Styles of Existence, Italy 1961-1982

The category of life is considered central to the heterogeneous field known as Italian thought or Italian theory. Its centrality helps explain the outsized role that Italian thinkers like Giorgio Agamben, Rosi Braidotti, Roberto Esposito, and Toni Negri play in international conceptualizations of biopolitics. Scholars have attempted to trace the roots of this emphasis on life back to thinkers such as Vico and Croce, Italian Marxist traditions such as workerism, “imports” like Heideggerian ontology and Foucauldian critique, and even Italy’s geography. These histories fail to interrogate the paradox that Italian thought usually deals with life in abstract terms, rather than with real, embodied lives. Styles of Existence, Italy 1961–1982 offers an alternative genealogy of Italian thought that focuses on the role that philology played in transforming conceptions of life and self in postwar Italy. It argues that the poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and art critic and feminist Carla Lonzi show us what living looks like by applying the tools and concepts of interpretation and criticism they acquired as artists and critics to their own lives. It makes the case for their inclusion in the unofficial canon of Italian thought, and for acknowledging the debts that later philosophical treatments of life owe to Pasolini and Lonzi’s existential attempts to overcome the distance between theory and praxis. Pasolini and Lonzi, both well-known for their polemical contributions to debates about politics, gender, and sexuality in Italy’s long 1968, are discussed here together for the first time. Styles of Existence lays out the theoretical tenets, preferred methodologies, and historical arcs of their life philologies, tracing them across an array of sources including diaries, screenplays, television talk shows, and newspaper columns. Both authors’ projects are examined from a comparatist perspective, which means that they are situated in Pasolini and Lonzi’s cultural and discursive contexts as Marxist and feminist intellectuals, respectively, and in relation to contemporaneous domestic and international trends and debates. Responding to a request by Pasolini that his works be read philologically, chapter one proposes a philological rereading of his corpus that takes into account his love for space and dedication to the irrational. Proposing the notion of “lunar hermeneutics” as a conceptual frame, it demonstrates that Pasolini incorporates tools from philology and stylistic criticism in his social critique and filmmaking in response to changing global and national political landscapes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and especially the developments of the space race. Chapter two elaborates the features of Pasolini’s project of “Marxist linguistics” in the mid-1960s as a political answer to rapid industrialization and globalization, demonstrating that Pasolini expands the scope of lunar hermeneutics with contributions from semiotics and insights from his work as a filmmaker. Close readings of Pasolini’s aesthetic writings in Empirismo eretico (1972) and his film Uccellacci e uccellini (1966) illustrate the importance of cinema to his revised theory of language and understanding of self. Chapter three examines Pasolini’s collection of political writings, Scritti corsari (1975), as an example of Auerbachian-inspired Weltliteratur, showing that the work is designed as a philological exercise dedicated to the critical preservation of human forms of life threatened with extinction. Turning to Lonzi, chapter four provides the first theoretical and historical account of autocoscienza or self-consciousness making, the feminist, relational practice that Lonzi developed with other members of the group Rivolta femminile in the early 1970s. Lonzi formulates autocoscienza as a subversive mediation of critical and postcolonial theory as well as of modern art, and envisions an “unforeseen subject” who refuses to comply with the misogyny and inequalities inherent to prevailing models of liberational subjectivity. Chapter five reassesses Lonzi’s rejection of Hegelian and psychoanalytic theories of recognition, and her engagement with Alexander Kojève’s anthropomorphizing rendition of Hegel, to argue that autocoscienza provides its own affirmative feminist theory and practice of recognition focused on listening and responsiveness among equals. Chapter six considers the diary’s central role in Lonzi’s philological project of self by linking it to autocoscienza and her theory of clitorality. It argues that the sexed dimension of autocoscienza is what makes viable a transition from theory to praxis, and from emphasis on the collective to the self. By focusing on the diary, it restores the contributions of “Sara,” another Rivolta member, and the influence of hagiographical writings on Lonzi’s conception of female freedom. Finally, chapter seven unearths Lonzi’s obsessive “dialogue” with Pasolini in her “feminist diary” Taci, anzi parla [Hush, No Speak] (1978) as a case study in the practice of autocoscienza. Lonzi’s disagreements with Pasolini about culture, sexuality, and women’s rights, and their largely overlapping views on freedom and expression, are situated in the context of Italian debates about abortion in the mid-1970s. This chapter argues that Lonzi’s relation to Pasolini transforms her understanding of self and helps her refine and recalibrate the goals of autocoscienza. In conceiving of the self and selfhood in philological rather than philosophical terms, Pasolini and Lonzi challenge theories of the subject predominant in critical theory and offer precursors to contemporary concepts like Agamben’s homo sacer. Their aesthetics of existence require a reconsideration of the scope of philology in the twentieth century, the parameters of political theory, the legacy and historiography of Italy’s long ’68, and our understanding of what it means to live a meaningful human life. The detailed recovery of Lonzi’s intensive engagement with Pasolini and his work, finally, points to an unlikely source of influence on radical Italian feminism

