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Una vita in comune: corpi e negoziazioni dello spazio pubblico come Beni Comuni. Uno sguardo da Dakar
No full textThis text proposes an anti-colonial genealogy (linked to the XX Century concepts of Pan-Africanism and Négritude) and a pre-modern genealogy (linked to ancestral cultural and existential models that have survived in post-colonial urban contexts) of contemporary participatory art experiences in the African continent. The first focus on Senegal will provide further references to festivals, biennials and triennials exhibitions and art projects on the continent. Such practices, which have entered into dialogue with the global art world through relevant international exhibitions (see, with reference to a recent example from the Global South, the Documenta curated by the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa in 2022), can be interpreted by global art critics through the lenses of hermeneutic and theoretical models proper to art-history and curatorial disciplines. However, in their complexity and hybridity - linked to the colonial history and the multicultural nature of the education of the their protagonists, artists who grew up in a dialectic between inside and outside the African continent, inside and outside the artistic education imported by the European colonies from the 19th century onwards, inside and outside their own ancestral cultures of reference – these practices must be framed in their contextual relevance and adherence, rather than within the deductive definitions of Eurocentric art criticism.Questo testo propone una genealogia anticoloniale (legata ai concetti di Panafricanismo e di Négritude, sviluppati nel corso del Novecento) e pre-moderna (legata a modelli culturali ed esistenziali ancestrali, sopravvissuti nei contesti urbani postcoloniali) delle esperienze contemporanee di arte partecipativa nel continente africano, a partire dal Senegal e con ulteriori riferimenti a festival ed esposizioni periodiche del continente. Tali pratiche, entrate in dialogo con il mondo dell'arte globale attraverso rilevanti esposizioni internazionali (si veda, con riferimento a un recente esempio del Sud Globale, la Documenta curata dal collettivo indonesiano Ruangrupa nel 2022), possono essere interpretate dalla critica d'arte globale a partire da modelli ermeneutici e teorici propri delle discipline storico-artistiche e curatoriali. Tuttavia, nella loro complessità ed ibridazione - legate alla storia coloniale ed alla natura multiculturale della formazione degli artisti che ne sono protagonisti, cresciuti in una dialettica tra dentro e fuori il continente africano, dentro e fuori l'educazione artistica importata dalle colonie europee a partire dal XIX secolo, dentro e fuori le proprie culture ancestrali di riferimento - vanno osservate nella loro pertinenza ed aderenza contestuale, più che nel loro inquadramento all'interno di definizioni deduttive proprie della critica d'arte eurocentrica
Between the Mediatic and the Mediumistic: Haunted Media in Contemporary Horror Cinema
No full textThe paper examines the interplay between media and the supernatural in contemporary horror cinema, focusing on the concept of haunted media—communication technologies that become conduits for metaphysical malevolence. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of Jeffrey Sconce’s media hauntology and Jacques Derrida’s hauntology, it explores how films reflect societal anxieties surrounding technology and its “magical” qualities. The analysis delves into the moral panic and techno-fetishism inherent in media history, emphasizing how communication tools blur the lines between the mediatic and the mediumistic. Four case studies are analyzed: Truth or Dare (Jeff Wadlow, 2018) portrays a demon that spreads its curse through media, highlighting moral panic around teen culture; Countdown (Justin Dec, 2019) investigates smartphone dependency and algorithmic determinism; Friend Request (Simon Verhoeven, 2016) explores digital connectivity as both a social enabler and a source of isolation through ghosting and stalking; and Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018) examines identity fragmentation in the age of digital reproduction and surveillance. These films, though largely genre-based, serve as mirrors of the current mediascape, where technological advances evoke both fascination and dread. They reveal the ethical and gendered dimensions of media-induced fears, situating horror cinema as a laboratory for cultural anxieties and social critique
Spettri dal 1987. Solitudini Queer Retromaniache in Estranei (All of Us Strangers, 2023) di Andrew Haigh
