When we were considering founding such a school, we thought about two different women: one who had made significant contributions to the European philosophical tradition - Hannah Arendt, namely - and one who has made a name for herself by criticising precisely this tradition from the perspective of women with other experiences, visions and options - namely the great black feminist theoretician from the United States, bell hooks. Our choice of Hannah Arendt does not mean that we have distanced ourselves from discussion with the different forms of international feminism.

Our choice corresponds with the current "renaissance" of Hannah Arendt and with the wish on the part of "Orlando" to honour a woman thinker who showed how politically productive thought can be. The present revival of interest in the work of this German-Jewish thinker who was persecuted by the Nazis actually spring from the increased attention devoted to a number of issues: 1) the significance in a post-totalitarian age of political theory which originated from a critique of totalitarianism; 2) the relevance of critical thought on identity during a historical period in which the politics of identity has increasingly come to the fore, from feminist practice of gender politics to cultural identity politics to the newly formed nationalisms; 3) the interest in a prescient, pregnant analysis of the "dual loss of community and home" for millions of refugees and the dispossessed of our time; 4) the unique relation of Hannah Arendt to her own identity as a women and as a Jew (see also Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, Sage Publications, 1996).

"Orlando" referred to Arendt from the very beginning, especially when favouring the "concept of natality" over the Heideggerian "being towards death", because of the context-dependent respect for the individuality and plurality of the living, which is a prerequisite for a difference to co-exist.

The school which we envisioned at the time is developing during a period which is termed postfeminist and in which - whatever name we give to it - wide-ranging changes in the relations between women and men are taking place. These changes can be traced to the consciousness and the social and political action of women of the most diverse ideological and geographical origins. These changes which are underway conflict with each other to some extent, encouraging women’s freedom in areas from education to the public sphere on the one hand, but, on the other, leading to varying reactions by men which have largely assumed the form of a "backlash". An analysis of "gender transformations", therefore, must entail not only an examination of the good practices carried out by women but also of the reactions on the part of society and men, as well as an examination of the radical technological changes which are affecting the lives of us all (see also Barbara Duden, Der Körper der Frau als öffentlicher Ort. Über den Mißbrauch des Lebensbegriffs: and Sylvia Walby, Gender Transformations, Routledge,1997).

As our informative material on the School indicates, the planned documentational work and initiatives, with their dual aim of entering an exchange on the European level an of establishing ourselves in the city of Bologna, cover a broad radius of action, from the significant and effective practices of women and feminists to the formulation of feminist theories to new forms of female authority and a new definition of politics. These objectives will be served by exchanges with different European partners who are active both inside and outside of institutions and have accumulated experience not only within autonomous women’s space but also in quite disparate institutional contexts, yet who at the same time want to work with us to bring practices developed by women more effectively into all areas of public life.

Where women and feminists the world over identify as crucial issue that of bringing the subject of freedom into accord with that of justice, then new forms of representation and practice should be developed which, deriving from the influence and authority of women, can reconcile survival and living together, personal liberties and social justice (see also Raffaella Lamberti, Democrazia senza Leadership e Doppia Sovranità. A proposito di Pechino, in "Femminismi", library bulletin of the Bologna Women’s Centre, n° 1, May, 1996; and Nancy Fraser, Equality, Difference and Democracy: Recent Feminist Debates in the United States, in Feminism and New Democracy, Re-siting the Political, Sage Publications, 1997).

With this perspective, the School will examine, document and compare very different experiences, from changes in the decisional processes in health services wherever women have a say, to peaceful solutions to conflicts which women have proposed and implemented in ongoing and recently concluded wars, from the different campaign strategies by women in administrative and political domains, to the conscious spread of women into autonomous women’s space. And so on.

We are therefore going to concentrate on both formal and informal domains in which women are prominently represented. As a result of fruitful and continuing co-operation between the different European partners, we should also devote special attention to language , which can promote or obstruct development of a "considered solidarity" and "concerned and concrete politics".