Conference Presentations by Emilia Andri
Nietzsche’s announcement of the “death of God”, far from representing the definitive abandoning o... more Nietzsche’s announcement of the “death of God”, far from representing the definitive abandoning of the problem of the religious, on the contrary represents the clamorous trigger of a new and audacious tradition of thought on religion, considered as crucial dimension for the definition of the human being and his origins. As a matter of facts, in the early Twentieth Century the study of the religious phenomenon, also stimulated by the previous ethnographical researches inspired by nineteenth-century positivism, becomes essential in order to understand not only the ancient or “primitive” man, but the human being per se, his origins and his final destination. Therefore, it is particularly significant that, just before the war that would inaugurate the Twentieth Century by driving Europe to sink in a abyss of material and moral poverty, it is published Les formes élémentaire de la vie religieuse of Émile Durkheim, the actual “birth certificate” of the concept of the sacred as precise scientific and historical category of religion, considered as «aspect essentiel et permanent de l’humanité», as a human fact which has to be studied iuxta propria principia. This paper means to restore this important chapter of the history of Western thought in its principal moments of development, in order to stress the philosophical importance of the discussion on sacred and religion at the beginning of the last century. First of all, the paper will try to highlight the philosophical and epistemological aspects of Durkheim’s formulation of the concept of sacred, which allows not only a functional definition of religion, but, by referring to a more elementary sphere of the religious life, brings back to the primordial forms of human cultural history as well. According to Durkheim, the sacred is a power, a force that, arising from the community, gives organization and meaning to the surrounding reality, and therefore is at the very origin of the cognitive and cultural categories that define the human “world”. The second section of the paper will address the subsequent discussion on sacred, which, after Durkheim’s definition, took two apparently incompatible interpretative directions: 1. an “immanent” approach, enhanced by the French School of Sociology, to the religious phenomenon, which is analysed as a fundamental social fact; 2. through the mediation of Swedish theologian Söderblom, an equally fruitful “transcendental” phenomenological approach, developed by scholars such as Rudolf Otto and Gerardus van der Leeuw and aimed to regain the original religious phenomena as the manifestation of a transcendent reality. These paths of investigation find an ideal intersection, on the methodological side, in the acquisition of religion as experience that has to be studied in its peculiar rules of functioning and, on the strictly philosophical one, in the emergence of religion as the fundamental dimension that, defining the human being, cannot be renounced without jeopardising all mankind.
ERNESTO DE MARTINO AND RENÉ GIRARD: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CRISIS OF THE PRESENCE AND MIMETIC CRISI... more ERNESTO DE MARTINO AND RENÉ GIRARD: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CRISIS OF THE PRESENCE AND MIMETIC CRISIS.
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
In this article, the author intends to delineate, in Hobbes’ thinking from "Elements of Law Natur... more In this article, the author intends to delineate, in Hobbes’ thinking from "Elements of Law Natural and Politic" (1640) to "De homine" (1658), a double level of theorization about the desire on the state of nature: an evident and explicit level of mechanistic explanation and a more hidden and erratic level of unaware mimetic intuition. The author underlines as in "Elements" Hobbes defines desire essentially in mimetic terms, close to René Girard theory, setting it to the very origin of the struggle of the state of nature, whereas, since "Leviathan", mimetic aspects of the desire are hidden alongside the progressive improvement of the rigorous mechanistic system until they disappear almost entirely in "De homine".
Lectures by Emilia Andri
Chapters in books by Emilia Andri
The article intends to analyse Girard's interpretation of myth, stressing its undeniable feature ... more The article intends to analyse Girard's interpretation of myth, stressing its undeniable feature of inventiveness, but also its constitutive limitations. Focusing on the myth of Œdipus, Girard elaborated his mimetic theory as the ultimate demystification, a démythification, which could reverse the process of méconnaissance that furtively organises not only the myth, but the entire culture. Girard's view, as incisive and innovative as it is, nevertheless ends with a demolition of human culture, which therefore is not aknowledged in its most profound meaning, as an extraordinary system of flexible and interconnected symbolic mediations.
