Chiara Mengozzi | Charles University, Prague (original) (raw)

Books by Chiara Mengozzi

Narrativa. Nuova serie, n. 46 , 2024

Questo numero monografico della rivista Narrativa intende intercettare gli orientamenti critici e... more Questo numero monografico della rivista Narrativa intende intercettare gli orientamenti critici e teorici che si considerano più promettenti per interpretare un testo letterario nell’Italia degli anni Duemila. Gli autori e le autrici del volume posizionano il dibattito critico e teorico italiano nel contesto internazionale; si interrogano sulla necessità o meno di far interagire gli Studies, nelle loro molteplici declinazioni, con prospettive più sedimentate nella tradizione filologica italiana ed europea; propongono relazioni testuali e transmediali utili a orientarsi nella multiforme produzione letteraria contemporanea e, infine, tracciano i nuovi percorsi che lo studio della letteratura oggi può intraprendere. Dagli articoli emerge sia una costellazione ampia e variegata di tendenze, in dialogo o in conflitto tra loro, tra le quali scegliere con la consapevolezza dei vantaggi o degli inconvenienti ermeneutici che possono offrire, sia un’idea diversificata del letterario, del rapporto che intrattiene con altri ambiti discorsivi e degli usi che ne possiamo fare oggi.

https://journals.openedition.org/narrativa/

Carocci , 2023

All’inizio degli anni Novanta, quando l’immigrazione stava diventando un fenomeno strutturale nel... more All’inizio degli anni Novanta, quando l’immigrazione stava diventando un fenomeno strutturale nel nostro paese, la produzione in lingua italiana di scrittori di origine straniera faceva il suo ingresso nel mercato editoriale nazionale. Entravano così nella narrativa e nel dibattito critico nuove questioni, come le recenti trasformazioni sociali dell’Italia, la revisione del canone letterario, il passato coloniale e la condizione postcoloniale. Il volume, grazie alle riflessioni di tre diverse generazioni di studiosi e studiose, non si limita a un bilancio di questa produzione e dei suoi lasciti, ma intende capire in che modo l’immigrazione abbia più largamente inciso nel panorama culturale italiano. I dieci contributi qui raccolti ampliano il ventaglio di approcci attraverso cui analizzare il rapporto fra scrittura e migrazione (gli studi di genere, il postumano, le strategie editoriali), osservano le nuove forme di collaborazione artistica tra gli italiani e i nuovi italiani ed esplorano linguaggi contigui e interrelati alle narrazioni letterarie: musica, teatro, arti visive, fumetti e videogiochi. Senza eludere gli aspetti conflittuali dell’Italia multiculturale di oggi, il libro mette in evidenza la capacità delle pratiche artistiche di immaginare nuovi modi di esistenza e coesistenza.

London-New York, Routledge , 2020

In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim... more In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim to be the masters of nature. Rather, we need to unlearn our species’ arrogance for the sake of all animals, human and non-human. Rethinking our being-in-the-world as Homo sapiens, this monograph argues, starts precisely from the way we relate to our closer companion species. The authors gathered here endeavour to find multiple exit strategies from the anthropocentric paradigms that have bound the human and social sciences. Part I investigates the unexplored margins of human history by re-reading historical events, literary texts, and scientific findings from an animal’s perspective, rather than a human’s. Part II explores different forms of human-animal relationships, putting the emphasis on the institutions, spaces, and discourses that frame our interactions with animals. Part III engages with processes of "translation" that aim to render animals’ experience and perception into human words and visual language.

