“A life of metal”: an ecocritical reading of Silvia Avallone’s "Acciaio"

Silvia Avallone’s acclaimed novel "Acciaio" (2010) narrates the struggling friendship, complicated existence, and coming of age of Anna and Francesca, two teenage girls who live in a working class neighborhood in the Tuscan coastal town of Piombino, near the Lucchini steel plant where most of their blue-collars older friends and relatives work. It tells the stories of human bodies who grow, love, suffer, struggle and die, but also of nonhuman matter (iron, steel) that is created, transformed and then “lives” a parallel co-existence in the same environment. More in particular, as its title and plot suggest, the novel also deals with the close relationship and reciprocal interferences between human beings and nonhuman matter, be it inorganic, like the iron ore and the machines the workers use to produce steel, or organic, like the animals, plants and shells the girls find on a beach near the plant site. Building on some of the theoretical postulates and methodological insights provided by ecocriticism’s recent “material turn”, that is, focusing on the novel’s representations of the encounters “between people-materialities and thing-materialities” (Bennett x), the aim of this paper is to suggest that Avallone’s novel not only presents a radically alternative vision of—at least a section of—Tuscany’s famed “Etruscan Coast,” but also hints at the sort of posthuman ecology that regulates this particular place. Ultimately, I argue that this text, by drawing attention to the mutual connections between “organisms, ecosystems, and humanly made substances” (Iovino 10), and between the biological, socio-economic and cultural spheres, goes way beyond the story of Anna and Francesca and the industrial area of Piombino where the Lucchini factory is situated. Taking this unusual Tuscan territory as an example, Avallone’s text provides a template for understanding ongoing dynamics in many other “Piombinos”, be they nearby in Tuscany—the Solvay soda-ash plant in Rosignano comes to mind—elsewhere in Italy, or all around the globe.La aclamada novela de Silvia Avallone, "Acciaio" (2010), narra la lucha de la amistad y la complica existencia y mayoría de edad de Anna y Francesca, dos adolescentes que viven en un barrio de clase obrera en el costero pueblo Toscano de Piombino, cerca de la acerería Lucchini, donde trabajan la mayoría de sus amigos mayores y sus parientes obreros. La novela cuenta la historia de cuerpos humanos que crecen, aman, sufren, luchan, y mueren, pero también de la materia no humana (hierro, acero) que se crea, se transforma, y después “vive” una existencia paralela en el mismo entorno. En particular, tal y como sugieren el título y la trama, la novela también trata de la cercana relación y las interferencias recíprocas entre los seres humanos y la materia no humana, sea inorgánica, como el mineral de hierro y las máquinas que los trabajadores usan para producir acero, u orgánica, como los animales, las plantas y las conchas que las chicas encuentran en una playa cerca de la acerería. Usando como base algunos postulados teoréticos y conocimientos metodológicos surgidos del reciente “giro material” de la ecocrítica, es decir, centrándose en las representaciones que la novela ofrece de los encuentros “entre materias-humanas y materias-cosas” (Bennett x), el objetivo de este ensayo es sugerir que la novela de Avallone no solo presenta una visión de la famosa “Costa Etrusca” de la Toscana (por lo menos una parte) radicalmente alternativa, sino que también insinúa el tipo de ecología posthumana que regula este lugar en concreto. Por último, argumento que este texto, al dirigir la atención a las conexiones mutuas entre “organismos, ecosistemas, y sustancias hechas por humanos” (Iovino 10), y entre las esferas biológicas, socioeconómicas, y culturales, va más allá de la historia de Anna y Francesca y del área industrial de Piombino donde se encuentra la acerería Lucchini. Tomando este insólito territorio toscano como ejemplo, el texto proporciona una plantilla para entender las continuas dinámicas en muchos otros “Piombionos”, estén cercanos a la Toscana (la planta de sosa Solvay en Rosignano viene a la mente), en otros lugares en Italia, o alrededor del mundo

“A life of metal”: an ecocritical reading of Silvia Avallone’s "Acciaio"

