Post by @federicabalbi

In this essay-pamphlet, Michela Murgia enters the debate on surrogacy, which has been on the Italian political agenda over the past few years. With the hostility of the present government towards this practice, surrogacy has very recently been declared ‘Universal crime’. According to the new law, it is illegal for couples or single parents to have a child through a gestational surrogate, even if this happens abroad (in Italy it has never been legal).

Michela Murgia hasn’t witnessed this, and she was probably hoping to contribute against this law. The Sardinian author was one of our bravest intellectuals, not afraid to speak up and to be engaged through her novels as well as through her non-fiction work. She died of cancer last year, in her early fifties, and Dare la vita is her last text, which she composed hurriedly, not knowing how much time she had left. Her writing is unfiltered, fast-paced and incisive, touching not only on surrogacy, but also on several topics concerning relationships and affections. 

In the first part of the book, Michela Murgia presents her feminist conceptualisation of bonds between people. In her idea of an elective family, members don’t have to correspond to fixed roles and are not necessarily bound by blood (e.g., between mother and child: she makes the example of her own “elective sons and daughters”, as well, of course, the case of parents whose child was born through surrogacy). The author’s theorisation goes all the way from the ideals to the practical side: a legislation must reflect these kinds of bonds, to protect them and the people who live them. She defies the way relationships are romanticised and institutionalised into families, opening possibilities to radically different ways of queer living or co-living, that account for the possibility for each individual to evolve and to change. A relationship, whatever shape it might take, should allow for this change, and not suppress it, in spite of the romantic concepts of “forever” and of “loyalty”. To live in this radical challenge of the system is an essential part of her definition of queerness.

In the second part, the writer exposes her defence of surrogacy, tackling the bioethic as well as the legal points of view. Her thought is rigorous, but also admits the points where she has doubts on how laws can effectively protect the weaker parts. Finally, the book closes on a beautiful poetic prose from 2008 that reflects on the roles of women through the centuries. The book, curated by Alessandro Giammei, has the power of imagining alternatives, shifting to what is called a ‘feminist’ point of view, that would make a more livable society for everybody.

I tried to save some quotations from this tiny, intense book, but I realised I was saving all of it. Furthermore, it is one of the first books published by a main publisher (Rizzoli) that uses inclusive language, by introducing a schwa (ə) instead of the feminine or masculine word ending.