence her approach to the events of the "genocidal rapes" in Bosnia. The aim of these rapes is "destroying an identity". Her approach with the Transnational Radical Party was fundamental: she perceives that the "transnational" theme is scarcely theorized and thus also scarcely politicized.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 25 November 1993)

Rome is flooded by the usual Autumn storm which has completely paralysed it. Beverly Allen reaches the headquarters of the Radical Party for a short visit, but is then "forced" to stay on the whole afternoon. The traffic is jammed and there are no taxis. Tall, elegant and good-looking, Professor Allen speaks a fluent, cultivated and almost natural Italian. It's a must for her, a professor of Italian literature (she also teaches French and compared literature and women's studies) at the University of Syracuse. She is a translator and a scholar of some of our best contemporary poets: Pasolini, Zanzotto, Spaziani. And yet her Italian reveals something more than just professional competence: it's more of a confrontation with her cultural identity.

It's this passion for identity that lead her, spontaneously, towards the Transnational Radical Party. Following is a short biography offered by the author herself.

I come from a family of Swedish immigrates. I was the first child to be born in the United States. My parents had the typical pride of the immigrates who wanted their children to be Americans. They didn't want me to learn Swedish. The only language I was to speak English only, even if my education was instead that of a traditional Swedish family that attended the Evangelic Church. The result was that as a child I felt neither Swedish nor American. Then I went to Berkeley to study music, when the American students' movement was in full swing. I became a Marxist, I demonstrated against the U.S. policy in Vietnam. I came to Italy in 1968. I started learning Italian while I was studying music and playing the piano. The experience in Italy was a counterbalance to my Swedish identity: it meant sensuality (including aesthetic one) and laicism. The problem of identity is a recurrent feature in my life...

You see, the subjective situation of being and feeling a foreigner places you in a pleasant situation; you enjoy a tremendous degree of irresponsibility, which is negative from one point of view, and at the same time positive because you feel freer to investigate. Thus, my entire work aims not to finding an identity, but rather understanding how identity works. That was the approach with which I confronted feminism, dealing with sexual identity (both heterosexual and homosexual) and the identity of the sexual gender (male, female). The same applies to my literary research; my investigation and my criticism are all based on the problem of cultural identification.

Then one day you started dealing with the war in the former Yugoslavia. And with rape in particular...

A Croatian pupil of mine introduced me into the horrors that were going on first in Croatia and then in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She came to visit me in California two years ago, with a heap of documentation on the rapes in the former Yugoslavia. I realized at once that what was taking place in the former Yugoslavia was far different from what had happened in the previous wars. The paradox of genocidal rape is that someone is using sexual violence to destroy an identity (not just the identity of the sexual gender, but the ethnic identity as well) through the conception of other human beings. The aim of the rape is to cause a pregnancy, because the fruit of that rape is the destruction of an identity, in this case the Muslim identity.

I have since tried to talk about genocidal rape wherever I go. I established contacts between by pupil and the press, and I started writing articles on newspapers and magazines myself.

Then you got in contact with the Radical Party.

Yes. Alessandra Filograno had read an article of mine on rape published on "Il Giorno". She got in touch with me. Emma Bonino (1) was leaving for the United States. I met her in New York and I immediately decided to join the Party.

I knew very little about the Radical Party. I had heard about Cicciolina, and a number of Italian intellectuals and writers. Them Emma talked to me about the transnational project: a policy which is very close to the truths I have been seeking in the my life and not just in literature. The transnational dimension has been little theorized and thus too scarcely politicized. This is a mistake because the national identity is in a crisis, and we can all see that. On the one hand multinational and transnational identities emerge, on the other the local and ethnic ones: two extremes that are trying to negotiate.

Translator's notes

(1) BONINO EMMA. (Bra 1948). President of the Radical Party, former member of the European Parliament, as of 1976 member of the Italian Parliament. Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion) and active militant in the campaign against clandestine abortion. She was tried and acquitted in Florence. Participated in the conduction, on a national and international scale, of the campaign on World Hunger. Among the founding members of "Food and Disarmament International", promoted the circulation of the Manifesto of Nobel Laureates.