Thinking Italian Animals: Human and Posthuman in Modern Italian Literature and Film

by D. Amberson (Editor), E. Past (Editor)

Overview

This bracing volume collects work on Italian writers and filmmakers that engage with nonhuman animal subjectivity. These contributions address 3 major strands of philosophical thought: perceived borders between man and animals, historical and fictional crises, and human entanglement with the nonhuman and material world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137454751
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	09/18/2014
Series:	Italian and Italian American Studies
Edition description:	2014
Pages:	263
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Roberto Marchesini, Scuola d'interazione uomo animale, Italy Elizabeth Leake, Columbia University, USA Gregory Pell, Hofstra University, USA Simone Castaldi, Hofstra University, USA Matteo Gilebbi, Duke University, USA Alexandra Hills, University College London, UK Giuseppina Mecchia, University of Pittsburgh, USA Daniele Fioretti, University of Miami, Ohio, USA Valentina Fulginiti, University of Toronto, Canada David Del Principe, Montclair State University, USA Giovanna Faleschini Lerner, Franklin and Marshall College, USA Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy

Table of Contents

Preface: Mimesis: The Heterospecific as Ontopoetic Epiphany; Roberto Marchesini Introduction: Thinking Italian Animals; Deborah Amberson and Elena Past PART I: ONTOLOGIES AND THRESHOLDS 1. Confronting the Specter of Animality: Tozzi and the Uncanny Animal of Modernism; Deborah Amberson 2. Cesare Pavese, Posthumanism, and the Maternal Symbolic; Elizabeth Leake 3. Montale's Animals: Rhetorical Props or Metaphysical Kin?; Gregory Pell 4. The Word Made Animal Flesh: Tommaso Landolfi's Bestiary; Simone Castaldi 5. Animal Metaphors, Biopolitics, and the Animal Question: Mario Luzi, Giorgio Agamben, and the Human-Animal Divide; Matteo Gilebbi PART II: BIOPOLITICS AND HISTORICAL CRISIS 6. Creatureliness and Posthumanism in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò; Alexandra Hills 7. Elsa Morante at the Biopolitical Turn: Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible; Giuseppina Mecchia 8. Foreshadowing the Posthuman: Hybridization, Apocalypse, and Renewal in Paolo Volponi; Daniele Fioretti 9. The Post-Apocalyptic Cookbook: Animality, Posthumanism, and Meat in Laura Pugno and Wu Ming; Valentina Fulginiti PART III: ECOLOGIES AND HYBRIDIZATIONS 10. The Monstrous Meal: Flesh Consumption and Resistance in the European Gothic; David Del Principe 11. Contemporaneità and Ecological Thinking in Carlo Levi's Writing; Giovanna Faleschini Lerner 12. Hybriditales: Posthumanizing Calvino; Serenella Iovino 13. (Re)membering Kinship: Living with Goats in The Wind Blows Round and Le quattro volte; Elena Past

Editorial Reviews

"Animals and the Posthuman in Italian Literature and Film is an elegant and musing collection on what it means to be alive and thinking today. The volume contains a wonderful preface by Italian philosopher, Roberto Marchesini , who sets out the stakes of the work beautifully. Indeed, it has been a long time since I've come across such a powerful combination of erudition, cutting-edge readings of continential philosophy, and, though this may seem surprising given the title, humanity." - Timothy Campbell, Professor of Italian Studies and Chair of Romance Studies, Cornell University, USA

From the Publisher