Silvia Avallone’s acclaimed novel "Acciaio" (2010) narrates the struggling friendship, complicated existence, and coming of age of Anna and Francesca, two teenage girls who live in a working class neighborhood in the Tuscan coastal town of Piombino, near the Lucchini steel plant where most of their blue-collars older friends and relatives work. It tells the stories of human bodies who grow, love, suffer, struggle and die, but also of nonhuman matter (iron, steel) that is created, transformed and then “lives” a parallel co-existence in the same environment. More in particular, as its title and plot suggest, the novel also deals with the close relationship and reciprocal interferences between human beings and nonhuman matter, be it inorganic, like the iron ore and the machines the workers use to produce steel, or organic, like the animals, plants and shells the girls find on a beach near the plant site. Building on some of the theoretical postulates and methodological insights provided by ecocriticism’s recent “material turn”, that is, focusing on the novel’s representations of the encounters “between people-materialities and thing-materialities” (Bennett x), the aim of this paper is to suggest that Avallone’s novel not only presents a radically alternative vision of—at least a section of—Tuscany’s famed “Etruscan Coast,” but also hints at the sort of posthuman ecology that regulates this particular place. Ultimately, I argue that this text, by drawing attention to the mutual connections between “organisms, ecosystems, and humanly made substances” (Iovino 10), and between the biological, socio-economic and cultural spheres, goes way beyond the story of Anna and Francesca and the industrial area of Piombino where the Lucchini factory is situated. Taking this unusual Tuscan territory as an example, Avallone’s text provides a template for understanding ongoing dynamics in many other “Piombinos”, be they nearby in Tuscany—the Solvay soda-ash plant in Rosignano comes to mind—elsewhere in Italy, or all around the globe.La aclamada novela de Silvia Avallone, "Acciaio" (2010), narra la lucha de la amistad y la complica existencia y mayoría de edad de Anna y Francesca, dos adolescentes que viven en un barrio de clase obrera en el costero pueblo Toscano de Piombino, cerca de la acerería Lucchini, donde trabajan la mayoría de sus amigos mayores y sus parientes obreros. La novela cuenta la historia de cuerpos humanos que crecen, aman, sufren, luchan, y mueren, pero también de la materia no humana (hierro, acero) que se crea, se transforma, y después “vive” una existencia paralela en el mismo entorno. En particular, tal y como sugieren el título y la trama, la novela también trata de la cercana relación y las interferencias recíprocas entre los seres humanos y la materia no humana, sea inorgánica, como el mineral de hierro y las máquinas que los trabajadores usan para producir acero, u orgánica, como los animales, las plantas y las conchas que las chicas encuentran en una playa cerca de la acerería. Usando como base algunos postulados teoréticos y conocimientos metodológicos surgidos del reciente “giro material” de la ecocrítica, es decir, centrándose en las representaciones que la novela ofrece de los encuentros “entre materias-humanas y materias-cosas” (Bennett x), el objetivo de este ensayo es sugerir que la novela de Avallone no solo presenta una visión de la famosa “Costa Etrusca” de la Toscana (por lo menos una parte) radicalmente alternativa, sino que también insinúa el tipo de ecología posthumana que regula este lugar en concreto. Por último, argumento que este texto, al dirigir la atención a las conexiones mutuas entre “organismos, ecosistemas, y sustancias hechas por humanos” (Iovino 10), y entre las esferas biológicas, socioeconómicas, y culturales, va más allá de la historia de Anna y Francesca y del área industrial de Piombino donde se encuentra la acerería Lucchini. Tomando este insólito territorio toscano como ejemplo, el texto proporciona una plantilla para entender las continuas dinámicas en muchos otros “Piombionos”, estén cercanos a la Toscana (la planta de sosa Solvay en Rosignano viene a la mente), en otros lugares en Italia, o alrededor del mundo

A Woman’s Loss of Imagination: Paola Masino’s Magical Realism in Nascita e morte della Massaia

Criticism on Paola Masino has flourished since the early 2000s. This increased attention has contributed towards reclaiming an author often overshadowed by the attention received by her partner, Massimo Bontempelli, the father of realismo magico. Masino experimented with a variety of styles—realismo magico was one of them—as she rejected strictly naturalistic forms of representation, preferring to co-opt myths and the supernatural. Nascita e morte della Massaia (1945) is Masino’s most renowned literary effort, both for its critique of Fascist Italy and for its sophisticated stylistic effects. Nascita, while indebted to Bontempelli’s theorizations, features all the chief characteristics listed in Faris’s analysis of magical realism as an international phenomenon, and illustrates how magical realism offers strategies for evading censorship to those writing against totalitarianism regimes. At the same time, it is an example of how magical realism can be used to denounce socially imposed gender roles. My analysis shows how this narrative mode emerges on multiple levels within Masino’s text

