The Alien in Greenwich - Iain Sinclair & the Millennium Dome

This essays looks at Sorry Meniscus Excursions to the Millennium Dome (Profile Books, 1999), by I Sinclair. The book collects two ";;Expeditions to the building site on Bugsby's Marshes";;, made in 1997   and 1999 and commissioned by the London Review of Books. The two resulting essays were published first separately, on the review, and  then in a volume by Profile Books. The booklet is a curious meditation on the metropolis that is the sinclairian life-project, and it focuses on the most recent urban enterprise that can be labelled  as an experiment in selling fake history for a fake political credit, giving voice to a fraud born and thriving in the fairyland of Blair's New Labour. Sinclair's journey also  shows how any urban imagination, when applied to London, tends to become curiously self-directed: it acquires its own life, and, as the creature of Frankenstein, it claims its own right to narrate its story. Sinclair proves to be very good at listening to this story, and even better at re-narrating it, trying not to intrude too much and keeping the voice of the city as clean as possible. And in this case, it is the voice of an alien

Ashes. Words and Images in the Forms of Remembrance

The issue of representing war has often been critically tackled by reflecting on the increasing exploitation of images often coexisting with their ambiguous quality (Franzini 2001, Mirzoeff 2005). In 1938, Woolf has no doubt about the interpretation of photographs as “a crude statement of fact addressed to the eye. But the eye is connected with the brain; the brain with the nervous system”. Yet, things have been changing from World War II to today and Woolf’s supposed total reliability of the visual documents of war has been gradually undermined, while the spectacular aspect of war has been given priority in the congregation of discursive tensions marking any recent representation, reflection and form of remembrance on world conflicts. My work here focusses on Tony Harrison’s film poem "The Shadow of Hiroshima" (1995), and tries to reflect on how the poetic word combines with the filmic image in trying to produce a convincing commemoration of one of the worst war tragedies of our Western history

Rewording/Rewarding Culture: (Post)Cultural Studies and the Shame of Being 'Different'

In his Keywords, Raymond Williams states that \u201cCulture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language\u201d (Williams 1977: 76). This paper engages with the complex ways in which a methodological approach born in the UK as part of the culture of the New Left, and conceived as a hybrid tendency across disciplines rather than a discipline in itself, is reshaped in the Italian academic context. I will see how English Cultural Studies in Italy tends to be perceived as a Janus-faced approach, inheriting Hoggart\u2019s and Williams\u2019s attempt at adapting techniques of literary analysis for the study of a variety of cultural formations and Stuart Hall\u2019s emphasis on language as the practice grounding signification and producing cultural representations (Hall and Open University 1997: 4-6). While recognising Eagleton\u2019s position that \u201cLiterature [\u2026] inherits the weighty ethical, ideological and even political tasks which were once entrusted to rather more technical and practical discourses\u201d (Eagleton 2000: 40), I will consider how this position should include Hall\u2019s notion that \u201cculture is about shared meanings and meanings can only be shared through our common access to language\u201d (Hall and Open University 1997: 1-2). In a postcolonial and globalised perspective, and with an eye to the current European contingency concerning migration, I will focus on how the Italian approach to Cultural Studies can help us to tackle the ambiguity recently pointed out by Simon Gikandi, who claimed that English literature is simultaneously \u201cone of the most universal phenomena\u201d and \u201cone of the most parochial disciplines\u201d (Gikandi 2001: 650). This requires English Cultural Studies to strongly engage with Postcolonial and Migration Studies, and again raises the question of what we call \u2018Cultural Studies\u2019 and how this theory is located in the Italian context

In the Year of the Rat. From infection to poisoning in David Peace's Occupied City

Susan Sontag’s probably most influencing work – her reflection on the metaphoricaura enveloping certain diseases – may be of some use in introducing my approach toDavid Peace’s narrative, with particular reference to the so called Tokyo Trilog

Esterino Adami, Francesca Bellino & Alessandro Mengozzi (eds.), Other Worlds and the Narrative Construction of Otherness

Esterino Adami, Francesca Bellino & Alessandro Mengozzi (eds.), Other Worlds and the Narrative Construction of Otherness(Milano, Mimesis, 2017, 210 pp. ISBN 978-886-977-095-1)by Nicoletta Valloran

A Precocious End of Innocence: Re-reading Children's Literature for Today

A Precocious End of Innocence: Re-reading Children's Literature for Today(Laura Tosi (ed.), Hearts of Lightness: the Magic of Children's Literature, Venezia, Cafoscarina, 2001, p.197 ISBN88-88613-18-8)by Nicoletta Valloran

Simona Bertacco (ed.), Language and Translation in Postcolonial Literature (Abingdon, Routledge, 2014, 248 pp. ISBN 978-0415656047)

Simona Bertacco (ed.), Language and Translation in Postcolonial Literature(Abingdon, Routledge, 2014, 248 pp. ISBN 978-0415656047

Loshitzky Yosefa, Screening Strangers. Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema

Loshitzky Yosefa, Screening Strangers. Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema(Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana UP, 2010 pp. 215 ISBN 978 0 253 35453 2)by Nicoletta Valloran

Lucia Saetta e Cristina Vannini Parenti (a cura di), Blog & Nuvole. Un incontro tra la scrittura della rete e l’arte del fumetto.

Lucia Saetta e Cristina Vannini Parenti (a cura di), Blog & Nuvole. Un incontro tra la scrittura della rete e l’arte del fumetto

Path(o)s of Mourning. Memory, Death and the Invisible Body in Derek Jarman’s Blue

The essay addresses two quite complex issues. The first one is the virulence of the hostility toward  gay men that the AIDS pandemic has released: this is the backdrop against which Jarman's extended elaboration and mourning for his own death  is performed, after his diagnosis as body-positive in 1986. The second issue  links to the open question of public mourning and its relation to AIDS in the early 90s, when the AIDS epidemic is not at its height, but it is certainly more visible than before, and many artists register the impact of the new sensibility this medical and social emergency actually moulds.  Considering a specific time span (the 90s) and  focusing mostly on cinema a strategic, privileged arena where gay cultures resist to social and cultural sanctions, this work elaborates on how AIDS as a deathly social and cultural destiny has suggested strategies of mournings that introduce new artistic practices. The analysis is specifically focused on Derek Jarman's last works, culminating in the film Blue (1993).&nbsp