La letteratura degli immigrati in Italia, a distanza di vent’anni dalla sua nascita, è diventata ... more La letteratura degli immigrati in Italia, a distanza di vent’anni dalla sua nascita, è diventata un fenomeno culturale di ampia portata sia da un punto vista quantitativo sia qualitativo. Se ne propone qui per la prima volta un quadro d’insieme offrendo una chiave di lettura unitaria, ma non riduttiva, capace di mettere in luce i limiti e i punti di forza di questo nuovo e importante ambito della letteratura italiana contemporanea. Il volume illustra la genesi editoriale delle scritture migranti alla luce del contesto politico, mediatico, legislativo dell’Italia, dove, tra la fine degli anni Ottanta e l’inizio degli anni Novanta, la questione “immigrazione” diventa terreno di controversie politiche e di conflitto sociale; ripercorre le fasi del dibattito critico e problematizza le definizioni usate finora dagli studiosi, evidenziando in tal modo la “funzione specchio” dei fenomeni migratori, ovvero la loro straordinaria capacità di rivelare le caratteristiche della società di arrivo; infine, attraverso una puntuale analisi testuale, individua il problema di fondo di questa produzione letteraria, la narrazione di sé, e dimostra in che senso e a quali condizioni le scritture della migrazione possano essere lette come forme di contro-narrazionirispetto al discorso pubblico dominante sui fenomeni migratori.

Mariano del Friuli, Collana "Appunti di Storia", 2007

The book brings to light little-known aspects of the lives of Italians belonging to the working c... more The book brings to light little-known aspects of the lives of Italians belonging to the working classes and living in the border territories between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy during the Great War. The epistolary is composed of 99 unpublished letters, transcribed here, commented and contextualized for the first time. The protagonists are three: a peasant woman left alone with her daughters in her house in San Vito al Torre, while her father was taken prisoner by the Italians and interned in a camp in Ascoli Piceno. Her husband, instead, is arrested by the Austrians and interned in Maribor where he dies in 2017. The book focuses on various themes such as internment between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, popular education, gender and family roles during the war, the figure of the woman between experience and representation and, finally, the relationship with death and the tale of mourning.
The book ends with a linguistic note by Professor Laura Vanelli (University of Padua) on the use of Italian, Venetian and Friulian by the authors of the letters. The chapter discovers, thanks to these letters, a linguistic island of which there were no traces before and illustrates in detail the use of language, or rather of languages, by Italian peasants living in border territories.
.........

Il libro porta alla luce aspetti poco noti della vita degli italiani appartenenti alle classi popolari e residenti nei territori di frontiera tra l'Impero Austro-ungarico e il Regno d'Italia durante la Grande Guerra. L'epistolario si compone di 99 lettere inedite, qui trascritte, commentate e contestualizzate per la prima volta. I protagonisti sono tre: una donna contadina rimasta sola insieme alle figlie nella sua casa di San Vito al Torre, mentre il padre viene fatto prigioniero dagli italiani e internato in un campo di Ascoli Piceno. Il marito, invece, viene arrestato dagli austriaci e internato a Maribor dove muore nel 2017. Il libro si concentra su diversi temi quali gli internamenti tra Impero Austro-ungarico e Regno d'Italia, l'istruzione popolare, il genere e i ruoli familiari durante la guerra, la figura della donna tra esperienza e rappresentazione e, infine, il rapporto con la morte e il racconto del lutto.
Il libro si conclude con una nota linguistica della professoressa Laura Vanelli (Università di Padova) sull'uso dell'italiano, del veneto e del friulano da parte degli autori delle lettere. Il capitolo scopre, proprio grazie a queste lettere, un'isola linguistica di cui non c'erano tracce prima e illustra in maniera dettagliata l'uso della lingua, o meglio delle lingue, da parte dei contadini italiani residenti in territori di frontiera.

Papers by Chiara Mengozzi

In "Storie condivise nell'Italia contemporanea. Narrazioni e performance transculturali", Roma, Carocci, pp. 11-37, 2022

Riproduzione vietata ai sensi di legge (art. 171 della legge 22 aprile 1941, n. 633) Senza regola... more Riproduzione vietata ai sensi di legge (art. 171 della legge 22 aprile 1941, n. 633) Senza regolare autorizzazione, è vietato riprodurre questo volume anche parzialmente e con qualsiasi mezzo, compresa la fotocopia, anche per uso interno o didattico.

