Pasolini, public pedagogy, subjective presence

Abstract

In this paper, I invoke the post-World-War-II Italian public intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini, juxtaposing Pasolini’s public pedagogy – his subjective presence always attuned to the historical moment - with a 2013 essay composed by contemporary U.S. scholars Jake Burdick and Jennifer Sandlin, who perform what I term discursive engineering, dismissing canonical concepts of education (without argument or evidence), apparently fantasizing that by changing what we say we can change the world. Alas, Pasolini knew better. No securely tenured professor, Pasolini risked his life to teach the Italian public, calling out the catastrophic path humanity has taken, specifically substituting virtuality for actuality, technologization that we imagine leaves us immune to the consequences of unbridled capitalism. Focused on Pasolini’s unfinished novel Petrolio (petroleum or crude oil) and a 2014 film focused on the final few days before Pasolini was assassinated, I conclude this curricular juxtaposition hoping to carve out what Tetsuo Aoki termed a generative space of difference, wherein we might re-experience – even reactivate – an earlier anthropological moment when we were still – sort of – “human.”