Italian Theory Research Articles

Muslim Selbstverständnis: Ahmet Davutoğlu Answers Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences

In a lecture he delivered in Vienna in May 1935 (Biemel 1962) the German philosopher Edmund Husserl identified a crisis in the West (which he defined as Europe, Britain and the US). More precisely he found multiple crises, which he termed the crises of the European sciences ( krises de europaisichen Wissenschaften). The content of the Vienna lecture reveals a crisis that was precipitated by the European sciences and that afflicted all of European humanity (Europaischen Menschheit). Husserl traced the origins of this crisis of humanity to the work of the Italian physicist and founding theorist of science Galileo Galilei. Galileo's conception of the universe as a closed, logical, and mechanical system was, Husserl believed, the force behind the empirical, positivistic excesses of modern science which wrought the crisis. He also blamed the Renaissance which, like Galileo, had unduly elevated humanity and exaggerated the powers of the human mind. No opponent of rationalism, Husserl objected to the fact that in the West, rationalism had been rendered superficial, in its entanglement in 'naturalism' and 'objectivism' (Carr 1970: 299). European humanity was alienated from itself. It had grown distant from that which had made it special and admirable: its role as a philosophical and a critical agent exploring not only the capacity but also the limitations of reason and rationality.Ahmet Davutoglu, a Muslim, Turkish academic turned government adviser and (since 2009) the Foreign Minister of the Turkish Republic, answers Husserl's European crisis with his doctoral dissertation, published in 1994 as Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. In this work Davutoglu agrees with Husserl's diagnosis of the West. Davutoglu accepted Husserl's diagnosis of the aetiology and symptoms of the European crisis. His prescription, however, was one that Husserl did not consider: Islamic civilisation (Islam medeniyeti). Treating the Western worldview as a fatally-flawed foil, Davutoglu reads the history of Islamic traditions as the only available cure to the ailments of Western civilisation. Whilst an assertion such as this is a certain recipe for civilisational competition and conflict, the purpose of bringing Husserl and Davutoglu into dialogue is rather to explore a tendency common to the intellectual workings of each figure: the phenomenological impulse.It is evident as a matter of historical fact that Husserl was not a Muslim and that his philosophical ideas did not originate in Islam. Whatever his religious identity Husserl did conceive and practise a philosophical school he explicitly termed phenomenology; a philosophy of consciousness that eschewed pretensions to unmediated, objective truths and claims about a mind-independent world, external to consciousness. Whether Davutoglu subscribed to Husserl's phenomenology and discovered the same transcendental impulses independently evolved in his own religious faith is unclear; the question is secondary. This article explores instead the question whether Islam - as interpreted and adumbrated by Ahmet Davutoglu - is itself an earlier, and continuing, latent instance of phenomenology.From Umwelt to LebensweltAlthough Husserl emphasised in his lecture that he did not intend reference to the West to be understood in geographic terms, it is apparent that he considered Greece in the sixth and seventh centuries BCE to be its birthplace. The philosopher Plato extracted (Western) humanity from the Umwelt. This term of Husserlian art, the Umwelt is the pre-theoretical world in which naivete rules, perceptions are immediate, and reality is neither more nor less than it seems. For the philosophers at least Plato inaugurated the search for things as they really are, appearances notwithstanding; the world was not what it seemed, and sensory perceptions are even yet neither accurate nor sufficient guides to truth. As Husserl describes Plato's discoveries: because reality is something other than is immediately apparent, Representations (Weltvorstellung) become necessary - representations of true reality which is not accessible through the sensible organs of perception (Carr 1970: 293). …

Giovanni Battista De Vecchis and the Theory of Melodic Accent from Zarlino to Zingarelli

This article investigates Niccolò Zingarelli’s method of text-setting, as documented in Giovanni Battista De Vecchis’s Compendio of Neapolitan teachings (1850). It contextualizes De Vecchis’s instructions by tracing the genealogy of the concept of ‘accent’ as understood by early nineteenth-century composers through successive reinterpretations of an Italian theory of qualitative rhythmopoeia established in the sixteenth century, which accounted for rhythm, metre, and pitch through a threefold division of accent. The article explores its origins, its treatment by Zarlino, its significance in writings by nineteenth-century Italian musicians, and the confusing alternative terminology circulated by Rousseau (1768). The Neapolitan doctrine of text-setting presents a historical example of a ‘drastic’ approach to conceptualizing music, recognizing the priority of unruly human performance over abstract rationalization, in contrast to the ‘gnostic’ theories of Sulzer and Koch, with their emphasis on notated melodies and their subordination of rhythm (as spoken, sung, or played) to quantifiable metric grids.