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers a Single Dimension of Complexity that Structures Global Variation in Human Social Organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.This work was supported by a John Templeton Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled “Axial-Age Religions and the Z-Curve of Human Egalitarianism,” a Tricoastal Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled “The Deep Roots of the Modern World: The Cultural Evolution of Economic Growth and Political Stability,” Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant REF RES-060-25-0085 entitled “Ritual, Community, and Conflict,” an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 694986, and Grant 644055 from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ALIGNED; www.aligned-project.eu). T.E.C. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement 716212).Peer Reviewe

Massimo Bontempelli e il mito classico: il caso di Gente nel tempo

Questo saggio approfondisce l’analisi del mito classico di Kronos, alla base di Gente nel tempo di Bontempelli, e propone una nuova intepretazione del romanzo. Tale mito, se interpretato alla luce delle idee dello scrittore circa la creatività artistica, la Storia ed il tempo, suggerisce che il romanzo, pur descrivendo l’azione distruttrice e divoratrice del tempo inteso come Kronos, allude anche alla possibilità di recuperare e ri-esperire un tipo di tempo alternativo: Kairos. Il noto progetto bontempelliano di ‘recupero dell’individuo’ ed il suo tentativo di fuggire dalla negatività della Storia possono dunque derivare da un’esperienza alternativa, ‘kairotica’, in cui il tempo è caratterizzato dalla sua natura qualitativa piuttosto che quantitativa ed in cui l’arte e la creatività possono riacquistare ruoli attivi e preminenti. Per Bontempelli, in conclusione, la categoria del ‘gioco’, in tutte le sue ramificazioni, rappresenta appunto questo tipo di salvifica esperienza

Nutrition as Dissolution: Paola Masino's Nascita e morte della massaia

Many scholars agree that Paola Masino's novel Nascita e morte della massaia is to be read as an allegory protesting Fascism censorship and suppression of women's creative powers, a sort of literal grave-stone and defeat of the possibility of feminine imagination and creativity. By focusing on the implications of the alimentary discourse in the novel and on its "anorexic" protagonist, my essay wishes to complement the former reading. I suggest that an additional, perhaps less dramatic and tragic message may stem out of this depiction of a failure and a defeat. That is, a message that alludes to a fundamental faith in the resiliency of the powers of imagination and artistic creativity may actually, although marginally, be traced in the novel

"A Life of Metal": An Ecocritical Reading of Silvia Avallone’s Acciaio // "Una vida de metales": Una lectura ecocrítica de Acciaio de Silvia Avallone