Science Fiction Studies, Volume 50, Part 2, pp. 145-174, 2023

Traditionally neglected if not despised by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, sci... more Traditionally neglected if not despised by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, science fiction is changing status, being invested with new qualities and functions and, above all, a real epistemic value by leading scholars in the field of environmental humanities. Some of them not only turn to sf as a conceptual resource but go so far as to write counterfactual texts, told in the future or from impossible points of view, deploying sf narrative strategies to breathe new life into their academic writing. This paper considers what qualities these researchers explicitly attribute to sf, focusing on an emblematic case study—an article of speculative anthropology by Anna Tsing—to show how concretely these unconventional writing experiments can weave science and fiction into their textual fabric. Finally, we address the reading effects that these hybrid texts may stimulate by positioning Tsing's article in the field of contemporary sf, through the joint analysis of two fictions by Ted Chiang and Sylvie Lainé, which similarly ask how to account for a form of existence radically different from ours, relying on surprising comparisons between different sciences, living species, and instruments of knowledge. Our research approach contributes to grasping the current reconfiguration of knowledge and writing practices, allows us to formulate some hypotheses about today's use and relevance of sf in the field of environmental humanities, and finally points to new and unexpected areas of application for comparative literature in a time of ecological collapse.

in "L’Europe transculturelle dans le monde global / Transcultural Europe in the Global World", 2023

Si, jusqu'aux années 1990, les décès de migrants en mer se produisaient assez loin des côtes ital... more Si, jusqu'aux années 1990, les décès de migrants en mer se produisaient assez loin des côtes italiennes, la situation a changé dans les années 2000, à la suite d'un certain nombre de naufrages qui ont été largement médiatisés. Après ces événements dramatiques, le débat public sur l'immigration évolue et la question du franchissement et du contrôle des frontières extérieures de l'Europe commence à occuper le devant de la scène. Or, pourquoi la littérature italienne, et plus encore ce domaine textuel que nous avons l’habitude d’appeler « littérature migrante », sont-elles restées, toutes les deux, si silencieuses face aux tragédies de la Méditerranée ? Et pourquoi les quelques romans qui traitent ce sujet ne parviennent-ils pas, pour la plupart, à représenter la Frontière dans toute sa profondeur spatiale, temporelle, expérientielle et idéologique ? Après avoir formulé quelques hypothèses à cet égard, cet article expliquera pourquoi d'autres formes narratives, comme les enquêtes-recits, ou artistiques, comme le théâtre, se sont avérées plus efficaces que la forme romanesque. Enfin, il proposera une brève analyse de deux pièces de théâtre, « Suppliantes à Portopalo » (2009) et « Bruits d'eaux » (2010), qui parviennent à mettre en scène l’expérience dramatique de la Frontière en réactivant la fonction principale de la tragédie antique, à savoir sa capacité à formaliser les conflits irréductibles de la cité.

While, until the 1990s, migrant deaths at sea occurred fairly far from the Italian coast, the situation changed in the 2000s, following a number of shipwrecks that were widely covered by the media. In the wake of these dramatic events, the public debate on immigration shifted, and the issue of crossing and controlling Europe's external borders began to take center stage. So why have Italian literature, and even more so the textual field we usually call "migrant literature", both remained so silent in the face of the tragedies of the Mediterranean? And why do the few novels that deal with this subject fail, for the most part, to represent the Border in all its spatial, temporal, experiential and ideological depth? After formulating a few hypotheses in this regard, this article will explain why other narrative forms, such as investigative reports, or artistic forms, such as theater, have proved more effective than the novel. Finally, it will offer a brief analysis of two plays, “Suppliants at Portopalo” (2009) and “Noise of Water” (2010), which manage to stage the dramatic experience of the Frontier by reactivating the main function of ancient tragedy, namely its ability to formalize the irreducible conflicts of the polis.

Écho des études romanes. Revue semestrielle de linguistique et littératures romanes, 18(2):157-175, 2022

By deploying an approach at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy and sociology of lit... more By deploying an approach at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy and sociology of literature, this article illustrates the intersubjective dynamics that make possible and structure the self-narration of migrants in the so-called host society: an endeavour that is always situated between choice and constraint, emancipation and violence. Most critics have interpreted migrant literature as a form of counter-narrative to the public discourse on migration where the migrant is either deprived of the possibility of first-person enunciation or incited to tell her story in order to justify her presence, to reassure the host community, and to satisfy the curiosity of audiences eager for exoticism or real-life experiences. I show instead that this literature responds to a specific horizon of expectations and is caught up in a set of ambivalent social, publishing, and literary norms. Some writers in this corpus, however, elaborate practices of resistance as they thematize the interlocutory scene of personal narrative, enacting and parodying the constitutive and productive violence of the norms that frame the migrant's self-narrative.