No full textThis paper aims to examine the spectral nature of queerness through an analysis of the movie Estranei (All of Us Strangers, 2023) by Andrew Haigh, viewed in comparative perspective with its hypotext novel Estranei (Ijintachito no natsu, 2005 [1987]) by Taichi Yamada. In the movie, as Adam interacts with the spectral entities of his parents, deceased during Christmas 1987, and his lover Harry, he melancholically slips into a retromaniac space, accompanied by the songs selected for the movie’s soundtrack – spectral melodies predominantly from the years 1984-87. Adapting a strictly heterosexual text, Haigh’s movie employs queerness as a device of semantic stratification, endowing elements already present in the hypotext – loneliness and disrupted temporality – with new queer meanings and functions. Simultaneously, at the intersection of the trauma of loss and the discomfort of the queer subject in heteronormative society, spectrality is used as a category to describe the very condition of queerness
L’horror come forma mentis. Pier Maria Bocchi, So cosa hai fatto. Scenari, pratiche e sentimenti dell’horror moderno, Lindau, Torino 2024
No full textEleganza Sostenibile: il Ruolo dell’Estetica Green nell’Industria della Moda
No full textIn an era of unprecedented technological change and fast-paced consumerism, we are witnessing a renewed appreciation for nature’s beauty, influencing aesthetic paradigms. Although Kantian and Burkean notions of the sublime historically framed nature as separate from human experience, contemporary challenges have led to a different consideration of this relationship. Movements like Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts pioneered organic designs in objects, clothes, wallpapers, and upholstery of every kind. Today, climate crisis and the environmental impact of the fashion industry — which ranks as the world’s seventh most polluting industry — demand designers to find sustainable solutions, such as the use of innovative biomaterials and natural dyes (derived from plants, insects or minerals), reducing pollution and waste. A green aesthetic represents more than a simple choice of style: it embodies a call for a more responsible future, where beauty is about living in harmony with the environment we live in. This study explores the significant impact that a green(er) aesthetics has on the fashion industry, thus reflecting a broader movement towards sustainability that encompasses sustainable innovations in designs, materials, and communication.In un’epoca di grandi cambiamenti tecnologici e di consumismo frenetico, stiamo assistendo a un rinnovato apprezzamento per la bellezza della natura, il quale ha un’influenza non indifferente sui paradigmi estetici contemporanei (Parsons & Carlson, 2024). Nonostante le nozioni kantiane e burkeane del sublime abbiano storicamente rappresentato la natura come separata dall’esperienza umana, le sfide attuali impongono una radicale rilettura di questo rapporto. Movimenti artistici come l’Art Nouveau e l’Arts and Crafts hanno anticipato questo cambiamento, introducendo disegni organici in oggetti, abiti, carte da parati e tessuti d’arredo (1999). Oggi, la crisi climatica e l’impatto ambientale dell’industria della moda – classificata come il settimo settore più inquinante al mondo (Smelik, 2021) – richiedono nuove soluzioni sostenibili. I designer stanno rispondendo con materiali innovativi – come Mylo, il “cuoio” derivato dai funghi usato da Adidas (2021) – e le tinture naturali derivate da piante, insetti o minerali, riducendo così l’inquinamento e gli sprechi (Kadolph, 2008). L’estetica green non è solo una semplice scelta stilistica, ma un appello per un futuro più responsabile, in cui la bellezza coincide con l’armonia tra l’uomo e l’ambiente. Questo studio esplora l’impatto trasformativo di un’estetica “più verde” sulla moda, dimostrando come le innovazioni sostenibili nel design, nei materiali e nella comunicazione riflettano un movimento culturale più ampio verso la sostenibilità
The Ghost of Middle Management: Automation, Control, and Heterarchy in the Platform Firm
No full textIn an effort to attend to the distinct organizational form of algorithmic management, we interrogate the arrangement of platform labor through the lens of the post-bureaucratic organization instead of that of the industrialized factory. Prior studies of gig workers rely heavily on sociological accounts of factory labor, but we posit that gig economy platforms represent a heterarchical organizational form, marrying the logics of industrial control induced by computational systems with the logics of post-bureaucracy inherited from flattening firms and downsizing middle management. In a technique we describe as automation by omission, we show how middle-managerial roles and responsibilities are excised entirely from the platform firm, how the vestigial traces of such roles are only imperfectly replaced by technical systems, and how “situated” managerial tasks essential to post-bureaucratic organizations are picked up by the worker, uncompensated. This heterarchical arrangement benefits the firm in multiple ways, while its competing structural conditions of labor leave workers to navigate multiple valuation systems at once. Appreciating gig work’s embedded post-bureaucracy shifts our understanding of common worker experiences such as peer-to-peer organizing and just-in-time scheduling illuminates dissonant accounts of empowerment and algorithmic despotism, and exposes new avenues for worker disenfranchisement