The ‘state of exception’ and disaster education: a multilevel conceptual framework with implications for social justice

The term ‘state of exception’ has been used by Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben to explain the ways in which emergencies, crises and disasters are used by governments to suspend legal processes. In this paper, we innovatively apply Agamben's theory to the way in which countries prepare and educate the population for various types of emergencies. We focus on two main aspects of Agamben's work: first, the paradoxical nature of the state of exception, as both a transient and a permanent part of governance. Second, it is a ‘liminal’ concept expressing the limits of law and where ‘law’ meets ‘not-law’. We consider the relationship between laws related to disasters and emergencies, and case studies of the ways in which three countries (England, Germany and Japan) educate their populations for crisis and disaster. In England, we consider how emergency powers have been orientated around the protection of the Critical National Infrastructure and how this has produced localised ‘states of exception’ and, relatedly, pedagogical anomalies. In Germany, we consider the way in which laws related to disaster and civil protection, and the nature of volunteering for civil protection, produce exceptional spaces for non-German bodies. In Japan, we consider the debate around the absence of emergency powers and relate this to Japanese non-exceptional disaster education for natural disasters. Applying Agamben's work, we conclude by developing a new, multilevel empirical framework for analysing disaster education with implications for social justice.

Managing risk through the veil of ignorance

Background. We view overconfidence within risk management as a problem likely to manifest within philosophical preferences for anticipationism over resilienism, and in assumptions that risks are objectively real external powers or potentialities rather than subjective knowledge propositions. Methods. We argue that the realist tradition within Italian social theory, first crystallised by Niccolò Machiavelli and later elaborated by the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, offers valuable lessons for corporate risk management praxis by demanding that we map out the complex relations between the risk subjectivities of risk managers, and their objective risk environments, from a standpoint of psychological and sociological realism which stresses the risk ignorance of practitioners. We caution that risk management efforts to improve risk subjectivities to achieve perfect veridicality to objective risk environments might often amount to a wishful bildungsroman of epistemological growth, reflecting the common aspirations of risk managers to demonstrate professional competence. We suggest that the profession should control this overconfidence problem by stressing the corrigibility of risk subjectivities with reference to sociological understandings that reflect on the widespread risk ignorance that can persist and even intensify where risk management effort is made. Results. Following the macrosociological framework sketched by Pareto, we show how two common ‘modes of uncertainty’ can be scrutinised for their adaptive fitness to two common types of risk environment. Conclusions. It can be helpful to think sociologically of organisations as engaging with some highly significant strategic risks blindly through a veil of ignorance.

Fashioning the ‘Born Criminal’ on the Beat: Juridical Photography and the Police municipale in Fin-de-Siècle Paris

Fin-de-siècle French criminologists opposed the Italian positivists' theories of the ‘born criminal’, yet the French school's theory of determinism contained a biological component, a broad similarity often overlooked. Evolving parallel to criminological discourse, juridical photography, owning to Alphonse Bertillon's standardisation of the process, gained momentum in identifying recidivists. This article analyses these two historical entities' intersection at a key moment in Belle Époque France where photography moved from a post-arrest identification tool to an instrument deployed to pre-empt criminal activities. It further proposes an alternative reading of juridical photography as prolonging notions of a criminal type in spite of the rise of environmental determinism. Pre-existing patrolling practices affected the Parisian police municipale's use of mugshots on the streets. Rogues' galleries combined a large number of photographs, with the sheer quantity of images enabling their mental blurring. This process mirrored psychologically Sir Francis Galton's and Cesare Lombroso's physical practice of composite photography. Police officers thus had recourse not to a series of individuals but a criminal type derived from subjects' shared characteristics. This attests to a subversion of Bertillon's implementation of photography to individualise criminals once these images were given to former imperial military personnel who had joined the police municipale.Dans les débats de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, les criminologistes français se sont opposés aux théories du ‘criminel-né’ atavique développées par les positivistes italiens. Or, si la théorie déterministe soutenue par les Français met également en avant un aspect biologique, ce point commun reste souvent ignoré. La photographie judiciaire, évoluant concomitamment au discours criminologique, s'est employée de plus en plus à l'identification des récidivistes grâce à la standardisation du processus par Alphonse Bertillon. Cet article analyse l'intersection de ces deux développements historiques à un moment clé de la France de la Belle Époque, celui où la photographie est passée d'outil d'identification après l'arrestation à un instrument d'action déployé pour contrecarrer des activités criminelles. Cet article offre une lecture alternative de la photographie judiciaire qui prolonge les notions de type criminel en dépit de l'avènement du déterminisme environnemental. Pendant les rondes quotidiennes de la police municipale, des pratiques préexistantes de patrouille ont influencé l'utilisation des photos d'identité. Les collections de photographies de repris de justice se composant d'une grande quantité de photos d'identité, la quantité importante d'images a rendu possible leur fusionnement psychique. Inconscient ou non, ce processus a généré des photographies composites mentales comme celles qu'ont créées matériellement Sir Francis Galton et Cesare Lombroso. Les policiers avaient donc recours non à une série d'individus mais plutôt à un type criminel dérivé des traits partagés par les sujets. L'entreprise de Bertillon, qui cherche à individualiser les criminels en incluant la photographie dans son système d'identification a été détourné des lors que celles-ci ont été transmises à la police municipale, garnie par un bon nombre d'anciens militaires de l'Empire.

