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A forgotten piece of Italian sinology: Amedeo Cracco’s Grammatica della lingua cinese moderna (1951)
No full textThis article deals with Grammatica della lingua cinese moderna (1951) by Amedeo Cracco O.F.M., one of the earliest comprehensive grammars of Chinese published in Italian. Rapidly fallen into oblivion due to the general hostility of Italian sinologists to its “unorthodox” approach to many problems of Chinese linguistics, Cracco’s grammar is nonetheless worthy of recognition for its original mix of archaisms and innovations. While Cracco’s commitment to a five-tone variety of Mandarin and the Latin grammatical framework can be mentioned for the former, his emphasis on the polysyllabism of Modern Chinese and new categories borrowed from the latest generation of Chinese grammarians make good examples of the latter. Presenting Grammatica della lingua cinese moderna in its historical and epistemological background, the article aims at retrieving the memory of a forgotten piece of Italian sinology
In the name of the Red Cross Society of China: Women’s activism and humanitarian aid during the war (1937-1945)
No full textThe participation of Chinese women in humanitarian aid from the War of Resistance to the Second World War is an issue that remains to be thoroughly investigated. What role did women play in humanitarian work during the turbulent years of the war? By analyzing the power relations and humanitarian activities in the Red Cross, the paper intertwines with issues concerning the meaning of gender and state in modern China, assessing women’s role within the Chinese Red Cross, particularly nurses in designing aid programs, and how significant it was. One woman played a special role in the growth of military nursing assistance for Chinese troops: Zhou Meiyu. Specifically, the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps had a major task in supporting the training of military medical personnel and Zhou was particularly successful in establishing a valid medical expert in the new education programs. Women in the Red Cross not only tended to the wounded and comforted soldiers but also helped in the logistical coordination of relief work, raising support for the Chinese war effort through their propaganda and fundraising efforts. The paper draws on different examples to illustrate how, breaking down gender boundaries, humanitarian war services in wartime were promoted, and how women’s work and relationships with Western women served as a window on which gender shaped the meanings of humanitarianism, war and nation-building in modern China, while offering the opportunity to re-discuss the social values and traditional roles of women
The Pearly Gates of the Central Sun: Science and the Location of Heaven in the 19th and 20th Centuries
No full textThe history of the relations that have obtained between science and religion—chiefly Western, Catholic and Protestant, Christianity—has attracted considerable attention. Oftentimes, in various ‘popular’ literatures, conceived as a relationship of intractable ‘conflict’ or antipathy, recent historical research has shown that the relationship between science and religion has been far from simple or straightforwardly amenable to pithy, off-the-peg, generalisations. The history of the perceived significance of science to the question of heaven’s putative location supports this conclusion. For some 19th- and 20th-century individuals, the advancement of science precluded the possibility of a ‘geographical’ heaven. For others, however, specific scientific ideas–the German astronomer Johann Heinrich Mädler’s theory of a ‘central sun’, for example–provided clues as to its nature and location. That scientific ideas could influence and inform ideas about the afterlife also suggests that the physical and the spiritual have not always been construed, in both theory and practice, as easily separable ontological opposites.
Keywords: Science and Religion, Location of Heaven, John F.W. Herschel, Johann Heinrich Mädler, Alcyone (star
Theorizing American Exceptionalism: An Interdisciplinary Historiography and Intellectual History
No full text‘American exceptionalism’ has become a ubiquitous concept in multiple fields of research. Complicating the picture, it has distinct definitions. To many scholars, ‘exceptionalism’ means that America is comparatively an ‘exception’. This non-normative definition refers to attributes interpretable positively or negatively. Conversely, many other scholars and much of the public interpret ‘American exceptionalism’ as a faith in American superiority. However, the diverse lines of exceptionalism scholarship are organized into separate fields that are hardly in dialogue, from history to law, criminology, sociology, political science, economics, international relations, American Studies, and beyond. This article therefore offers an interdisciplinary historiography and intellectual history of American exceptionalism that connects the dots between different fields by pointing to interrelationships not always apparent at first glance. The latest research notably addresses the United States’ distinctive evolution compared to other Western democracies or the wider world, including its growing polarization over numerous fundamental issues, such as abortion, health care, religion, race, criminal justice, guns, foreign policy, and authoritarianism. The article simultaneously explores the interplay between the comparative and ideological meanings of exceptionalism. In particular, scholars have suggested that the belief that America is ‘exceptional’ in the sense of exemplary has historically shaped distinctive behavior. Once placed in dialogue, separate fields each offer their own insights on American exceptionalism while helping nuance each other’s conclusions, thereby offering a broader understanding of a multifaceted subject.