The Future of International Dual Degrees

Panel 1 – The Future of International Dual Degrees Moderator: Toni Fine, Fordham University School of Law, Assistant Dean for International and Non-JD Programs Examining Barriers, Purpose, Context and Possibilities in International Dual Degrees - Margaret Heisel, Director, The Center for Capacity Building in Study Abroad; Mary Catherine Scarborough, Education UK British Council; Adelaide Ferguson, Global Education and Development Consultan

Non-centrosomal microtubule-organising centres in cold-treated cultured Drosophila cells

In this paper we describe a new type of non-centrosomal microtubule-organising centre (MTOC), which is induced by cold treatment of certain cultured Drosohhila cells and allows rapid reassembly of microtubule (MT) arrays. Prolonged cooling of two types of cultured Drosophila cells, muscle cells in primary culture and a wing imaginal disc cell line C1.8+ results in disassembly of MT arrays and induces the formation of clusters of short MTs that have not been,described before. Upon rewarming, the clusters are lost and the MT array is re-established within 1 h. In C1.8+ cells, gamma-tubulin-containing centrosomes are detected, both in cell extensions and in the expected juxtanuclear position, and gamma-tubulin co-localises with the cold-induced MT clusters. The MT plus-end-binding protein, Drosophila EB1, decorates growing tips of MTs extending from clusters. We conclude that the cold-induced MT clusters represent acentrosomal MTOCs, allowing rapid reassembly of MT arrays following exposure to cold.</p

Non-centrosomal microtubule-organising centres in cold-treated cultured Drosophila cells

In this paper we describe a new type of non-centrosomal microtubule-organising centre (MTOC), which is induced by cold treatment of certain cultured Drosohhila cells and allows rapid reassembly of microtubule (MT) arrays. Prolonged cooling of two types of cultured Drosophila cells, muscle cells in primary culture and a wing imaginal disc cell line C1.8+ results in disassembly of MT arrays and induces the formation of clusters of short MTs that have not been,described before. Upon rewarming, the clusters are lost and the MT array is re-established within 1 h. In C1.8+ cells, gamma-tubulin-containing centrosomes are detected, both in cell extensions and in the expected juxtanuclear position, and gamma-tubulin co-localises with the cold-induced MT clusters. The MT plus-end-binding protein, Drosophila EB1, decorates growing tips of MTs extending from clusters. We conclude that the cold-induced MT clusters represent acentrosomal MTOCs, allowing rapid reassembly of MT arrays following exposure to cold.</p

Effects of Gender on the Health and Development of Medically At‐Risk Infants

OBJECTIVES: To examine gender-differentiated health and cognitive/motor/language developmental outcomes among medically at-risk infants. DESIGN: Longitudinal descriptive and comparative secondary analysis. SETTING: Neonatal intensive care unit, intermediate care unit, and infectious disease clinic of the tertiary medical centers in the Southeast and East United States. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred eight (108) premature infants, 67 medically fragile infants, and 83 infants seropositive for HIV. METHODS: Neonatal and later health variables were obtained from the medical record to determine the technology dependence scores and frequency of common health problems. Data for physical growth and cognitive/motor/language development were obtained through the physical measurement, including the Bayley Scales of Infant Development–Second Edition, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, the Toll Control Developmental Checklist, and the Preschool Language Scale–3 during home visits between 6 to 27 months corrected ages. RESULTS: Fewer effects on health and developmental outcomes related to gender were observed with medically fragile infants than the other two groups of infants. The cognitive/motor/language scores were decreased with increasing age of the infants in all groups. CONCLUSION: Male gender can be considered a significant biological risk factor for infants' cognitive and motor development, especially for premature infants. Because of their increased risk, it is recommended that male infants who are born prematurely or seropositive for HIV have early and advanced developmental screening tests by trained personnel through periodic pediatric clinic