INTERLÚDIO EUFÓRICO E FRAGMENTAÇÃO DO “EU”: APROXIMAÇÕES E DISTANCIAMENTOS ENTRE A “ODE TRIUNFAL” DE ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS E AS TESES FUTURISTAS DE MARINETTI

This article aims to analyze the second phase of the poetry of Alvaro de Campos, Fernando Pessoa heteronomous, with a particular focus on the study of the Ode Triunfal, a poem in which the artist glorifies, in an euphoric tone, technological and scientific discoveries of the modern world. In this process, Campos argues in favor of one fragmented personality, able to represent the prismatic character of the huge flow of sensations of the machine age, standing as a sort of spokesman for the depersonalization process undertaken by Pessoa. Given this fact, such production should be examined focusing one of the most important intertexts with which it dialogues: F. T. Marinetti’s futuristic theses. Thus this paper will try to point similarities and differences between this Pessoa’s text and the vanguard guidelines outlined by the Italian theorist in his combative pamphlets.

Reactivating the Social Body in Insurrectionary Times: A Dialogue with Franco 'Bifo' Berardi

The Italian theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi has spent a lifetime participating in revolutionary movements and thinking through their complexities. He is best known in the English-speaking world for his association with the Italian autonomist movement Operaismo (“workerism”) and its prominent attempts to transform communist politics by resituating the “needs, desires, and organizational autonomies” of workers at the foundation of political praxis (Genosko and Thoburn 2011: 3). This text assembles excerpts from three interviews we conducted with Berardi over the course of the insurrectionary year 2011. Each of our conversations coincided with notable developments in last year’s mobilizations and our interviewee’s enthusiasm about those events is evident at certain points in the transcript. Yet while Berardi is generally optimistic about the revolts and the “reactivation of the social body” that they seem to imply, he reminds us that protest alone will not be enough to win the genuine kinds of autonomy that he suggests are necessary. He argues that dogmas of growth, competition and rent have so colonized every sphere of “human knowledge” that they have begun to threaten the very survival of what he calls “social civilization.” The hegemonic grip of this “epistemological dictatorship” has altered our capacity to feel empathy towards one another, severing fundamental bonds of inter-personal connection. Yet in spite of this dark diagnosis, Berardi is not a doomsayer and he always leaves open the possibility of transformation and escape. He counsels that our best shot at deliverance lies in the development of new strategies of withdrawal, refusal, sabotage, and the negotiation of new “lines of flight” from the late-capitalist forms of domination.

The Ironic Vision of tragicomedy in Measure for Measure

There are two critical discussions of Measure for Measure. Seen from the point of view of the character, including Duke, Measure for Measure is a problem play, but from the point of view of the implied dramatist it is a tragicomedy. The play has affinities with Ibsenite problem plays of a much later period but in many important respects Measure for Measure conforms to tragicomedy as it was defined by Italian tragicomedy theorist Guarini. The Duke in some sense stands in for the dramatist. As manipulator of the play’s action and thus its quasi-author, the Duke exists at the border of the play’s internal and mediating communication systems, his role is never quite clearly defined by these two genres. His presence throughout the play certainly provides assurance of a formally comic ending. But as a controlling artist figure he is unreliable, and our attempt to see things from his point of view is repeatedly frustrated by his imperfect problem-solving. Shakespeare creates the full expectation of a comic rather than a tragic conclusion in Measure for Measure, and at the same time he problematizes the tragic means by which it will be produced. The chief problem is Duke, the guarantor of a happy ending, whose flawed and comedic problem-solving, at odds with the seriousness of the character’s difficulties, produces much of the play’s discomfort. But it is this dissonance that produces Measure for Measure as a darkly ironic version of tragicomedy, and in particular as a tragicomedy whose indeterminacy links it with modern versions of the genre. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare dramatizes the instability of human experience, the imperfect resolutions that can pervade in this world and expose the hypocrisy and contradiction of the Duke in a satirical mode. The discomfort and dissatisfaction aroused by Measure for Measure, especially by it’s ending, are not the product of flaws in the play’s design; they are part of tragicomedy’s inherent aesthetic and the validation of tragicomic integrity in Measure for Measure.