Revue des sciences humaines, 2022

The article is part of a thematic issue of the journal "Revue des sciences humaines" entitled "Re... more The article is part of a thematic issue of the journal "Revue des sciences humaines" entitled "Refaire monde" and devoted to the idea of the world in contemporary philosophical and literary debates. In a first step, the article identifies the three main areas of contemporary literary theory in which a reflection on the notion of the world is articulated today: the studies on world literature, the debate on the return of the "real" and "realism," and finally the reflections on the mobility of the boundaries between fiction and non.fiction. In a second step, the article considers these three debates in light of the current ecological emergency by showing how most of the issues raised earlier undergo a significant shift, if not a critical reversal. Finally, the article argues for the insufficiency of the notion of the world to account for the most pressing contemporary problems by trying to indicate a possible direction for the planet to become an operative concept for comparative literature studies without, however, losing sight of the global and worldwide dimension.

in "Perspectives on the Self Reflexivity in the Humanities", eds. Vojtěch Kolman and Tereza Matějčková, De Gruyter, 2022

This article posits that no form of self-creation, personal or collective, occurs without engagin... more This article posits that no form of self-creation, personal or collective, occurs without engaging into an agonistic relation with the other, be it through negation, incorporation, inventive translation, or frontal struggle. Examining how intellectuals concerned with anticolonial fights have appropriated Hegel's master-slave dialectic provides an excellent entry point for understanding what specific facets these agonistic dynamics take on in colonial contexts. After identifying the main elements of novelty that Frantz Fanon and Michel Tournier - my two case studies - introduce into Hegel's account (involving the racial identity of the servant and the master, the narrative sequence, the point of view, and the reader), the chapter explores how these two authors conceive of the transition from the material violence of struggle to true emancipation and mutual recognition, opening up new ways of thinking about self-creativity (i. e., the capacity to reinvent oneself) as an intersubjective enterprise of shared sense-making.

Ed. Petr Kyloušek, "Centers and Peripheries in Romance Language Literatures in the Americas and Africa", Brill, pp. 383-414, 2023

In the territories of the former Italian colonial empire, an autonomous Italophone literature has... more In the territories of the former Italian colonial empire, an autonomous Italophone literature has never emerged. On the other hand, the literature of Italian emigrants in the world, although quantitatively important, remained mostly separate from national literary production without exerting any real influence on its evolution. Different is the case, however, of the so-called migrant literature, within which it is usual to place not only the production written in Italian by immigrants, but also that of authors from former colonies or second generations. It is through this corpus, I argue, that the Italian case can enter into dialogue with postcolonial dynamics between centers and peripheries that invest other Romance language literatures. Although today there are many reasons to abolish and definitively overcome the dividing line between migrant literature and contemporary Italian literature tout court, the chapter insists on the role that migrant production has been able to play in the Italian context, precisely as a “marginal” textual area distinct from both foreign literature in translation and contemporary Italian literature. After presenting the effects of this strategic peripherality on the Italian literary field (especially in terms of deprovincialization and revitalization of literary criticism), the contribution focuses on literary forms and genres through some emblematic examples and concludes by explaining why the distinction between migrant and Italian literature has gradually lost its meaning, suggesting some avenues for future research.

Studi Culturali, 2012

È quanto Said accentua nel primo saggio scegliendo come esempio il modo in cui la teoria della re... more È quanto Said accentua nel primo saggio scegliendo come esempio il modo in cui la teoria della reificazione di György Lukács è stata recuperata da studiosi appartenenti a generazioni diverse come Raymond Williams o Lucien Goldmann, i quali, pur approdando a esiti brillanti, la usano sostanzialmente come strumento interpretativo, attenuando il suo originario slancio rivoluzionario e l'effetto dirompente conferitole da Lukács che vedeva in essa la possibilità di una reale trasformazione politica della realtà. 2 È quanto Said dimostra nel secondo saggio concentrandosi sull'uso che Adorno e Fanon hanno fatto della teoria della reificazione di Lukács, funzionale a comprendere, nel primo caso, il posto di Schoenberg nella storia della musica e nella società contemporanee, nel secondo, il rapporto manicheo tra colonizzatore e colonizzato nelle colonie europee e le contraddizioni implicite nei diversi processi di decolonizzazione.

