Mariella Righini

Of German-speaking Switzerland mother and Italian father, Mariella Righini is high with Florence until the nomination of his/her father to the O.T.A.N leads all his family to itch with Paris. After one year spent to learn French, it integrates the school system in third then follows its studies secondary to the college of Sevres.

Although tried by the academy of music, it chooses to enter to the Institut of political studies of the University of Paris to follow the paternal traces towards a diplomatic career. But the impossibility made to the women contribute to the diplomatic stations obliges it to be reorientated towards journalism. It then begins as freelance journalist with the Express train under its marital name. But it is with the Nouvel Observateur that she wishes to work and she decides to write a letter with Jean Daniel. This last then makes it possible to him to write some measuring rods with the foreign service as from February 1965. Treating East-West relations, it signs there under its name of young girl while continuing with piger for the Express train , Jeune Afrique or New Adam . In September 1965, it is established within the drafting of Nouvel Obs. Attached to the economic pages, it is detached some at the end of one quarter thanks to the departure from Katia Kaupp which leaves vacant a place to the service company. It takes then charges with it the heading “mode” but also the question with manners and the female condition. The return of Kaupp in August 1966 obliges it to fight to preserve the heading “mode” threatened, the latter not hesitating to try to prevent it from carrying out its discussions with the large dressmakers. But it treats also major security questions like the attitude of the catholics vis-a-vis the divorce in Italy (February 8th, 1968) or the movement of the women and the release of manners. Filled with enthusiasm by May 68, it then supports the leaders of the internal dispute to the direction and approaches the gauchists mediums and libertarians. It thus covers the anarchistic Carrara marble congress (September 1968) where it follows “the young deer of Nanterre”, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. But its political sympathies go rather on the side of the mobility Maoïste of which it distributes the body ( the Cause of the People ) with Sartre and other members of the newspaper. It binds even to its persons in charge (as André Glucksmann) at the point to leave the Nouvel Obs to take part in the adventure of I Show (November 1970). But if it helped the newspaper much to find funds near the Jewish medium of the ready-made clothes, it feels very quickly cantilever with its dogmatism.

Thus, after a few months, it turns over to the Nouvel Obs where Olivier Todd, although not explanation of its absence (the writing of a book) deceives, reinstates it in the service “Our Time”. But if its relationship with this last were often stormy, they were enriching on the professional level. It is not the same with its replacing, Christiane Duparc, with the execrable relationship with the women of the service. With Herve Chabalier, it thus makes circulate a petition to be opposed to its nomination. But it is a failure and, with Chantal of Cap, it undergoes “a true terror” which “prevented it from sleeping”. It is thus not insensitive with the proposals which are made to him direct the drafting of Vogue man (1973) or, later, that of the Femmes magazine. But, attached to the newspaper, she prefers to remain with Obs while collaborating in the review Féminin Singular before her prohibition (1973/74). With the beginning of the year 1970, its engagement for the cause of the women is thus dominating even if it is attached to the wing maoïsante newspaper.

Indeed, its signature of a text of inter-union (June 1972) which, criticizing an article pro-member of the C.G.T., is worth to him a quasi-unanimous reprobation of the company of the writers, marks his membership of the most critical pole of the common Program. With Jean Moreau, Nicole Muchnik, Michel Thicket and Claude-François Julien, it constitutes the most hostile wing with the vision of the social transformation which the Union of the Left implies. Its most politicized articles however relate above all to the emancipation of the woman. In 1970, it thus publishes a proclamation-poem for the right to the difference ( Être woman, finally! … ) in which she affirms that this last master key less by the search of the equality that the claim of an identity. This type of speech is not foreign with the empathy that certain feminists express to him and who appears when deputy Frenchwomen make him prohibit the access to the congress of Stockholm (October 1971). Partisane of a mixed engagement, it supports the militant ones for which “the enemy is not the man but the company which created it, those for which the fight of the women falls under a broader political struggle”. Enthusiastic partisane of the abortion, it denounces in particular the conditions of its practice abroad, the crusades of integrist or it not application of the law Veil. It treats also topics like the adoption, the pain labor or psychatrie, defending the alternatives to enfermement. The year 1978 marks the exit its book Écoute my difference , test in which it at greater length develops its feminist speech on femininity and the right to the difference.

In parallel, it is made the echo of feminist faintness on the question of the rape related to the rejection of the judicial proceedings and the repression which it implies. Although located in this debate closer to the “legalists” than of the ultra gauchists, she doubts that the imprisonment transforms “the mentality of the rapist into exercise and all the rapists into power”. Thereafter, it diversifies even more of the subjects even if those related already sometimes to the holidays, photography or arts, its file on “the Beaubourg Madness” (August 2nd, 1976) for example having made the cover. Treating much the family, she denounces for example silence around the inceste, the problems of drug or the rise of the marriages between Européens.

Within the service, it belongs to the opponents to the project of the Matin (November 1976). By November 1977 in May 1978, she is also delighted by the steering collar of the service by Jean-Francis Held. She thus takes badly her departure in May 1979.

Seriously reached by an car accident in 1982, it publishes in 1983 the Passion Ginette (Grasset) which appears a best-seller (250 000 specimens). Two years later, it publishes And the moon beat full sound (Grasset 1985) but with less success like Florentine and Cappuccino , at Flammarion.

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