Aime, Borzani
A journey across old and modern myths of the Italian imaginary (from bleeding hearts paraded mainly for the sake of appearances to a rampant evilsm out on the hunt for any scapegoat available).
A brief Guide to Italian Evilism
foreword by Donald Sassoon
That Italians have changed, and not quite for the best, is now a fact. The anthropological mutation foreseen by Pier Paolo Pasolini in the mid-1970s is today much too obvious, and perhaps took a turn for the worse. If democracies throughout the West are showing cracks and a frightened and consumerist individualism prevails, Italy has been at the forefront of the processes that today make us look with a worried and dismayed gaze at the involution of civil life that is taking place in the United States and large parts of Europe. This drift had a long way coming, namely from that 1989 which not only did not keep its promises but marked the start of a new and often ruthless globalization of the planet. In this sense, immigration is truly the phenomenon that most clearly allows us to read the change in Italian culture. Not the only one, of course. But immigration performs a «mirror function» capable of revealing the nature of the host society, bringing to light what is latent, a social unconscious left in the dark.
MARCO AIME teaches Cultural Anthropology at Università di Genova. He has conducted research in West Africa (Benin, Mali) and the Italian Alps. He authored numerous anthropological essays including Eccessi di culture (Einaudi, 2004), Contro il razzismo. Quattro ragionamenti (Einaudi, 2016), L'isola del non arrivo. Voci da Lampedusa (Bollati Boringhieri, 2018).
A brief Guide to Italian Evilism
foreword by Donald Sassoon
That Italians have changed, and not quite for the best, is now a fact. The anthropological mutation foreseen by Pier Paolo Pasolini in the mid-1970s is today much too obvious, and perhaps took a turn for the worse. If democracies throughout the West are showing cracks and a frightened and consumerist individualism prevails, Italy has been at the forefront of the processes that today make us look with a worried and dismayed gaze at the involution of civil life that is taking place in the United States and large parts of Europe. This drift had a long way coming, namely from that 1989 which not only did not keep its promises but marked the start of a new and often ruthless globalization of the planet. In this sense, immigration is truly the phenomenon that most clearly allows us to read the change in Italian culture. Not the only one, of course. But immigration performs a «mirror function» capable of revealing the nature of the host society, bringing to light what is latent, a social unconscious left in the dark.
MARCO AIME teaches Cultural Anthropology at Università di Genova. He has conducted research in West Africa (Benin, Mali) and the Italian Alps. He authored numerous anthropological essays including Eccessi di culture (Einaudi, 2004), Contro il razzismo. Quattro ragionamenti (Einaudi, 2016), L'isola del non arrivo. Voci da Lampedusa (Bollati Boringhieri, 2018).
LUCA BORZANI has been the president of Fondazione per la cultura Palazzo Ducale di Genova. He is also director of magazine «la Città», columnist for the newspaper «la Repubblica» and president of Medi, Research center on Mediterranean migrations.
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