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L’articolo intende analizzare l’interpretazione del mito elaborata da René Girard, mostrandone gli aspetti di indubbia originalità, così come i limiti costitutivi. In particolare, l’interpretazione del mito di Edipo costituisce un momento fondamentale per l’universalizzazione della teoria girardiana del desiderio mimetico, la cui prima formulazione in Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) ne limitava la portata esplicativa al romanzo europeo moderno. Nel quadro teorico di Girard, il mito di Edipo diventa la riproduzione simbolica di un processo di vittimizzazione, narrato però secondo la prospettiva dei persecutori e, di conseguenza, strutturato a livello formale secondo le regole di una méconnaissance che si radica nel fondamento violento della cultura umana. Per accedere al nucleo di verità del mito, è necessaria quindi un’opera di démythification, vale a dire, di decostruzione a un tempo strutturale e genetica, che analizzi la struttura formale del testo mitico alla ricerca di incoerenze e lacune spiegabili solo in virtù del contenuto extra-testuale, nascosto tra le pieghe del mito e capace di illuminarlo dall’interno. In questa esegesi “demitificante”, risulta centrale il confronto del mito di Edipo con la rielaborazione tragica sofoclea, le cui variazioni tematiche e i cui dispositivi formali costituiscono indizi di una decifrazione, seppur parziale, dell’occultamento mitico. Se l’approccio girardiano ha il merito di fornire un potentissimo strumento ermeneutico, tuttavia esso risente di un invalicabile riduzionismo, legato essenzialmente alla concezione semplicistica e angusta della cultura umana, implicita nella teoria mimetica. In tale quadro teorico, infatti, non solo il mito, concepito in ultima analisi come menzogna da demistificare, perde ogni autonomia simbolica e conoscitiva, ma è altresì ignorato il ruolo della tragedia nell’interazione e ri-creazione attiva dei motivi mitici.
M. Mazzocut-Mis, G. Mormino, (a cura di), Edipo, re e vittima, Mimesis, Milano 2014
R. Di Donato, M. Gandini, (a cura di), Le intrecciate vie. Carteggi di Ernesto de Martino con Vittorio Macchioro e Raffaele Pettazzoni, ETS, Pisa 2015
Francesco Mercadante, Maria Stella Barberi, Riccardo di Giuseppe, Giuseppe Fornari, (a cura di), Disordine e ordine: il fattore mimetico in politica e nella storia, Giuffrè, Milano, 2012
"ERNESTO DE MARTINO AND RENÉ GIRARD: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CRISIS OF THE PRESENCE AND MIMETIC CRIS... more "ERNESTO DE MARTINO AND RENÉ GIRARD: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CRISIS OF THE PRESENCE AND MIMETIC CRISIS.
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
Giuseppe Fornari, Gianfranco Mormino, (a cura di), René Girard e la filosofia, Mimesis, Milano, 2012
«FOR WHILE WE LIVE, WE HAVE DESIRES, AND DESIRE PRESUPPOSETH A FARTHER END». DESIRE IN HOBBES’ AN... more «FOR WHILE WE LIVE, WE HAVE DESIRES, AND DESIRE PRESUPPOSETH A FARTHER END». DESIRE IN HOBBES’ ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE STATE OF NATURE.
In this article, the author intends to delineate, in Hobbes’ thinking from Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) to De homine (1658), a double level of theorization about the desire on the state of nature: an evident and explicit level of mechanistic explanation and a more hidden and erratic level of unaware mimetic intuition. The author underlines as in Elements Hobbes defines desire essentially in mimetic terms, close to René Girard theory, setting it to the very origin of the struggle of the state of nature, whereas, since Leviathan, mimetic aspects of the desire are hidden alongside the progressive improvement of the rigorous mechanistic system until they disappear almost entirely in De homine.
Books by Emilia Andri
Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), il maggior antropologo del Novecento italiano, si è sempre percep... more Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), il maggior antropologo del Novecento italiano, si è sempre percepito come “uomo atipico”, figlio della crisi, refrattario, perciò, a ogni norma classificatoria intesa a neutralizzare le contraddizioni della sua esistenza e della sua epoca.
