Differentia: Review of Italian Thought

Number 8 Combined Issue 8-9 Spring/Autumn Article 37

1999

Streetwalking on a Ruined Map by Giuliana Bruno

Maurizio Viano

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Viano, Maurizio (1999) "Streetwalking on a Ruined Map by Giuliana Bruno," Differentia: Review of Italian
Thought: Vol. 8 , Article 37.
Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol8/iss1/37

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 REVIEWS
I

Streetwalking on a Ruined macro-historical levels.

Map The micro-historical explores the
By Giuliana Bruno. work of Elvira Coda Notari (1875-
Princeton: Princeton University 1946), the "first and most prolific
Press, 1992. Italian woman director" (3). Working
within the fertile terrain of
I used to think that book reviews Neapolitan silent cinema, Elvira
should be like summaries informing Notari ran, together with her hus-
readers about the book's content in as band Nicola, the Dora Film (1906-
descriptive a mode as possible . As a 1930), and directed some sixty feature
rule, then, I would take the salient films (many of which employed her
traits of each chapter (in my opinion) son Edoardo as an actor) and over a
and proceed in a very linear way, hundred shorts and documentaries.
aiming to reflect the book's trajectory. "A film pioneer lost in a male-domi-
As I am sitting in front of the com- nated culture" (4), she was forgotten
puter with Giuliana Bruno's by film history. First censored by
Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, I find Fascism-the antirealist ideology
reviewing it in accordance with my which would later find its "democra-
usual strategy virtually impossible. tic" reenactment in the Andreotti vs.
This impossibility might well serve neorealism incident-Notari's work
as a starting point. In the attempt to would later be relegated, at best, to
grasp this book's design, polyhedral, the status of a footnote. It is no acci-
multilateral, and web-like are the dent that perhaps the most sensitive
adjectives that come to mind, but that reference to her work and role in the
is not quite enough, there is some- history of Italian cinema (a precursor
thing more, something that has to do of neorealism) came from Mira
with movement, motion. Liehm, a woman, from the left, in her
A book whose signifying structure book Passion and Defiance. Thus
mimes the signified content, not only uncovering one of the paradigmatic
does Streetwalking on a Ruined Map cases of censorship intrinsic to Italian
inscribe cinema and spectatorship cultural history (film history being
within metropolitan movement, but part of it), Bruno's micro-historical
it is itself a book in and of motion. research implicitly operates on a
Bruno emphasizes this by making political and epistemological plane at
various notions of movement pivotal once. On the political, it is the revin-
in her arguments and by entitling dica tion of savoir mineurs and the
both the entire book and three of its implicit denunciation of a patriarchal
five parts after spatial and mobile form of discursive censorship. On the
coordinates (PART II. Film in the epistemological, this book on a realist
Cityscape: A Topoanalysis of filmmaker performs one of realism's
Spectatorship; IV. The Metropolitan most typical and intriguing gestures:
Texture; V. Female Geographies). giving discursive presence to voices
Streetwalking on a Ruined Map has that have been put to sleep.
an incessant pendular, Brownian With only three extant films,
motion between the micro- and Notari's filmography is a ruined