Études romanes de Brno, 2016

Dopo aver precisato il ruolo delle mappe nel quadro dei progetti espansionistici dell'Europa e i ... more Dopo aver precisato il ruolo delle mappe nel quadro dei progetti espansionistici dell'Europa e i diversi usi di questo topos nella letteratura (post)coloniale, il contributo si focalizza su due opere emblematiche, che condividono la stessa ipotesi di fondo, ovverosia l'idea che la storia individuale e collettiva siano strettamente correlate alla cartografia del territorio urbano e nazionale: La mia casa è dove sono di Igiaba Scego e Maps di Nuruddin Farah. Si dimostrerà che, mentre il romanzo di Scego giunge a una proposta identitaria conciliatoria basata sulla fiducia nella narrazione come strumento "per rendere conto di sé" e su una disinvolta equivalenza tra l'"io" e il "noi"; quello di Farah, concependo il rapporto tra l'individuale/familiare e il collettivo/nazionale secondo le modalità dell'allegoria e facendo del protagonista un narratore inaffidabile, approda a una convincente critica della narrazione come privilegio delle elite metropolitane, e delinea una nuova geografia di rapporti interpersonali e internazionali dove le frontiere risultano completamente denaturalizzate.

Modern Language Notes. French Issue / Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 135, Number 4, pp. pp. 936-965, 2020

La production littéraire ayant pour objet le réchauffement climatique constitue un terrain privil... more La production littéraire ayant pour objet le réchauffement climatique constitue un terrain privilégié pour penser les frontières de la littérature ; qu’elles soient externes (croisements avec les discours scientifique et politique) ou internes (relatifs aux défis que cet hyperobject pose aux régimes de représentation). Après avoir présenté ces enjeux théoriques, nous démontrerons l’apport original de trois auteurs de science-fiction française (Jean-Marc Ligny, Dominique Douay et Claude Ecken) dans la mise en récit du réchauffement climatique. Cette originalité réside dans les macrostructures narratives et les procédés formels, ainsi que dans la mise en présence de savoirs scientifiques.

dans "Humain, Posthumain", sous la dir. de Cristina Alvares, Ana Lucia Curado, Sergio Guimaraes de Sousa, éditions Le Manuscrit Savoirs, Exotopies, pp. 51-78, 2020

Routledge, 2020

Final version of this article in: Chiara Mengozzi (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Cro... more Final version of this article in: Chiara Mengozzi (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies. Routledge, 2020

By proposing a new interpretation of The War with the Newts by Karel Čapek, this chapter demonstrates that resisting the anthropological machine depends first and foremost on the practices of reading. My intent is to challenge previous readings of the novel, most of which remove the salamanders as a referent, recoding them through an allegorical key. However, before being an allegory of colonised people, the working class, Jews, and in the end, even Nazis, the Salamanders should be considered, in narrative terms, as concrete living beings that humans treat as if they were merely natural resources to be studied and exploited. This chapter demonstrates the extent to which traditional interpretations are reductionist and symptomatic of a failure and inability to think beyond humanity, insofar as they persist in placing humans at the centre of the plot, even when confronted by a radically anti-anthropocentric novel that stages the catastrophic consequences of the Anthropocene. I ground such an interpretation on the analysis of the intertextual references left unexplored in previous readings (Darwin and Kafka), and of two stylistic features neglected by other interpreters, to wit, the frequent inversion between the centre and the margins of the text, and the “surprise effect” created by the concatenation of the narrated events.

