‘This will be the love of the future’. Italian LGBT-people and their emotions through letters from the FUORI!-Archive and the Massimo-Consoli-Fonds (1970-1984)

Abstract

The present essay investigates the ways in which a group of Italian LGBT-people expressed their feelings in a selection of letters dating from the early 1970s to the early 1980s. Most of these letters have been written by readers or contributors of two Italian LGBT-magazines: ‘Fuori!’, published in Turin between 1971 and 1982, which was the emanation of the omonymous LGBT-movement, and ‘Ompo’, self-published in Rome between 1975 and 1990, by LGBT-activist and writer Massimo Consoli.

The letters written by contributors and readers of "Fuori!" often contain references to emotions such as joy and anger. By contrast, the letters written by and to Massimo Consoli references to such emotions are rare to be found.

My hypothesis is that the political and emotional strategy of Fuori! was influenced, through a process of cultural and ‘emotional transfer’, by the example of other LGBT-movements and publications, above all the English-speaking ones.

More in general, and following W. Reddy, I argue that both Fuori! and Ompo were a tremendous ‘emotional refuge’ , where the readers were able to talk almost free wheel about very private and burning matters, sometimes receiving potentially destabilizing answers, but more often caring, tender and appasionate ones.