The particle that ate itself

Eighty years ago, an Italian theorist proposed matter and antimatter might sometimes be the same thing. We might now have the proof

La Pedagogia di genere in Italia: dall’uguaglianza alla complessificazione

Moving from an distinction between Gender-Education and Gender-Pedagogy, this paper aims to identify the main joints that have characterized the last forty years of Italian theories and practices in these areas. From the equality to the differences, from the differences to the complexity: this is the itinerary, non-linear, followed by Italian feminists who - although here mentioned only in general terms - are remembered in order to understand the “operability” in the areas of education.

A ‘Mediterranean New Left’? Comparing and Contrasting the French PSU and the Italian PSIUP

AbstractThis article argues that Gerd-Rainer Horn's model of a ‘Mediterranean New Left’ encompassing both the French Parti socialiste unifié (PSU, 1960–1990) and the Italian Partito socialista italiano di unità proletaria (PSIUP, 1964–1972) needs to be significantly revised. It agrees that, half a century on from the events which gave rise to their foundation, this much misunderstood part of the political spectrum, midway between social democracy and the far left, is worthy of rescue from the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’, but questions how similar the two parties actually were. Major differences emerge, especially in the nature of each party's relationship with communism, with the philosovietism of the PSIUP contrasting with the PSU's evolution towards an anti-Leninist decentralist socialism of self-management. Yet, at the same time, important new evidence is uncovered about the concrete political and personal links that developed between leading intellectuals of the PSIUP and PSU, an example being the friendship of the Italian parliamentarian and theorist Lelio Basso with the journalist Gilles Martinet, later French ambassador to Italy. Other transnational links, both across the Mediterranean and to eastern Europe, are explored. Furthermore, the location of the roots of both parties in the 1940s generation of anti-fascist resistance calls into question prevailing assumptions equating the New Left with the youth of the 1960s, with wider implications for our understanding of the development of the European left across the twentieth century.

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES DEBATE

In what follows I am going to argue that the rise of the creative industries has in general been understood too narrowly. This narrow understanding has had implications for the way that a politics of management and labour in the creative industries has been framed and contained, and it has held back an analysis of class struggle in the creative industries. To elaborate an understanding of labour in the creative industries I am going to revisit some insights related to the development of British cultural studies, and try to link these insights to what Stuart Hall calls the conditions of possibility for the creative industries today (1973/1980). These conditions of possibility require a different conception of labour, infusing the circuits of production in what Italian post-workerist theorists call the social factory. Such an elaboration of the work of culture allows us to reframe the questions of labour struggle and management control in the creative industries. The method of this article will of necessity be somewhat speculative and its scope broad, but where possible I will try to give examples of what I mean in order to focus on the possibilities for developing a politics of labour under the expanded conditions considered here.

“TO HELP THE NATION TO SAVE ITS SOUL”: MUSEUM PURPOSES IN JAMES'S THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA

In a 1927 lecture the Director of the British Museum Sir Frederic Kenyon countered the futurist leader F. T. Marinetti's calls for the destruction of museums by arguing that “in times of upheaval . . . salvation is to be found in adherence to tradition” rather than in “break[ing] loose from” it. Kenyon explained the museum's role in promoting this salvation: A visit to a museum will not by itself quench a revolution. It would have been useless to invite the pétroleuses of the Commune to an official lecture in the Egyptian Gallery at the Louvre; but if they had been brought up to respect the past, there might have been a revolution without pétroleuses. Every form of instruction or experience which teaches men to link their lives with the past makes for stability and ordered progress. Hence the value of history and hence also the value of those institutions which teach history informally and without tears. (24–25) This is perhaps the most explicit statement of the British Museum's ideological function in early twentieth-century museum discourse. The museum acts as an ideological state apparatus that calls out to museum-goers to identify with, rather than agitate against, the social order symbolized in the “examples of great men” and the “monuments of the past” (23–24). Though not without critics, much of the new museology since the 1980s draws on this historical record and poststructuralist theory to argue that the modern museum operates as a site for the reflection or reinforcement of existing power relations. Critics have associated the museum, for example, with racism and sexism (Haraway), with classism (Bourdieu and Darbel), with imperialism and colonialism (Barringer and Flynn), with mechanisms of social control (Sherman and Rogoff), and with the consecration of state authority (Duncan and Wallach). Whereas Kenyon's defense of the museum suggests a reactionary position, the cultural destruction he combats amounts to a revolutionary act, whether accomplished by the “gay incendiaries with charred fingers” exhorted by Marinetti in his movement-founding manifesto of 1909 or the communardes accused of torching the French capital during the semaine sanglante in 1871 (43). For cultural destruction is inescapably political, as Antonio Gramsci argued in “Marinetti the Revolutionary” (1916). The Italian theorist and political activist identified the futurist discourse against the museum and the aesthetic tradition it perpetuates with the Marxist task of destroying “spiritual hierarchies, prejudices, idols and ossified traditions” to make way for the creation of a new, proletarian civilization (Gramsci 215).