Routledge , 2020

Final version in: Chiara Mengozzi (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-... more Final version in: Chiara Mengozzi (ed.), Outside the Anthropological Machine. Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies. Routledge, 2020

This introductory chapter dwells on Agamben’s notion of the “anthropological machine”—the device by which man is produced against his allegedly animal nature—and addresses two issues that Agamben’s analysis has left unexplored: namely, the consequences the anthropological machine implies for the life of animals, and the strategies one needs to adopt in order to render the machine inoperative, for the sake of both human and non-human animals. It is argued that to dismantle this “othering machine” and to undo the traditional boundary between human and animal, one should embark on a difficult but rewarding journey of self-displacement and de-familiarization. Three anti-anthropocentric exercises are suggested. The first consists in placing humans at the margins of the history (both in the sense of human history and the narrative plot), while bringing other co-protagonists into the foreground. The second shifts the focus onto the human-animal relationship, while exploring the dispositifs that allow, mediate, or prevent a genuine encounter. Finally, the third addresses the possibility of grasping and portraying animals’ lives, minds, and language, while bearing in mind that this “translation process” is necessarily open-ended and fraught with traps.

Revue de littérature comparée , 2020

After having discussed the various definitions of World Literature provided by Karel Čapek in the... more After having discussed the various definitions of World Literature provided by Karel Čapek in the article « Jak se dělá světová literatura » (« How to Make World Literature »), as well as the various ways in which minor literatures may achieve world-wide recognition, I turn the attention to Čapek’s most famous novel, Válka s mloky (The War with the Newts). With this, I aim to demonstrate that the critical doxa on this classic of the European literary canon can be challenged by taking into account the unequal power-relations within the literary system. This joint reading of Čapek’s essay and novel—never undertaken by the critics—has three goals. The first is to provide a new interpretation of Capek’s novel: far from being exclusively a « thesis novel » against capitalism, militarism, and Nazism (as most of the critics affirm), The War with the Newts also thematizes the contemporary configuration of the hierarchical relationships between languages, cultures, and nations. In other words, it simultaneously reflects and contests the relationships between the centres and peripheries of the literary system to which it belongs. The second aim is to bring to light an unknown chapter of the history of the concept of World Literature through the lens of an author who, coming from a semi-peripheral space himself, nevertheless managed to attract international attention and become a reference for European modernism and science-fiction. Finally, I claim that, in order to properly understand World Literature, we need to link close and distant reading.

"Narrativa. Nuova Serie", n. 41, 2019, pp. 23-39

L’articolo esplora le diverse maniere in cui gli scrittori italiani contemporanei mettono in scen... more L’articolo esplora le diverse maniere in cui gli scrittori italiani contemporanei mettono in scena cause ed effetti (sociali, ambientali e psicologici) della crisi climatica in corso, offrendoci al contempo la possibilità di cambiare sguardo sul nostro Umwelt, inteso come spazio di coesistenza –fatto di incontri e simbiosi o, viceversa, di rapporti conflittuali e violenti – tra agenti differenti, umani e non-umani.
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L’article montre les façons dont les écrivains contemporains en Italie mettent en récit la crise climatique actuelle, avec ses causes et ses effets, qu’ils soient sociaux, environnementaux et psychologiques. Il rend compte du fait que leurs œuvres nous offrent la possibilité de changer de regard sur notre environnement, entendu comme un espace de coexistence – fait de rencontres et symbioses ou, vice-versa, de rapports conflictuels et violents – entre agents différents, humains et non humains.

Narrativa. Nuova serie, n. 46 , 2024

https://journals.openedition.org/narrativa/

Carocci , 2023

London-New York, Routledge , 2020

Mariano del Friuli, Collana "Appunti di Storia", 2007

In "Storie condivise nell'Italia contemporanea. Narrazioni e performance transculturali", Roma, Carocci, pp. 11-37, 2022

Science Fiction Studies, Volume 50, Part 2, pp. 145-174, 2023

in "L’Europe transculturelle dans le monde global / Transcultural Europe in the Global World", 2023

Écho des études romanes. Revue semestrielle de linguistique et littératures romanes, 18(2):157-175, 2022

Revue des sciences humaines, 2022

in "Perspectives on the Self Reflexivity in the Humanities", eds. Vojtěch Kolman and Tereza Matějčková, De Gruyter, 2022

Ed. Petr Kyloušek, "Centers and Peripheries in Romance Language Literatures in the Americas and Africa", Brill, pp. 383-414, 2023

