Books by Giacomo Tagliani
"Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" (1975) di Pier Paolo Pasolini e "Todo modo" (1976) di Elio Pet... more "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" (1975) di Pier Paolo Pasolini e "Todo modo" (1976) di Elio Petri: due film gemelli ed estremi, dalla medesima tonalità apocalittica e dall’identico destino censorio. Due film che si trovano uniti anche nel confronto implicito con il pensiero di Michel Foucault, proprio in quei mesi impegnato in una svolta significativa nei suoi lavori con il passaggio da "Sorvegliare e Punire" (1975) a "La volontà di sapere" (1976). Attraverso l’analisi comparata dei due film e di alcuni passaggi del filosofo francese dedicati al concetto di potere pastorale, questo libro si concentra su una fase cruciale della storia della cultura critica europea, nella quale prende compiutamente forma, all’incrocio tra arte e filosofia, la riflessione sul ruolo della verità nell’esercizio del potere. Un momento originario che influenzerà ampiamente la teoria critica successiva nonché gran parte del cinema italiano più recente, da Nanni Moretti a Paolo Sorrentino e Matteo Garrone, e che propone alcune chiavi di lettura decisive per comprendere la nostra attuale ossessione per il vero e l’autentico nei comportamenti e nei sentimenti quotidiani.
Andreotti, Berlusconi, Moro, Mussolini: ciascuno incarnazione di una specifica immagine del poter... more Andreotti, Berlusconi, Moro, Mussolini: ciascuno incarnazione di una specifica immagine del potere, tutti protagonisti di film che hanno segnato l’immaginario recente. Il cinema biografico è in continua espansione e il mondo della politica cattura sempre di più il suo interesse, soprattutto in Italia. Anziché considerarlo un semplice fenomeno commerciale, questo libro propone di pensare il biografico-politico come l’espressione più tipica del cinema contemporaneo: è qui infatti che si possono comprendere con chiarezza gli incroci tra estetica e politica, le strategie di costruzione del senso comune, le forme di autorappresentazione di una comunità nazionale. E se l’intreccio originale di vita, storia e politica definisce il carattere peculiare del pensiero italiano, il cinema biografico-politico è allora il luogo più fecondo per riflettere sulla memoria storica e sul futuro della nazione.
Intrighi, terrorismo internazionale, geopolitica, spionaggio: Homeland è la serie televisiva che ... more Intrighi, terrorismo internazionale, geopolitica, spionaggio: Homeland è la serie televisiva che ha rivoluzionato il racconto del mondo dopo l’11 settembre, vincendo numerosi premi e ottenendo un enorme successo di pubblico. Per la prima volta un libro ne indaga l’estetica, i segreti e lo stile, svelandone tutta la densità concettuale, l’ampiezza dei temi e gli aspetti controversi. Giacomo Tagliani conduce il lettore in un labirinto di immagini, tra gli schermi della guerra a distanza e l'onniscienza dei dispositivi di controllo: mettendo in questione l'odierna nozione d'identità occidentale e il suo rapporto con l'alterità, questo volume, più di una semplice guida alla serie, offre una riflessione quanto mai attuale sul modo in cui si racconta l’epoca della Guerra al terrore.
Oltre sessant’anni dopo la sua scomparsa, il pensiero di André Bazin si rivela ancora di estrema ... more Oltre sessant’anni dopo la sua scomparsa, il pensiero di André Bazin si rivela ancora di estrema attualità. Dimostra, per esempio, di essere uno strumento utile (forse il più utile) per interpretare il cinema che definiamo “moderno”. Ma c’è di più: la riflessione di Bazin si rivela una chiave interpretativa irrinunciabile nella comprensione di molti fenomeni che interessano la produzione audiovisiva contemporanea, in particolare le nuove forme del documentario. Per il tramite di Bazin, questo volume vuole essere uno strumento utile alla comprensione di quegli oggetti misteriosi che sono le immagini in movimento, anche quando (o forse ancora di più quando) esse dimostrano di tendere verso un radicale ripensamento del loro statuto, proprio come ora sta accadendo.
