Hybrid Bodies between Utopia and Trauma in F.T. Marinetti

This article analyses a small selection of texts by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti with the aim to shed new light on the role that the experience of combat during the First World War played in the evolution of the narrative of the body in Marinetti’s imagination. Different pre-war narratives of the body will be first analysed and then placed against the backdrop of the cultural productions of the war years. Specific attention will be paid to the images of the prosthetic body with a wider look onto other social discourses (medical science, politics, propaganda). The article will argue that Marinetti re-writes and adjust his earlier narratives of the body and highlight the ambivalences and social fantasies, mostly relevant to gender and sexuality, underlying them

Entering the Simulacra World. Aesthetic and Cultural Phenomenologies in Literature, Media, and the Arts

This issue of Between aims to investigate the phenomenology of simulacra and their range of functions (conceptual, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and in the media). What is meant here by ‘simulacrum’ is any artificial creature or phantasm that imitates or replicates the outward form and/or behaviour of living beings, especially human beings. By doing so, it blurs the boundaries between life and artifice, human and non-human. As a notion, ‘simulacrum’ covers a variety of hybrid, liminal and often spectral figures populating the premodern, modern and contemporary imagination: from statues to puppets, from golems to homunculi, from automata to robots, from cyborgs to avatars and, ultimately, Artificial Intelligence. The case studies collected here lay the groundwork for an inquiry wherein literary works are assessed from both the point of view of textual analysis and in connection with the compelling relevance that the theme of simulacra has been gaining in the cultural sphere, including contemporary debates on the ‘trans-‘ and ‘posthuman’

Entering the Simulacra World. Aesthetic and Cultural Phenomenologies in Literature, Media, and the Arts

This issue of Between aims to investigate the phenomenology of simulacra and their range of functions (conceptual, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and in the media). What is meant here by ‘simulacrum’ is any artificial creature or phantasm that imitates or replicates the outward form and/or behaviour of living beings, especially human beings. By doing so, it blurs the boundaries between life and artifice, human and non-human. As a notion, ‘simulacrum’ covers a variety of hybrid, liminal and often spectral figures populating the premodern, modern and contemporary imagination: from statues to puppets, from golems to homunculi, from automata to robots, from cyborgs to avatars and, ultimately, Artificial Intelligence. The case studies collected here lay the groundwork for an inquiry wherein literary works are assessed from both the point of view of textual analysis and in connection with the compelling relevance that the theme of simulacra has been gaining in the cultural sphere, including contemporary debates on the ‘trans-‘ and ‘posthuman’

Carlo Emilio Gadda. Un seminario

I sette capitoli di questo libro sono altrettante prospettive attraverso cui guardare l’opera di Carlo Emilio Gadda. Frutto di un seminario permanente inaugurato nel 2021, questo volume si articola in tre sezioni: Discorsività, retorica; Limiti, aperture; Referenti, voci, tempi. L’ambizione non è quella di offrire una guida introduttiva alla lettura, né di proporre un’opera critica dedicata a un solo libro o a una specifica questione, ma di aprire un fronte critico, nuovo e diversificato, su Gadda, sulla sua scrittura, sui suoi mondi, sulla sua posizione nella letteratura italiana ed europea. Così le voci di questo libro si armonizzano per affrontare, attraverso prospettive ermeneutiche e metodologiche diverse e complementari, nodi e problemi che l’opera gaddiana continua a porre ai suoi nuovi lettori: il linguaggio stratificato, figurale e letterario; le soglie liminari e il problema della forma narrativa; il rapporto tra temporalità, prospettive, realtà e rappresentazione. Un libro frastagliato e coeso assieme, percorso dall’obiettivo di riflettere sulla prosa di Gadda, sulla sua forza critica, sulla sua ricezione. Un libro seminariale, la cui costitutiva varietà è la chiave per accedere all’opera di un autore che non smette di dimostrarsi un interlocutore vivo e attuale