Studi Culturali, 2012

Études romanes de Brno, 2016

Modern Language Notes. French Issue / Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 135, Number 4, pp. pp. 936-965, 2020

dans "Humain, Posthumain", sous la dir. de Cristina Alvares, Ana Lucia Curado, Sergio Guimaraes de Sousa, éditions Le Manuscrit Savoirs, Exotopies, pp. 51-78, 2020

Routledge, 2020

Routledge , 2020

Revue de littérature comparée , 2020

"Narrativa. Nuova Serie", n. 41, 2019, pp. 23-39

Storia del romanzo in Italia, eds. G. Alfano, F. De CristofaroRoma, Carocci, vol. 4, pp. 435-47 , 2018

Italian Studies , 2018

This article addresses the ethics of Ennio Flaiano’s farcical approach to the colonial war in two... more This article addresses the ethics of Ennio Flaiano’s farcical approach to the colonial war in two early works, La guerra spiegata ai poveri and Tempo di uccidere. While both texts demystify belligerent rhetoric, they differ in their treatment of language, characterization, and metaliterary reflection. In the play, all characters are subject to farcical treatment, including those who embody a subaltern perspective, whereas in the novel the targets of derision are Italian colonialists alone. Flaiano thus subverts the cultural stereotypes promoted by fascist satirical magazines, which disseminated racist ideology by portraying indigenous people as morally and physically inferior. I argue that, while in La guerra spiegata ai poveri, Flaiano presents literature as a politically compromised discourse and derides intellectuals who supported colonial aggressions in Libya and Ethiopia, Tempo di uccidere not only parodies the European colonial novel but also works to propose a new understanding of literature, construed as ethical responsibility towards colonised people.

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/HFhd6NAyaKGQBqmiW8q5/full

Acta Universitatis Carolinae, 2018

AT THE FRINGES OF HUMANITY: THE (IN)EFFECTIVENESS OF EMPATHY AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE The humanit... more AT THE FRINGES OF HUMANITY: THE (IN)EFFECTIVENESS OF EMPATHY AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
The humanities in general, and literature in particular – Martha Nussbaum argues – deserve a leading role within the educational system, because they contribute in a fundamental way to the functioning of a democratic society. More concretely, they would help to cultivate empa-thetic citizens, concerned with the experiences, suffering and vulnerability of people whose lives seem radically different from their own. In the present article, the correlation between literary education, empathy, and justice established by Martha Nussbaum will be tested by reference to an extreme case, i.e. the affective relations between human beings and artificial creatures as represented in Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The limits and dangers of empathy, on the one hand, and the ambivalent character of aesthetic experience, on the other, will be emphasized. In these two novels – the author argues – the arbitrary distinction between human and non-human, as well as the differential justice that follows the lines of this cleavage, is consolidated precisely by the deep sympathy/empathy/compassion felt for members of the same group of belonging, be it social class, gender, race, or species. Furthermore, if aesthetic education functions for the protagonists of the two novels both as an illusory compensation and a means of subjectivation, the effect that the narratives may have on the readers is far from clear and unequivocal: even though empathy for otherness is partially able to undermine our closure of identity, it remains powerless as a motivation for acting ethically, if this implies the loss of benefits for our group of belonging (ethnic, national or human).

Arabeschi. Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità , 2017

online

Revue Romane, 2017

The article proposes a new reading of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique with the intent to comb... more The article proposes a new reading of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique with the intent to combine Postcolonial and Animal Studies, beyond the common emphasis on the notion of victim, and to resist the allegorical interpretations of the novel. Firstly, I demonstrate that during the “administrated island”, Robinson imposes an order based on the correlation among capitalism, colonialism and Oedipal sexuality, as if humanity as such could be reduced to the features of Western societies. Then, I explore how the novel relocates the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, challenging the exclusive identification of alterity to a human face. Finally, I focus on the new relation with otherness (both human and animal) experienced by the two characters: a kind of intersubjectivity based on the play, which is a practice that does not presuppose the knowledge of the other and exceeds the traditional categorical antithesis, such as truth/falsity, good/evil, nature/culture.

Keywords : Tournier, Animal Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Play, Allegory, Alterity

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