Ambivalence of the notion of “Mimesis”: between the opening towards the other and the repetition of the same

One of the main characteristics of the contemporary aesthetic debate is the recovery of the concept of mimesis, as a dimension that is originally involved in the foundation of human culture and the processes of cultural learning. This is evident in the aesthetic reflection developed by Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf. For these two authors, mimesis is never a mere reproduction of the given reality, but always implies the production of the New, of the Other, of the different with respect to the empirical world, i.e. to the existing categorical order of the world. In particular, Gebauer and Wulf underline the constitutive ambivalence of the notion of mimesis: on the one hand, it favors the processes of reification fueled by capitalist society and, on the other hand, it contributes to the affirmation of a critical and “utopian” instance that can counter “instrumental reason” and the primacy of identity

La figura del “tirso” come exemplum dell’opera d’arte. Riflessioni sul nesso arte-immaginazione in Baudelaire

This paper aims to show how the Baudelaire’s prose poem The Thyrsus, in Paris Spleen, constitues the exemplary exhibition of the idea of art itself and of its ontological and epistemological statute, according to the theoretical Baudelairian perspective. From this point of view, the paper highlights two features playing a decisive role in aesthetical terms: on the one hand, the Baudelairian image of the “thyrsus” presents itself as an authentic “short-circuit” of the Apollonian logos and the Dionysian pathos (according to Nietzsche’s lexicon); on the other hand, the same image of the thyrsus is conceivable as a sort of “symbol” (or as a sort of “equivalent”) of that instance of creativity closely related to the Kantian notion of “free schematism”. Thus, the figure of the thyrsus exhibits in an exemplary way – showing it “in action” and putting it in front of our eyes – the same utopian instance of “liberation of the possible” that, again under the Baudelairian perspective, belongs to the faculty of imagination

La parte oscura di noi. Nota critica a: M. Bettini - G. Pucci, Il mito di Medea. Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi

L'articolo propone una ricognizione critica del volume di Maurizio Bettini e Giuseppe Pucci "Il mito di Medea. Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi" (Einaudi, Torino, 2017) ponendo al centro della messa a fuoco la stretta connessione, emergente dall'articolazione interna del mito di Medea e dalla storia delle sue molteplici rielaborazioni, tra le nozioni di "alterità", "liminarità" ed "erranza". Da questo punto di vista, l'articolo mette in evidenza la ricchezza di implicazioni estetico-filosofiche ascrivibili al mito di Medea, così come questo viene ricompreso nella lettura multiprospettica e multidimensionale che ne offrono Bettini e Pucci

Il silenzio del Dio spettatore. Sulla Metafisica della tragedia del giovane Lukács

Il primo saggio offre una ricomprensione della nozione di "tragedia" così come questa viene tematizzata dal giovane Lukács nell'Anima e le forme, con particolare riferimento alla questione fondamentale del senso e del rapporto paradossale che si stabilisce tra la nozione di "forma" e quella di "vita". In particolare, il saggio mostra come nella prospettiva lukácsiana la tragedia costituisca, per un verso, l'estrema espressione di quel riconoscimento della necessità del finito che contraddistingue la nozione lukácsiana di “forma-saggio” e, per altro verso, l'espressione di una tendenza, ancora metafisica, all'assolutizzazione della forma

Nel segno del possibile. Arte e immaginazione in Baudelaire

The paper shows how in Baudelaire’s work the faculty of imagination represents the dimension which makes possible to institute art as a production of the “possible”, i.e. as a device able to bring out, through the immanence of the datum (the appearance, the sensitive), the “other of the datum”: the transcendence of the “non-identical”. In this perspective, Baudelaire’s art qualifies itself for its ability of witnessing the transmutability of the categorical order established in the world. Hence, its function is both critical and utopian. From this point of view, the interconnection which binds Spleen and Idéal, i.e. sense and non-sense, becomes the center of Baudelaire’s poetry: if the Spleen is the feeling of the “permanent catastrophe”, the Idéal is the expression of a transcendence that the work of art, as a non-kept “promise of happiness”, has to affirm and deny at the same time, in order to preserve its “content of truth”, in a irreducibly dissonant world

The modern aspect of mètis: flânerie and strategies of sense in the labyrinth of the metropolis

The essay aims to show how the notion of mètis could work as an interpretative tool philosophically fruitful in view for a new understanding of some fundamental theoretical-problematic knots revolving around the Baudelairean theme of the flâneur: the question of the relationship between mind and world; the need of rethinking the critical function of art within a reality more and more commercialized and homologated; the motif of sense and its link to the dimension of contingency

ASASSN-18aan revisited

The light curve of the cataclismic variable ASASSN-18aan is studied using recent observations of the MC589 Observatory, giving an orbital Period and Epoch fully consistent with the data obtained after the discovery flare in 2018. Archival data from ASASSN, ZTF and Gaia were used to check if its flares have a quasi-periodic behaviour. A recurrency time scale of about 11 months is found, confirming a previous tentative result using the historic plate archive of the Asiago Observatory. The next outbursts are expected by April 2023 and March 2024.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, published on OEJ

Rappresentare la modernità: aura, choc e allegoria nello sguardo del flâneur

The aim of the article is to propose a re-interpretation of the nexus «representationmodernity» as it comes to manifestation, in an exemplary way, through the Baudelairian figure of the flâneur. In this perspective, and assuming the reading offered by Walter Benjamin as a privileged referent of the investigation, the article focuses on a constellation of themes and problems, emerging both from Baudelaire’s artistic production – and in particular from the lyric The Swan – and from his theoretical reflection, within which particular emphasis is given: 1) to the experience of «shock»; 2) to the polyvalence of the notion of «aura»; 3) to the motif of the «fantasque escrime» put into practice, in the Paris of the XIX Century, by the artist-flâneur; 4) to the conceptual figure of «allegory», here included above all as a device for the production of the possible

Mort, narració i testimoniatge en el final d'Èdip a Colonos, de Sòfocles

Il contributo ha per oggetto la questione del rapporto morte-narrazione-testimonianza così come questa emerge, in modo esemplare, dal finale dell’Edipo a Colono di Sofocle. In questa prospettiva, la rappresentazione che Sofocle offre della morte di Edipo viene ri-letta assumendo come motivo conduttore della trattazione il nesso dicibile-indicibile. Di qui, il particolare rilievo conferito all’esplorazione di tre fondamentali nodi teorico-problematici: 1) la nozione di “pathos”, in quanto dimensione che si sottrae a ogni possibilità di spiegazione in termini logico-concettuali; 2) il rapporto di reciproca implicazione che lega “mito” e “finitezza”; 3) la “cura dell’Altro” in quanto istanza etica che, nell’orizzonte della tragedia sofoclea, risulta inestricabilmente intrecciata all’istanza estetica della rappresentazione