What We Talk About When We Talk About Media Effects
No full textBased on remarks at the 25th anniversary of the Center on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University, this essay suggests that canonical debates over historical media “revolutions” call attention to the narrow, behaviorist paradigm driving most research about online misinformation today. While numerous empirical studies have found only minimal exposure to or risks from lies, hoaxes and conspiracy theories circulating on social networks, defining media effects strictly in terms of individual psychology neglects the broader cultural and institutional dimensions of how media shape public life. Foundational accounts of the development and influence of the printing press —– including those that challenge deterministic assumptions —– remind us that, in hindsight, the media effects that matter will be understood as shifts in culture, perhaps especially elite political culture
Sociology as a Vocation and a Collective Enterprise: Remembering Michael Burawoy
No full textMichael Burawoy has been one of the most influential contemporary sociologists. The author of a scholarly output developed over fifty years, Burawoy innovated in ways of theorizing, field research methods, and tackling the most varied objects of study: forms of consensus in labor processes, class and race relations, major political-economic transitions, and finally modes of knowledge production. This essay is both a tribute to his great scientific testimony and an essential portrait of his sociological style, which conceives scientific work as an authentic Weberian public vocation, strongly linked to reflexivity and pluralism in the way of theorizing, capable of revising its paradigms thanks to comparative empirical research in time and space. A scientific and critical enterprise that is capable of being global, enriched by a diversity of contexts and by dialogue with critiques, a sociology that, in order to account for the complexity of the real, has proposed itself on many occasions as a collective work
Trade union solidarity in an export-oriented sector - some experiences from the Polish automotive industry
No full textThis paper explores the challenges and limitations of trade union solidarity in Poland's automotive sector, a key export-oriented industry dominated by multinational corporations. Drawing on an analysis of the sector's structure and industrial relations, as well as selected case studies of company-level trade union practices, the authors examine the feasibility of introducing collective bargaining at a sector level in Poland. The paper highlights how organisational structures inherited from the past, employer strategies and national industrial policy all contribute to the weakness of higher-level union coordination. Despite some workplaces having a high level of unionisation, union activity remains fragmented and is embedded in corporate logics. This undermines the potential for coordinated action in response to the dual transition (green and digital) and growing global competition. The authors argue that, without systemic changes and state incentives to promote sectoral bargaining, the Polish automotive workforce risks becoming further marginalised in restructuring processes driven by external pressures
Usi del dialetto siciliano da parte dei migranti nel comune di Favara
No full textThis paper investigates the role of the Sicilian dialect within the linguistic repertoire of adult migrants living in diglossic contexts. The study compares recently immigrated foreign nationals residing in the municipality of Favara and enrolled in the Provincial Centre for Adult Education (CPIA) of Agrigento, with Romanian adults who have been living in the area for over five years. Data gathered through structured interviews show that migrants enrolled in the CPIA acknowledge the usefulness of the dialect for social inclusion, although some perceive it as more difficult than Italian. Certain variables—such as prolonged residence in the area and the use of the dialect in the workplace—appear to be strongly correlated with the acknowledgement of the dialect’s local identity value.Il contributo indaga il ruolo del dialetto siciliano nel repertorio linguistico dei migranti adulti inseriti in contesti linguistici caratterizzati da dilalia. La ricerca mette a confronto la popolazione straniera di recente immigrazione nel comune di Favara, iscritta nel Centro Provinciale di Istruzione per gli Adulti (CPIA) di Agrigento, con adulti di cittadinanza rumena residenti nel comune da più di cinque anni. Dai dati ottenuti con un’intervista strutturata emerge che i migranti iscritti al CPIA riconoscono l’utilità del dialetto per l’inclusione sociale, anche se ritenuto da alcuni più difficile dell'italiano. Alcune variabili, come la prolungata permanenza nel territorio e l’uso del dialetto in contesto lavorativo, appaiono fortemente correlate con il riconoscimento del valore identitario del dialetto locale