Keywords: American Exceptionalism, Democracy, Polarization, Comparative History, International Relations
Dalla focalizzazione delle canzoni allo spazio diegetico e non-diegetico: Sulle strategie filmico-audiovisive nella popular music
No full textThe essay explores the intersections between popular music and audiovisuality, with particular attention to the use of narrative and representational strategies shared by songs and audiovisual texts. This is first approached through the analysis of Luca Marconi’s work, which identifies five categories of focus in songs (on the speaker, the protagonist, the chorus leader, the author, and the performer), and subsequently by introducing a semiotic square that intersects the dimensions of diegetic/non-diegetic and formal/non-formal, in order to describe musical and textual elements that go beyond the “official” narrative of the song—such as spontaneous exclamations, studio count-ins, mistakes, or interpretive variations. Finally, the essay discusses cases of hybridization and ambiguity between diegesis and non-diegesis, leading to reflections on phenomena such as the breaking of the fourth wall in songs, and self-reflexive songs that thematize themselves or their own creative process.Il saggio esplora le intersezioni tra popular music e audiovisualità, con particolare attenzione all’uso di strategie narrative e rappresentative comuni tra canzoni e testi audiovisivi. Questo avviene prima attraverso l’analisi del lavoro di Luca Marconi, che individua cinque categorie di focalizzazione nelle canzoni (sul locutore, sul protagonista, sul corifeo, sull’autore e sul performer), e successivamente introducendo un quadrato semiotico che incrocia le dimensioni diegetico/non-diegetico e formale/non-formale, per descrivere elementi musicali e testuali che vanno oltre la narrazione “ufficiale” della canzone, come esclamazioni spontanee, conteggi in studio, errori o variazioni interpretative. Infine, il saggio discute casi di ibridazione e ambiguità tra diegesi e non-diegesi, arrivando a riflettere su fenomeni come la violazione della quarta parete nelle canzoni, e le canzoni “autoriflessive” che tematizzano se stesse o il loro processo creativo
L’héritage du vertige: Ernesto De Martino et Suzanne Doppelt. Anthropologie et poésie autour de la “taranta”
No full textThe metaphoric “bite” of the tarantula is the embodied memory of a wounded heart. A transgenerational legacy of emotional debts in which the fire of the Trouble (“la Noia”), a mixture of languor and spleen, blow. The painful absence embodied by the frantic body of the tarantata/o (women and men who have been “bitten”) deflagrates through the desegregation and reintegration of personal identity through the ritual dance/combat. My contribution proposes a hybrid text between anthropological analysis, poetic prose and poetry, based on the work of the French poet Suzanne Doppelt, Meta donna (P.O.L., 2020), inspired by Gian Franco Mingozzi’s documentary “La taranta” (1962), set against the backdrop of De Martino’s La Terra del rimorso (1961). Doppelt’s work, a poetry in prose, traces the broad lines of Mingozzi’s documentary while reflecting certain elements of the poetess's poetic horizon, such as insects, in particular the araneid, the automaton, metamorphosis, and magic. My contribution draws a parallel between De Martino’s vision of straniamento (estrangement) driven by the tarantate/i, “the malaise of the unmanageable unusual”, characterized by the loss of Presence – a feeling I shall show to be peculiar to De Martino himself – and the struggle to recover it through dance, and Doppelt’s poetic approach, which envisages this same condition as belonging to a fairy-like mechanics intrinsic to the principle of movement itself. The comparative analysis of the two approaches is interspersed with the author's poetic prose, which takes up the concept of apocalypse from various individual and collective landscapes of a contemporary Anthropocene.The metaphoric “bite” of the tarantula is the embodied memory of a wounded heart. A transgenerational legacy of emotional debts in which the fire of the Trouble (“la Noia”), a mixture of languor and spleen, blow. The painful absence embodied by the frantic body of the tarantata/o (women and men who have been “bitten”) deflagrates through the desegregation and reintegration of personal identity through the ritual dance/combat. My contribution proposes a hybrid text between anthropological analysis, poetic prose and poetry, based on the work of the French poet Suzanne Doppelt, Meta donna (P.O.L., 2020), inspired by Gian Franco Mingozzi’s documentary “La taranta” (1962), set against the backdrop of De Martino’s La Terra del rimorso (1961). Doppelt’s work, a poetry in prose, traces the broad lines of Mingozzi’s documentary while reflecting certain elements of the poetess's poetic horizon, such as insects, in particular the araneid, the automaton, metamorphosis, and magic. My contribution draws a parallel between De Martino’s vision of straniamento (estrangement) driven by the tarantate/i, “the malaise of the unmanageable unusual”, characterized by the loss of Presence – a feeling I shall show to be peculiar to De Martino himself – and the struggle to recover it through dance, and Doppelt’s poetic approach, which envisages this same condition as belonging to a fairy-like mechanics intrinsic to the principle of movement itself. The comparative analysis of the two approaches is interspersed with the author's poetic prose, which takes up the concept of apocalypse from various individual and collective landscapes of a