«SI was guided by the need to declare the truth of the bodies, never present in the minutes, in the reports, in the courts, which however remains the only reliable archive of the violence suffered. The meat does not mind, it does not let itself be bribed by the definitions, by the conventions of a community or a popular culture »so the writer Michele Caccamo traces the origin of his book “Catoju. Evangelio on offended women” (Elliot Edizioni), in which, inspired by facts that really happened, gives voice to one Girl abused by the pack, in a small town in Southern Italy.
In the book Catoju, a male pen translates into words an intimate pain experienced by many women
Writing in first person and translating such intimate pain into words, not experienced personally, moreover caused by people belonging to its kind, it was not simple at all. «I listened to my fragile part, the most sensitive one that opens up to care and understanding. It is a fragment that exists in every man, but is almost always crushed, Derise and repressed, to give way to the dogma of possession »explains Caccamo.
The writer resisted the temptation to explain, mediate and make what is not by nature more bearable. Moved by the responsibility of not betraying the offense and not softening it with traits of rhetoric and pity, it highlights the unspeakable and returns removed memories.
The responsibility of society and institutions in the face of gender violence
To guide his pen are news cases that, years ago, have shaken a community of the Calabrian hinterland, but it is well known that Gender violence and patriarchal culture cannot be circumscribed to a certain geographical or social context, they represent an emergency that invests the entire country.
In this regard, Caccamo focuses on collective responsibility of a community that knows and silent and on the inability of the institutions to recognize the pain. «A state unable to listen becomes an accomplice of those who abuse. The awareness protocols and campaigns are not enough if the barracks and courts, with their culture of suspicion, transform the victims into accused, reducing pain to an administrative practice. Every institutional omission is already violence »thunders.
Silence is complicit in violence
AND It also appeals to the company that often has the fault of normalizing, to transform the offense into gossip, remembering that silence is an accomplice of violence. “Sometimes – he says – The victims of violence is asked to demonstrate the indornoble: inner pain. In the meantime, around they have the void, indifference, hatred. The absence of the community is devastating: Lonely and shame arrives instead of closeness ».
His gaze is also aimed at language that, in some cases, prepares the refuge for homeral: “we speak of” raptus “,” drama “,” jealousy “or even” love “, as if it were uncontrollable passions, not criminal acts. Current language is still impregnated with justifications, euphemisms, formulas ready to move the fault. Maybe you have to rewrite the words, Make them more raw, refuse the terms that make the crime acceptable »comments.
“It is not the female body that has to be controlled, but the male gaze that must be disarmed”
In addition, Caccamo is keen to clarify that “It is not the female body that has to be controlled, but the male gaze that must be disarmed. There is no relationship between the dress and abuse, but between power and abuse. The interventions must affect the root: education. That is to say, You have to educate children to equalityvulnerability, responsibility. We have to Teaching them that a desire does not give any right and consent is not negotiable ».
The awareness of a violence hidden in the basement of consciousness
A re -education to feelings Among the school desks, but also for mistreating men, it is What Michele Caccamo hopes that, through his civil writing, aims to submit the violence hidden in the basement of consciousness before the eyes of all. Transforms like this the cataju – basement, in Calabrian dialect, in which abuses occurred – from space for concealment and silent complicity in A metaphorical place from which to re -emerge with a new language, aware and responsible.