In questo libro, l’autrice ricostruisce l’intreccio contraddittorio e fecondo di esperienza storica della crisi europea ed esperienza della crisi personale che costituisce il nucleo profondo del pensiero demartiniano, attraverso un’accurata ricerca sul periodo della travagliata formazione del giovane De Martino fino alla composizione de Il mondo magico.
Emerge così un passato in parte rimosso dal suo stesso protagonista, segnato dal tormentato rapporto con Vittorio Macchioro, cui è restituita la giusta centralità grazie al recupero della parte ancora inedita del carteggio tra i due studiosi, e percorso dal tentativo di rispondere alla crisi dell’Occidente attraverso il recupero storico e conoscitivo della forza rigenerativa e salvifica della religione e del magismo.
Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), the most important italian anthropologist of the Twentieth Century, has always perceived himself as “atypical man”, born of the crisis, and therefore resistant to any classifying rule intended to neutralize the contradictions of his existence and of his time. In this book, through an accurate research on the period of the troubled intellectual and personal growth of the young De Martino until the publication of Primitive Magic, the Author depicts the contradictory and fruitful entanglement of the historical experience of the european crisis and the experience of the personal crisis, which constitutes the deeper core of demartinian thought. It emerges a past, partly removed by its own protagonist, marked by the tormented relationship with Vittorio Macchioro, to which a proper centrality is restored thanks to the recovery of the unpublished section of the correspondence between the two scholars, and defined by the effort of responding to the crisis of the West through a historic and cognitive recovery of the regenerating and redeeming force of religion and magic.
Papers by Emilia Andri
Storia, Antropologia e Scienze del linguaggio, 2016
My paper focuses on the relationship between religious studies and literature in the thought of V... more My paper focuses on the relationship between religious studies and literature in the thought of Vittorio Macchioro, author of Zagreus, a well-known study on orphism, based on a peculiar interpretation of the frescos of Villa Item in Pompei. His theoretical research, which was deeply rooted on the cultural ad spiritual European crisis of the Twentieth Century, intended to seize the irrational core of the religious, seen as the last chance for a personal and collective regeneration. Certain of his role of intellectual and prophet at once, like a new Orpheus, he devoted his entire existence to literature, which he interpreted as the more effective means to provoke an experience of mystical communion with God. Nevertheless, Macchioro was too lucid to free his mystical inspiration, and yet too lost to be clear in his speculation, and, at the end, he failed to reach a real communication of such an irrational and irreductible experience.
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Conference Presentations by Emilia Andri
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
Lectures by Emilia Andri
Chapters in books by Emilia Andri
********************
L’articolo intende analizzare l’interpretazione del mito elaborata da René Girard, mostrandone gli aspetti di indubbia originalità, così come i limiti costitutivi. In particolare, l’interpretazione del mito di Edipo costituisce un momento fondamentale per l’universalizzazione della teoria girardiana del desiderio mimetico, la cui prima formulazione in Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) ne limitava la portata esplicativa al romanzo europeo moderno. Nel quadro teorico di Girard, il mito di Edipo diventa la riproduzione simbolica di un processo di vittimizzazione, narrato però secondo la prospettiva dei persecutori e, di conseguenza, strutturato a livello formale secondo le regole di una méconnaissance che si radica nel fondamento violento della cultura umana. Per accedere al nucleo di verità del mito, è necessaria quindi un’opera di démythification, vale a dire, di decostruzione a un tempo strutturale e genetica, che analizzi la struttura formale del testo mitico alla ricerca di incoerenze e lacune spiegabili solo in virtù del contenuto extra-testuale, nascosto tra le pieghe del mito e capace di illuminarlo dall’interno. In questa esegesi “demitificante”, risulta centrale il confronto del mito di Edipo con la rielaborazione tragica sofoclea, le cui variazioni tematiche e i cui dispositivi formali costituiscono indizi di una decifrazione, seppur parziale, dell’occultamento mitico. Se l’approccio girardiano ha il merito di fornire un potentissimo strumento ermeneutico, tuttavia esso risente di un invalicabile riduzionismo, legato essenzialmente alla concezione semplicistica e angusta della cultura umana, implicita nella teoria mimetica. In tale quadro teorico, infatti, non solo il mito, concepito in ultima analisi come menzogna da demistificare, perde ogni autonomia simbolica e conoscitiva, ma è altresì ignorato il ruolo della tragedia nell’interazione e ri-creazione attiva dei motivi mitici.