contemporary Anthropocene.The metaphoric “bite” of the tarantula is the embodied memory of a wounded heart. A transgenerational legacy of emotional debts in which the fire of the Trouble (“la Noia”), a mixture of languor and spleen, blow. The painful absence embodied by the frantic body of the tarantata/o (women and men who have been “bitten”) deflagrates through the desegregation and reintegration of personal identity through the ritual dance/combat. My contribution proposes a hybrid text between anthropological analysis, poetic prose and poetry, based on the work of the French poet Suzanne Doppelt, Meta donna (P.O.L., 2020), inspired by Gian Franco Mingozzi’s documentary “La taranta” (1962), set against the backdrop of De Martino’s La Terra del rimorso (1961). Doppelt’s work, a poetry in prose, traces the broad lines of Mingozzi’s documentary while reflecting certain elements of the poetess's poetic horizon, such as insects, in particular the araneid, the automaton, metamorphosis, and magic. My contribution draws a parallel between De Martino’s vision of straniamento (estrangement) driven by the tarantate/i, “the malaise of the unmanageable unusual”, characterized by the loss of Presence – a feeling I shall show to be peculiar to De Martino himself – and the struggle to recover it through dance, and Doppelt’s poetic approach, which envisages this same condition as belonging to a fairy-like mechanics intrinsic to the principle of movement itself. The comparative analysis of the two approaches is interspersed with the author's poetic prose, which takes up the concept of apocalypse from various individual and collective landscapes of a contemporary Anthropocene
Laments from the South: Mario Banushi, Emma Dante and Ernesto De Martino
No full textIn 1960, Cecilia Mangini adapted Ernesto De Martino’s Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico (1960) to the screen in the film Stendalì – Suonano ancora. Documenting a funeral rite and its laments in Southern Apulia, Mangini engaged with the same practices described by De Martino. Today, theatre similarly engages with Southern European funeral rites, as exemplified by Emma Dante’s Vita mia (2004) in Italy and Mario Banushi’s Goodbye, Lindita (2023) in Greece. The article investigates the mourning rituals staged by Dante and Banushi, arguing that they follow the footsteps of the laments described by De Martino and documented by Mangini. In particular, the article analyses on the characters’ gestures, their non-linguistic and linguistic laments, paying special attention to the use of Palermitan dialect in Dante’s case and to Albanian in Banushi’s play. Ultimately, the article contends that the two directors adopt De Martino’s analyses not just in the depiction of mourning rituals, but also in the promotion of subaltern Southern cultures.In 1960, Cecilia Mangini adapted Ernesto De Martino’s Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico (1960) to the screen in the film Stendalì – Suonano ancora. Documenting a funeral rite and its laments in Southern Apulia, Mangini engaged with the same practices described by De Martino. Today, theatre similarly engages with Southern European funeral rites, as exemplified by Emma Dante’s Vita mia (2004) in Italy and Mario Banushi’s Goodbye, Lindita (2023) in Greece. The article investigates the mourning rituals staged by Dante and Banushi, arguing that they follow the footsteps of the laments described by De Martino and documented by Mangini. In particular, the article analyses on the characters’ gestures, their non-linguistic and linguistic laments, paying special attention to the use of Palermitan dialect in Dante’s case and to Albanian in Banushi’s play. Ultimately, the article contends that the two directors adopt De Martino’s analyses not just in the depiction of mourning rituals, but also in the promotion of subaltern Southern cultures
Il mito, il rito e l’essere selvaggio: Dialogo fra De Martino e Merleau-Ponty
No full textThis article proposes to establish a dialogue between Ernesto De Martino’s anthropology and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, on the assumption that this comparison is as fruitful as it is unexplored. De Martino takes up Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the body in a dense chapter of the posthumously published volume La fine del mondo. Contributo alle analisi delle apocalissi culturali, referring to The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception. For both of them, what lies beyond the communitarian fruition of reality, beyond the automatisms of everyday life, is not things themselves, but the non-world, chaos, nothingness – Wild Being, to quote The Visible and the Invisible. This undomesticated foundation exposes us to the anguish of meaninglessness and the complete disarticulation of experience. The foundation can only be represented through a mythical-ritual language that has a protective individual and social function. The metahistorical models of myth and ritual provide a safeguard against both the proliferation of becoming and the blind repetition of disturbing elements from the past. In myth-ritual, closed symbols, i.e. symptoms, are re-moulded into open symbols, images: a dynamic that can be compared with Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology.This article proposes to establish a dialogue between Ernesto De Martino’s anthropology and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, on the assumption that this comparison is as fruitful as it is unexplored. De Martino takes up Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the