Silvia Avallone’s acclaimed novel Acciaio (2010) narrates the struggling friendship, complicated existence, and coming of age of Anna and Francesca, two teenage girls who live in a working class neighborhood in the Tuscan coastal town of Piombino, near the Lucchini steel plant where most of their blue-collars older friends and relatives work. It tells the stories of human bodies who grow, love, suffer, struggle and die, but also of nonhuman matter (iron, steel) that is created, transformed and then “lives” a parallel co-existence in the same environment.  More in particular, as its title and plot suggest, the novel also deals with the close relationship and reciprocal interferences between human beings and nonhuman matter, be it inorganic, like the iron ore and the machines the workers use to produce steel, or organic, like the animals, plants and shells the girls find on a beach near the plant site. Building on some of the theoretical postulates and methodological insights provided by ecocriticism’s recent “material turn”, that is, focusing on the novel’s representations of the encounters “between people-materialities and thing-materialities” (Bennett x), the aim of this paper is to suggest that Avallone’s novel not only presents a radically alternative vision of—at least a section of—Tuscany’s famed “Etruscan Coast,” but also hints at the sort of posthuman ecology that regulates this particular place. Ultimately, I argue that this text, by drawing attention to the mutual connections between “organisms, ecosystems, and humanly made substances” (Iovino 10), and between the biological, socio-economic and cultural spheres, goes way beyond the story of Anna and Francesca and the industrial area of Piombino where the Lucchini factory is situated. Taking this unusual Tuscan territory as an example, Avallone’s  text provides a template for understanding ongoing dynamics in many other “Piombinos”, be they nearby in Tuscany—the Solvay soda-ash plant in Rosignano comes to mind—elsewhere in Italy, or all around the globe.    Resumen   La aclamada novela de Silvia Avallone, Acciaio (2010), narra la lucha de la amistad y la complica existencia y mayoría de edad de Anna y Francesca, dos adolescentes que viven en un barrio de clase obrera en el costero pueblo Toscano de Piombino, cerca de la acerería Lucchini, donde trabajan la mayoría de sus amigos mayores  y sus parientes obreros. La novela cuenta la historia de cuerpos humanos que crecen, aman, sufren, luchan, y mueren, pero también de la materia no humana (hierro, acero) que se crea, se transforma, y después “vive” una existencia paralela en el mismo entorno. En particular, tal y como sugieren el título y la trama, la novela también trata de la cercana relación y las interferencias recíprocas entre los seres humanos y la materia no humana, sea inorgánica, como el mineral de hierro y las máquinas que los trabajadores usan para producir acero, u orgánica, como los animales, las plantas y las conchas que las chicas encuentran en una playa cerca de la acerería. Usando como base algunos postulados teoréticos y conocimientos metodológicos surgidos del reciente “giro material” de la ecocrítica, es decir, centrándose en las representaciones que la novela ofrece de los encuentros “entre materias-humanas y materias-cosas” (Bennett x), el objetivo de este ensayo es sugerir que la novela de Avallone no solo presenta una visión de la famosa “Costa Etrusca” de la Toscana (por lo menos una parte) radicalmente alternativa, sino que también insinúa el tipo de ecología posthumana que regula este lugar en concreto. Por último, argumento que este texto, al dirigir la atención a las conexiones mutuas entre “organismos, ecosistemas, y sustancias hechas por humanos” (Iovino 10), y entre las esferas biológicas, socioeconómicas, y culturales, va más allá de la historia de Anna y Francesca y del área industrial de Piombino donde se encuentra la acerería Lucchini. Tomando este insólito territorio toscano como ejemplo, el texto proporciona una plantilla para entender las continuas dinámicas en muchos otros “Piombionos”, estén cercanos a la Toscana (la planta de sosa Solvay en Rosignano viene a la mente), en otros lugares en Italia, o alrededor del mundo

The Environmental Humanities and Italy

Published online: 22 March 2023Does something like “Italian environmental humanities” exist? If so, what makes an Italian approach to this multifaceted field of inquiry so different from the more consolidated Anglo-American tradition? At least until the early 21st century, Italian academic institutions have maintained established disciplinary boundaries and have continued to produce siloed forms of knowledge. New and more flexible forms of scholarly collaboration have also not been traditionally supported at the national level, as political decisions regarding curricular updates and funding opportunities have been unable to foster interdisciplinarity and innovative approaches to knowledge production. However, an underlying current of environmental awareness and action has a strong and long-standing presence in Italy. After all, Italy is where St. Francis wrote The Canticle of Creatures, with its non-hierarchical vision of the world, which then inspired the papal encyclical Laudato si (2015). Italy is also where Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco The Allegory and the Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country (1337–1339) already “pre-ecologically” reflected on the relationship between nature and culture, on the effect of political decisions on our surroundings, and on the impact of local environments on the well-being (as well as the malaise) of their inhabitants. Additionally, Italy is among the few countries in the world whose constitution lists specific laws aimed at protecting its landscapes, biodiversity, and ecosystems in addition to its cultural heritage, as stated in a recent addendum to articles 9 and 41. However, Italy also experienced an abrupt, violent process of development, modernization, and industrialization that radically transformed its urban, rural, and coastal territories after World War II. Many of its landscapes, once iconic and picturesque, have become polluted, toxic, or the outcome of contested, violent histories. And the effects of globalization are materially affecting its ecologies, meaning that Italy is also exposed to constant risks (earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions) and presents geo-morphological features that situate it at the very center of planetary climate change (both atmospheric and sociopolitical) and migration patterns. Considering this, thinking about Italy from an environmental humanities (EH) perspective and, in turn, about the EH in the context of Italy, highlights the interconnections between the local and the global and, in the process, enriches the EH debate