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
In this article, the author intends to delineate, in Hobbes’ thinking from Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) to De homine (1658), a double level of theorization about the desire on the state of nature: an evident and explicit level of mechanistic explanation and a more hidden and erratic level of unaware mimetic intuition. The author underlines as in Elements Hobbes defines desire essentially in mimetic terms, close to René Girard theory, setting it to the very origin of the struggle of the state of nature, whereas, since Leviathan, mimetic aspects of the desire are hidden alongside the progressive improvement of the rigorous mechanistic system until they disappear almost entirely in De homine.
Books by Emilia Andri
In questo libro, l’autrice ricostruisce l’intreccio contraddittorio e fecondo di esperienza storica della crisi europea ed esperienza della crisi personale che costituisce il nucleo profondo del pensiero demartiniano, attraverso un’accurata ricerca sul periodo della travagliata formazione del giovane De Martino fino alla composizione de Il mondo magico.
Emerge così un passato in parte rimosso dal suo stesso protagonista, segnato dal tormentato rapporto con Vittorio Macchioro, cui è restituita la giusta centralità grazie al recupero della parte ancora inedita del carteggio tra i due studiosi, e percorso dal tentativo di rispondere alla crisi dell’Occidente attraverso il recupero storico e conoscitivo della forza rigenerativa e salvifica della religione e del magismo.
Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), the most important italian anthropologist of the Twentieth Century, has always perceived himself as “atypical man”, born of the crisis, and therefore resistant to any classifying rule intended to neutralize the contradictions of his existence and of his time. In this book, through an accurate research on the period of the troubled intellectual and personal growth of the young De Martino until the publication of Primitive Magic, the Author depicts the contradictory and fruitful entanglement of the historical experience of the european crisis and the experience of the personal crisis, which constitutes the deeper core of demartinian thought. It emerges a past, partly removed by its own protagonist, marked by the tormented relationship with Vittorio Macchioro, to which a proper centrality is restored thanks to the recovery of the unpublished section of the correspondence between the two scholars, and defined by the effort of responding to the crisis of the West through a historic and cognitive recovery of the regenerating and redeeming force of religion and magic.
Papers by Emilia Andri
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
********************
L’articolo intende analizzare l’interpretazione del mito elaborata da René Girard, mostrandone gli aspetti di indubbia originalità, così come i limiti costitutivi. In particolare, l’interpretazione del mito di Edipo costituisce un momento fondamentale per l’universalizzazione della teoria girardiana del desiderio mimetico, la cui prima formulazione in Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) ne limitava la portata esplicativa al romanzo europeo moderno. Nel quadro teorico di Girard, il mito di Edipo diventa la riproduzione simbolica di un processo di vittimizzazione, narrato però secondo la prospettiva dei persecutori e, di conseguenza, strutturato a livello formale secondo le regole di una méconnaissance che si radica nel fondamento violento della cultura umana. Per accedere al nucleo di verità del mito, è necessaria quindi un’opera di démythification, vale a dire, di decostruzione a un tempo strutturale e genetica, che analizzi la struttura formale del testo mitico alla ricerca di incoerenze e lacune spiegabili solo in virtù del contenuto extra-testuale, nascosto tra le pieghe del mito e capace di illuminarlo dall’interno. In questa esegesi “demitificante”, risulta centrale il confronto del mito di Edipo con la rielaborazione tragica sofoclea, le cui variazioni tematiche e i cui dispositivi formali costituiscono indizi di una decifrazione, seppur parziale, dell’occultamento mitico. Se l’approccio girardiano ha il merito di fornire un potentissimo strumento ermeneutico, tuttavia esso risente di un invalicabile riduzionismo, legato essenzialmente alla concezione semplicistica e angusta della cultura umana, implicita nella teoria mimetica. In tale quadro teorico, infatti, non solo il mito, concepito in ultima analisi come menzogna da demistificare, perde ogni autonomia simbolica e conoscitiva, ma è altresì ignorato il ruolo della tragedia nell’interazione e ri-creazione attiva dei motivi mitici.
