Città, genere e discriminazioni. Interpretare le esperienze urbane attraverso le cartografie femministe nomadi e le parodie filmiche

In this thesis, I have chosen to direct my attention toward the way space makes gender differences concrete, starting from the everyday experience of white and cis-gender women, a group both privileged and oppressed, to intercept some of the forms of discrimination in urban space. The objective of studying discrimination imposes an active confrontation with the subjects who experience it (Marion-Young 1990) and the sharing of intimate and subjective conditions, located, and rooted in bodies and particular contexts. However, it is also necessary to understand which levels of discrimination intersect the self (in this case, white and cis-gender women) and which of these also intersect the "we" (women) in space. Given these assumptions, and 'conceding that there are huge and sometimes irreconcilable differences between women', how can we 'recover the minimum common ground that allows them to identify as a collective political subject, to return to a "we", to give themselves goals that (...) can (...) be shared by all?" (bell hooks 2018 [1990]). How can the personal and affective dimensions of discrimination be reconciled in urban geographic studies with the collective social and political dimensions? Finding an interpretive potential in Rosi Braidotti's (2012, 2017, 2019) Nomadic Feminist Theory, in this thesis, I introduce it into the geographical disciplines, spatialising it, and elaborating the 'nomadic feminist methodology' (NFT). The NFT, which I theorise and then experiment in the two participatory field experiences in Cagliari and Brussels, is based on three assumptions: positioning, research ethics, and the critical study and representations of spatial experience. Concerning positioning, NFT is based on strong reflexivity (Harding 1992), on the art of failure (Halbestram 2011), and on the attempt to decentralise, to become nomads by assuming a "minor" perspective (Kats 1996) when observing the power structures taking place in society through space. On the level of research ethics, the NFT is characterised by the attempt to find and use tools of care for the subjects involved in the work, rather than violent extraction of knowledge and encourage lightness and joy in the modes of observation and languages used. On the level of the critical realisation of representations of spatial experience, NFT helps to realise what in Braidotti's theory is called "singular and multiform cartographies", and thus maps of the functioning of power in contemporary society. In this work, I produce a spatialised version of these cartographies to represent the functioning of power in urban space in the two contexts of Cagliari and Brussels. Through the NFT I propose also collective and multiform cartographies that consisted of the realisation of three fictional and parodic films, through which the group of participants collectively reflected on the discrimination that affects women as a collective political subject. The films were written, shot, and edited together, thus offering multiple perspectives on the same spatial issues. They are titled: By bike she lives, Urban Piss-Ups, Freedom for Jeanneke-Pis. In creating the singular and collective cartographies, numerous ways emerge through which space produces differences between subjects, discriminating them according to intersectional planes, with particular attention in this case to the dimensions of gender, whiteness and cis-heteronormativity. The singular cartographies contribute to a theoretical and urban planning discourse - by raising specific questions related to precise spaces and contexts - while the collective ones are helpful in the dissemination and political interpretation of the events concerning the common ground of women, a social group united - also and above all in space - by the fight against sexism (Bell Hooks 2020 [1994]).