Musica Ficta in the Cortona Laudario

The Cortona Laudario (late 13th century), the oldest surviving witness to the repertory of Tuscan and Umbrian laudesi fraternities, includes no accidentals. This paper surveys editorial accidentals added by Liuzzi, 1935; Lucchi, 1987; Terni, 1988; Durrer, 1996; and Tischler, 2002 (Ernetti and Rossi Leidi, 1980, added no accidentals). It proposes alternative readings based on the theory of accidentals presented by Marchetto da Padova in his Lucidarium of 1317-1319, a work firmly rooted in earlier Italian theory and postdating the Cortona Laudario by only a few decades. The paper proposes that B- and E-flats are never appropriate in modes based on G (contrary to the practice of Liuzzi, Lucchi, and Terni), but may be used in particular situations in those based on D or F; and that the subsemitonium modi is appropriate in at least one case.

The migration of artistic ideas: Maerten van Heemskerck's reception of Italian Renaissance art and art theory

The migration of artistic ideas: Maerten van Heemskerck's reception of Italian Renaissance art and art theory

The Uses and Abuses of Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci is today the most translated Italian theorist. His theory has been used extensively in English language publications in cultural studies and international relations. This article examines the use, abuse and fruitful additions to Gramsci of Stuart Hall, Edward Saïd, Ranajit Guha, Robert Cox, Stephen Gill and Adam Morton. Its object is to examine their fidelity to what the mainstream Italian philology of Gramsci has written about his concepts and their order.

The Italian theories of progressive taxation*

The present paper examines the theories of progressive taxation debated in the Italian public finance literature between the end of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. The survey presents only the main arguments, stressing their connection with the international literature. Among the Italian economists, apart from a few opponents, the idea of progressive taxation is agreed upon, even though it is not well founded from a theoretical viewpoint. The main result of the paper is that the main case for progressive taxation is to be found in political and social reasons.

Lorenzo de Minico's Thought in the Development of Accounting Theory in Italy: An Understated Contribution

The first decades of the twentieth century were years of innovation for Italian accounting theory: a new scientific approach, the Economia aziendale, was developed and affirmed as the dominant paradigm. Among its main ideas were new concepts of capital and income, strongly influenced by Irving Fisher. The analysis of Lorenzo de Minico's entire scientific output demonstrates that he played a significant role in the ‘revolution’ which history credits almost exclusively to Gino Zappa. A critical methodological issue is confirmed: the lack of completeness in doing accounting history might lead to imprecise or incomplete knowledge of the evolution of accounting. Furthermore, this article tries to demonstrate that the structure of the real economy has played an important role in the assimilation of international theories in Italy, leading accounting theory in that country to be quite far removed from the Anglo-American approach.

Addicted to Virtue: The Globalization Policy-Maker

The dominant economic institutions whose version of globalization dominates today have sustained a remarkably devastating homogeneity of thought and policy-making. Drawing upon Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents, World Bank annual bank reports, the writings of Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci, trauma and addiction theory, and other analytical and documentary resources, this essay investigates the imperviousness of the economic policy-making subject position to evidence of the violence that its economic policies have visited upon lives, cultures, and ecosystems.

The Italian approach to the theory of public goods*

The subject of needs is the centre of attention of Italian public finance scholars. The financial activity of the State is justified by the existence of collective or public needs to whose satisfaction collective or public goods and services are linked. Italian economists have studied the problems of public goods in a general context, taking into consideration concurrently both taxes and public expenditure and giving prominence to positive analysis. Italian theorists have always been far removed from the classical approach, which denies the productivity of public services, and have deemed it necessary to take into account the political context in which fiscal structures operate. Their models include the State as a major factor. Herein lies the main value of the Italian tradition in public finance, which puts in coercion into the market mechanism via State intervention.