body in a dense chapter of the posthumously published volume La fine del mondo. Contributo alle analisi delle apocalissi culturali, referring to The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception. For both of them, what lies beyond the communitarian fruition of reality, beyond the automatisms of everyday life, is not things themselves, but the non-world, chaos, nothingness – Wild Being, to quote The Visible and the Invisible. This undomesticated foundation exposes us to the anguish of meaninglessness and the complete disarticulation of experience. The foundation can only be represented through a mythical-ritual language that has a protective individual and social function. The metahistorical models of myth and ritual provide a safeguard against both the proliferation of becoming and the blind repetition of disturbing elements from the past. In myth-ritual, closed symbols, i.e. symptoms, are re-moulded into open symbols, images: a dynamic that can be compared with Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology
Crisis, Culture, and Creation: Ernesto De Martino’s Ethos of Transcendence beyond Cassirer and Heidegger
No full textThis article examines how Ernesto de Martino’s ethos of transcendence carves out a moral path beyond the apparent impasse between Martin Heidegger’s emphasis on human finitude and Ernst Cassirer’s focus on the constructive power of symbolic forms. In the wake of two World Wars and Europe’s collapse into crisis, de Martino recognized that modern culture itself could disintegrate—what he termed the “risk of losing presence.” Drawing on anthropology, history, and philosophy, he argued that ritual, myth, and collective decision-making can continually renew shared horizons of meaning. By analyzing de Martino’s critical engagements with both Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Heidegger’s ontology of thrownness, the article demonstrates how de Martino forges an ethos of transcendence that underscores the ethical imperative to rebuild communal worlds whenever they threaten to collapse. This perspective provides a powerful lens for addressing contemporary challenges—from environmental degradation to social fragmentation—where the “end of the world” looms large. Rather than endorsing naive rationalism or surrendering to existential despair, de Martino urges moral agency: a renewed duty to be in the world, forging cultural frameworks that sustain our collective stories in moments of acute crisis.This article examines how Ernesto de Martino’s ethos of transcendence carves out a moral path beyond the apparent impasse between Martin Heidegger’s emphasis on human finitude and Ernst Cassirer’s focus on the constructive power of symbolic forms. In the wake of two World Wars and Europe’s collapse into crisis, de Martino recognized that modern culture itself could disintegrate—what he termed the “risk of losing presence.” Drawing on anthropology, history, and philosophy, he argued that ritual, myth, and collective decision-making can continually renew shared horizons of meaning. By analyzing de Martino’s critical engagements with both Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Heidegger’s ontology of thrownness, the article demonstrates how de Martino forges an ethos of transcendence that underscores the ethical imperative to rebuild communal worlds whenever they threaten to collapse. This perspective provides a powerful lens for addressing contemporary challenges—from environmental degradation to social fragmentation—where the “end of the world” looms large. Rather than endorsing naive rationalism or surrendering to existential despair, de Martino urges moral agency: a renewed duty to be in the world, forging cultural frameworks that sustain our collective stories in moments of acute crisis
Eco-poetical Trees: Posthuman & Vegetable Intra-actions
No full textThe article offers fifteen Italian translations of US poems to or about trees. The selecting principle has been the ecocentric positioning of the lyric “I.” Thus, the little anthology covers poems that signal the emergence of a “new nature poetry” – such as Emily Dickinson’s and later on Robert Frost’s – and of “ecopoetry” proper, such as Gary Snyder’s and W. S. Merwin’s. The spectrum of tree poems represented includes various inflections, ranging from William Carlos Williams’s voice to Denise Levertov’s and Mary Oliver’s, to culminate with the contemporary statements of Cynthia Zarin and Christian Wiman. The translations are introduced by the author’s attempt to provide an understanding of the term and concept of “ecopoetry” within the theoretical frame of a posthumanist perspective, and to retrace the development of US poets’ consciousness of the posthuman.The article offers fifteen Italian translations of US poems to or about trees. The selecting principle has been the ecocentric positioning of the lyric “I.” Thus, the little anthology covers poems that signal the emergence of a “new nature poetry” – such as Emily Dickinson’s and later on Robert Frost’s – and of “ecopoetry” proper, such as Gary Snyder’s and W. S. Merwin’s. The spectrum of tree poems represented includes various inflections, ranging from William Carlos Williams’s voice to Denise Levertov’s and Mary Oliver’s, to culminate with the contemporary statements of Cynthia Zarin and Christian Wiman. The translations are introduced by the author’s attempt to provide an understanding of the term and concept of “ecopoetry” within the theoretical frame of a posthumanist perspective, and to retrace the development of US poets’ consciousness of the posthuman