In this paper, I intend to delineate a correspondence between the concept of "mimetic crisis", central in the theory of René Girard and the concept of "crisis of the presence", elaborated by Ernesto De Martino for the first time in Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni ad una storia del magismo (1948), whose central nucleus meaningfully ascends to the dramatic period of the Nazi occupation. To such purpose, I analyze all that aspects of the "crisis of the presence", that underline its nature of radical crisis of undifferentiation, of loss of the limits, that can drag the collectivity in an abyss of destruction. Subsequently, it is underlined as in the demartiniana speculation the "crisis of the presence" doesn't stand as an unrelated, inactive, a-historical negative, but it constitutes a fundamental dialectical pole in the development of the historical drama of the magic world, whose opposite pole is the redemption of the presence achieved by means of the creation of specific cultural forms that define and enable the magic action, which literally rescues “primitive” community. Furthermore, as mimetic crisis is cyclically repeated and defeated by means of the sacrificial rite, so “crisis of the presence” is cyclically re-acted by the wizard, the saviour and mediator of the community, the “magic Christ”, a plain sacrificial figure that sustains the supreme risk of the loss of the presence and redeems from it through specific rituals, rooted in tradition. Finally, I would try to thematize some significant divergences in the speculations of these two authors: from a side, in Girard it emerges as prominent the matter of the origin of culture, whereas, from the other side, in De Martino the foundational problem is, not only not considered, but also refused; on the other hand, however, Girard, in his analyses, is inclined to neglect and to underestimate creative and generative potentialities of the sacrificial culture, on which, on the contrary, De Martino focuses his attention in his interpretation of magic rite.
In this article, the author intends to delineate, in Hobbes’ thinking from Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) to De homine (1658), a double level of theorization about the desire on the state of nature: an evident and explicit level of mechanistic explanation and a more hidden and erratic level of unaware mimetic intuition. The author underlines as in Elements Hobbes defines desire essentially in mimetic terms, close to René Girard theory, setting it to the very origin of the struggle of the state of nature, whereas, since Leviathan, mimetic aspects of the desire are hidden alongside the progressive improvement of the rigorous mechanistic system until they disappear almost entirely in De homine.
In questo libro, l’autrice ricostruisce l’intreccio contraddittorio e fecondo di esperienza storica della crisi europea ed esperienza della crisi personale che costituisce il nucleo profondo del pensiero demartiniano, attraverso un’accurata ricerca sul periodo della travagliata formazione del giovane De Martino fino alla composizione de Il mondo magico.
Emerge così un passato in parte rimosso dal suo stesso protagonista, segnato dal tormentato rapporto con Vittorio Macchioro, cui è restituita la giusta centralità grazie al recupero della parte ancora inedita del carteggio tra i due studiosi, e percorso dal tentativo di rispondere alla crisi dell’Occidente attraverso il recupero storico e conoscitivo della forza rigenerativa e salvifica della religione e del magismo.
Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), the most important italian anthropologist of the Twentieth Century, has always perceived himself as “atypical man”, born of the crisis, and therefore resistant to any classifying rule intended to neutralize the contradictions of his existence and of his time. In this book, through an accurate research on the period of the troubled intellectual and personal growth of the young De Martino until the publication of Primitive Magic, the Author depicts the contradictory and fruitful entanglement of the historical experience of the european crisis and the experience of the personal crisis, which constitutes the deeper core of demartinian thought. It emerges a past, partly removed by its own protagonist, marked by the tormented relationship with Vittorio Macchioro, to which a proper centrality is restored thanks to the recovery of the unpublished section of the correspondence between the two scholars, and defined by the effort of responding to the crisis of the West through a historic and cognitive recovery of the regenerating and redeeming force of religion and magic.