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Fields without honour: contemporary war as globalenforcement
No full textThe chapter discusses the role of war in contemporary social theory. Following the mainstream tradition of classical Western thought, armed conflicts do not find a legitimate place in the sociological theory, because, given the scientific division of labor in social sciences, they traditionally belong to political science and history. According to the author, this lack of sociological interest prevents a real understanding of the new social features of war, especially after the end of the Cold war.
Today, even if Western countries are involved in armed conflicts in foreign countries - like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.-, they tend to conceive bombing, covert operations on the terrain and so on not as wars but rather as a sort of police enforcement in other countries - a global police. On one side this allows a “professionalization” of military activities (as the employment of contractors, special forces, robots, drones); but on the other it implies a “normalization” of war. Reversing the meaning of Carl von Clausewitz's famous statement, war doesn’t appear as a continuation of politics by other means (i.e. the result of a political decision), but in a way it is the form of Western politics in the rest of the world. This promotes not only a global turbulence, but also an anthropological change. Since USA and Europe inhabitants are protected from the effects of war, they do not feel at war: the consequence is a blunting of the perception of other people’s suffering
EROI DI CARTA.Il caso “Gomorra” e altre epopee
No full textThe book “Gomorra” by Roberto Saviano represents one of the most interesting cases of contemporary literary hits at a global level. Sold in millions of copies in many languages, the book owes its notoriety to the author's hero role, inasmuch – according to the common opinion – he was threatened to be killed by the camorra. Therefore the book is considered a first hand account of the criminal reality of Naples and at the same time a biographical narrative, a journey of the young hero in the abysses of crime and a witnessing of hope and redemption.
Starting from the perspective of semiotics and sociology of literature, the book by Alessandro Dal Lago is a critical analysis of both the book and the role of national hero played by its author. From a literary point of view, “Gomorra” appears to shift ambiguously between fiction and non-fiction. If, according to the recent tendencies of Italian “epic” novelists, the fictional side glamorizes the account of squalid street crimes, drug selling and other unlawful activities, the non-fictional side legitimates the truth of such account, with the result to transform the book into a “revelation” of the dark side of Naples life.
At the same time, the “making” of the hero (realized by newspapers, political authorities and so on) represents a national (and international) solace in front of the stable and growing power of organized crime in Italy. In other words, the epic of “Gomorra” and its author is a contemporary myth built with the contribution of several actors. Dal Lago’s book is one of the first attempts, at least in Italy, to look in depth at the role of bestsellers in the shaping of contemporary culture
Il business del pensiero. La consulenza filosofica tra cura di sè e terapia degli altri
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