Le immagini del controllo. Visibilità e governo dei corpi, Dec 2016
Dopo un lungo periodo di degenza, il cinema italiano sembra aver ritrovato la propria vocazione o... more Dopo un lungo periodo di degenza, il cinema italiano sembra aver ritrovato la propria vocazione originaria, quella di raccontare la realtà di un paese perennemente attraversato da contrasti e tensioni e popolato da maschere sempre in bilico tra un passato stereotipato e un futuro che non si concretizza. "Gomorra" di Matteo Garrone e "Il divo" di Paolo Sorrentino hanno definitivamente riacceso una polemica che sembrava sopita riguardante i rapporti fra la settima arte e la realtà. Ma il cinema è ancora in grado di dar forma alle inquietudini e alle tensioni che serpeggiano nel Paese e di mettere in scena uno spaccato dell'esistenza quotidiana con il quale lo spettatore può confrontarsi in maniera critica e problematica? E quali gli strumenti analitici più forti per poter riflettere sul potere testimoniale delle immagini filmiche senza perdere di vista il linguaggio cinematografico e le strategie di scrittura adottate nei singoli film? Sono questi gli interrogativi che attraversano cui i saggi di questo volume provano a fornire una risposta. A partire da "Buongiorno, notte" di Marco Bellocchio e "Il caimano" di Nanni Moretti, passando per la produzione di Ciprì e Maresco e approdando infine alla nuova generazione di autori impegnati la ricognizione della realtà si presenta come un proficuo orizzonte di ricerca per mettere in luce le discontinuità e le innovazioni della produzione recente nei confronti del sostanziale disimpegno che sembra aver segnato il ventennio precedente
Papers by Giacomo Tagliani
M.C. Addis, S. Jacoviello (eds.), Tra il dire e il fare. Enunciazione: l'immagine e altre forme semiotiche, 2020
A strange obsession for truth seems to define the present time: injunction to truth-telling, call... more A strange obsession for truth seems to define the present time: injunction to truth-telling, call to being authentic, fear of the fake are some of the features characterizing practices and rethorics of our living together. The realm of politics appears to be a privileged ground to this end, being able to grasp the symptoms diffused in the everyday life and configure them into steady models of behaviour through the effectiveness of its (self)representations. This paper aims to address the rhetoric pervasiveness of the concept of truth by inquiring the semantic field deployed by neologism "truthiness" and its Italian translation "veracità", tentatively defined as a "natural" truth that presents itself without mediation or filters and keeps together diverse phenomena, from popular wisdom to food wholesomeness. As a matter of fact, the need for witnessing one's genuine and truthful being seems to be the recurrent feature in several cultural expressions of the present time, as well as in the subsequent subjectivation processes. The goal of the paper is thus to analyse this "aesthetics of truthiness" to outline its specific enunciative strategies that testify how the matter of post-truth should be addressed primarily in terms of behaviours instead of knowledge. Fig. 1-"Governo balneare": Matteo Salvini al Papeete di Milano Marittima Lo sguardo trasognato, leggermente all'insù, fissa il volto di una ragazza in costume che danza. Occhi socchiusi, espressione estatica, microfono in mano: in piedi probabilmente sul cubo, la vocalist si dimena di fronte a Matteo Salvini che a torso nudo, la pelle salmastra rubizza per il sole, divide il
Fata Morgana. Quadrimestrale di cinema e visioni, 2020
This paper deals with the “theoretical history” of the concept of wall – considered both as a pla... more This paper deals with the “theoretical history” of the concept of wall – considered both as a place and as a scene – as proposed by Agnès Varda in Mur, murs (Id., 1981) and Visages, Villages (Faces, Places, 2017). In these films, walls are both surfaces of inscription of the stories binding the subjects to a certain place and frames in which everyone’s conducts become a spectacle addressed to anyone. This theoretical framework directly traceable in these works will be finally considered as a potential interpreting strategy of some practices in urban art (such as those of Blu and Bansky) that magnify aesthetical and political possibilities of the walls modelling the space of historical existence of a given community.
Fata Morgana. Quadrimestrale di cinema e visioni, 2018
All’interno del panorama audiovisivo contemporaneo, la possibilità di attestare il reale sembra e... more All’interno del panorama audiovisivo contemporaneo, la possibilità di attestare il reale sembra esposta a un duplice rischio. Da un lato, grazie alla diffusione delle tecnologie leggere, emerge l'illusione di una coincidenza tra immagine e realtà; dall’altro, a causa della manipolabilità completa di ogni riproduzione digitale, si manifesta uno scetticismo radicale nell'efficacia testimoniale dell'immagine. Questo paradosso mediale sembra aver generato due opposte strategie retoriche che attraversano in generale l’orizzonte audiovisivo del presente e che riattualizzano la grande dicotomia cinematografica tra “montaggio sovrano” e “montaggio proibito”: alla ripresa in continuità propria della maggior parte dei video amatoriali fruiti in rete si contrappongono quei processi di “autenticazione intermediale” (Montani) che definiscono la cifra peculiare di un nuovo rapporto tra le immagini.
