Teaching experiences, feminist practices, awareness of subjective and collective identities: a mutual co-construction within bodies, words and (self)reflections in the Italian '70s

Considering the feminisation of the Italian school system as a preliminary historical premise, this paper examines the Seventies and pays attention to grassroots and feminist experiences that emerged at that time. In doing so, it addresses the following questions: how have teachers' and women's identities been discussed in Italian grassroots and feminist magazines in the Seventies? How did the debate and reflections they proposed contribute to the mutual co-construction – and deconstruction – of ideas on teachers, the body, the relationship with power and women's identity? To answer these questions, the following experiences and publications are examined: the book L'erba voglio by Fachinelli et al., published in 1971; the homonymous journal published from 1971 to 1977; and the feminist periodical effe, published from 1973 to 1982. Extracts and articles have been selected and analysed to grasp the symbolic and social (dis)order they evoked concerning topics such as the relationship between students and teachers; the relationship with the authority both when it is possessed and in the case of being submitted to it; how teachers' identity was conceived, in particular of female teachers; the modality through which bodies were perceived, experienced and narrated within school; how the reflection on school was intertwined with discourses on society, power and gender.