DIFFERENT/A 8-9 Spring/Autumn 1999

360 DIFFERENT/A

map. As the usual points of reference of Naples. In yet another sense, the
are missing, the activity of the know- book is an immense act of emigrant
ing subject, Bruno's subjectivity, love towards Naples; Italian history
comes to the fore. In fact, one regrets and geo-politics (South vs. North
that most books are written on whol- axis); cultural methodology and epis-
1y legible maps and thus operate temology; and various problems in
within the illusion of objective schol- film theory such as that of female
arship. Utilizing filmic fragments, spectatorship which Bruno wrenches
stills, scripts and other writings such away from a Lacanian fixity and
as novelizations, tickets, posters, launches into a mobile metropolitan
Bruno engages in a fractal explo- space of trains, arcades, boulevards .
ration of the area in which text and Pushing on the metaphor of the
context meet and succeeds in offering hypertext, we discover concepts
an engaging picture of Notari as she which readily apply to Bruno's
operated in the belly of Naples book's quintessential movement:
(Serao's II ventre) a city caught in the interface and navigation. Unlike
process of becoming "metropolitan what happens in the metaphysics of
texture" and related, as Notari's suc- homogeneity, the concept of interface
cess among Italian immigrants testi- makes us realize the heterogeneity of
fies, to the Ur-metropolis New York . the real: every process, every transla-
Let us now talk about the macro- tion, every relation in the order of
historical. Association is the elemen- interfering. Streetwalking on a Ruined
tary process at the heart of the inter- Map is about the creation of interfaces
pretive activity: to give a text its between film authorship and specta-
meaning, one connects it to other torship and other cultural produc-
texts and therefore creates a hyper- tions. The hypertextual dimension of
text. In many cases, however, the illu- Bruno's exploration effects a change
sory completeness of the map limits in the mode of consumption required
the scope and horizon of the hyper- from the reader: from reading to
textual dimension. "navigating," as computer specialists
The movement of the book is con- call it. As the experience of sailing
sciously hypertextual. As in Brian navigation is perhaps less for the sub-
Eno' s music, one insistent motif altern groups than streetwalking, we
flakes off into layers of sound to cre- can say that Bruno popularizes and
ate an auditory palimpsest, Bruno's "feminizes" the metaphor for hyper-
microhistorical research branches out textual consumption: passeggiata.
rhizomatically and forays into territo- As if flashing a series of postcards
ries and problematics touched upon or glimpses from a train, and frames
by Notari's practice and theory-con- of panoramic shots, Streetwalkingon a
tained-in-her-practice. Streetwalking Ruined Map invites its readers to
on a Ruined Map is thus also a series indulge in the art of fianerie,passeggia-
of "inferential walks" (a term bor- ta with a camera. Intriguingly, how-
rowed from Eco) into the intercon- ever, the camera we are invited to
nectedness of film, architecture, pho- take along does not have a fixed focal
tography, and painting-the history length but alternates, with a zoom-
 reviews 361

like motion, between a wide angle than sedentariness, thereby suggest-

and a macro-lens. The wide angle ing the position Bruno would take in
allows Bruno's and the reader's gaze the domains where these opposites
to embrace large, panoramic portions are pertinent and circulating.
of the visual field and therefore per- Just as with the images reflected
ceive a series of connecting perspecti- on the train windows, where you
val relations that in perfect keeping occasionally catch glimpses of your-
with the metaphor of the ruined map, self looking, there is an extent to
are subject to the distortion of the which Bruno's book forces you into a
wide angle; a distortion that must be sort of self-awareness: readers
"corrected" by the reader who thus inevitably explore paths of sense con-
becomes aware of his/her role in the genial to their desires. You know that
making of the image. Then there are drawing of an ambiguous figure
plunges into the fractal world of where, depending on how the viewer
microhistory, the macrolens blowing looks at it, either a young woman or
up details in the map into a very old woman can be seen?
sites/ sights, metonymically suggest- Imagine that drawing becoming ani-
ing the shape of the whole from what mated, and moving, and travelling,
is missing. always on a double level of reading.
It comes as no surprise that a cru- You can never see the two images at
cial term in Bruno's book is transito,a once, you can only imagine them;
word she leaves in Italian-a signifier hence you decide which image you'll
thus brought into relief. Transitoindi- be focusing on and you become
cates Notari's cinema literally at the aware of your desire. Streetwalkingon
crossroads of Neapolitan cityscape a Ruined Map acts a bit like that, for it
and Bruno's camera the transient is ultimately up to your desire to
focal length. Film spectatorship, no decide which alley to take, in your
longer enchained to the passivity of a passeggiata, with a macro-to-wide
prisoner in Plato's cave, is also a mat- zoom lens.
ter of transito. Imagined in term of
fluidity and mobility, female desire is MAURIZIO VIANO
itself, of course, a transito. And the Wellesley College
discourse of women, as that of other
marginalized groups-all those who
encounter difficulties "matching
one's own image unless through
excessive ana/logos or with a mask" The Scorpion's Dark
(229)-is also characterized by transi- Dance
to and transvestitism in the form of a By Alfredo de Pa/chi.
metaphorical tension, a search for Riverside, CA: Xenos Books, 1993.
metaphorical recipients of one's
socio-discursive positioning and Looking at history with eyes wide
identity. In sum, transito implies open, it is quite possible to conclude
mobility rather than fixity, process that, left to our own devices, we
rather than essence, nomadism rather humans are an unpalatable species.