A partire da alcuni esempi emblematici, cinematografici (ad esempio Redacted, La bocca del lupo, Vincere) e amatoriali caricati in rete, la presente proposta intende affrontare queste due grandi forme di mediazione tra mondo e immagine per interrogare i regimi di credenza (Deleuze) contemporanei. Rileggendo alcuni passaggi classici della teoria del cinema, su tutti Ejzenstejn e Bazin, l’obbiettivo è quello di delineare le principali modalità di costruzione di specifiche “autorità” discorsive (Foucault, Lincoln) che orientano l’esperienza mediale contemporanea e definiscono la possibilità per lo spettatore di credere al mondo e alle immagini che lo rappresentano.
L'avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes , 2019
This article aims to outline the three main threads that have marked Italian cinema in the adopti... more This article aims to outline the three main threads that have marked Italian cinema in the adoption, comparison and modelling of migratory images and imageries, namely: a formed and forming gaze that transforms the multitude of life forms on the move into a horde of indistinct bodies; a humanitarian moral and a look that risk placing the diasporic subjects in an irredeemable position of subalternity and the construction and valorisation of migrant identities. Through these three threads, it is possible to reconstruct the visual history of migratory
phenomena – both outwards to the Americas and inwards from North Africa –and highlight wo opposing outcomes: on the one hand, the strategies of homologating otherness, posed alternately as a threat to social stability or within a condition of suffering; on the other hand,
the formative processes that help to re-establish the migrant’s positive condition as the bearerof elements of creolisation, the promoter of discursive negotiation and translation of identities.
Fata Morgana n. 34 , 2018
The Variable Intensities of Terror. Representations of Migrants and Terrorist in Contemporary Med... more The Variable Intensities of Terror. Representations of Migrants and Terrorist in Contemporary Mediascape
Terrorist and migrant are probably the major phobias of contemporary Western societies, the two figures that embody the fears of the present time the most. Media are crowded by tragedies associating with the landings of migrants and videos documenting attacks, beheadings and destructions of artistic heritage. What are the criteria of visibility of these images? Which iconographic and imaginary domains do they recall? What are the effects and passions produced on the public?
Migratory waves and terrorist attacks have been interpreted by media through distinct rhetoric, and yet enclosed in neighboring discursive fields, whose “boundaries” are marked by the different passional gradations (from fear to terror) that these would produce in public opinion. Starting from an audiovisual corpus consisting of the representations broadcasted by Italian media in the period coinciding with the attacks occurred in November 2015 in Paris, the paper will evaluate the theoretical and heuristic effectiveness of two specific ways of creating fear involving migrants and terrorists, that we propose to define respectively “low” and “high” intensity.
The rhetoric of invasion and preventive security is based on the gradual threat of a looming terror. This passional gradualness is also supported by implicit references to an epidemiological imaginary that originates from Hollywood cinema and is rooted around two “conceptual characters” – the zombie and the clone – and two genres – horror and science fiction. Forms of representation and passional variations will therefore be the focus around which the essay will articulate a reflection – related to a specific but nevertheless generalizable corpus – on the images of migrants and terrorists, two “extreme” forms of life that continually challenge our relationship with the Otherness.
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Oct 2016
In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual and “conservative” account of th... more In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film, indeed, produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film's paradoxical nature, caught in an indecibility between past and present.
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2016
In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual
and “conservative” account of th... more In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual
and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film’s paradoxical nature, caught in an undecidability between past and present.
Journal of Italian cinema and Media Studies, 2014
The increasing production of biographical films dealing with power and its figures raises interes... more The increasing production of biographical films dealing with power and its figures raises interesting questions about the nature and the aims of political cinema. What are the strategies used to represent people whose public image has completely overlapped to their identity? This matter concerns not only thematic aspects of the biopic genre, but more in depth it discloses fundamental issues at the basis of any theory of cinema. From this point of view, some Italian instances propose original solutions, creating a coherent framework in continuity with a long tradition that has marked the history of Italian thought. This article aims at making a survey of these inputs through the analysis of contemporary relevant texts – above all Il Caimano/The Caiman (Moretti, 2006), Il Divo: La spettacolare vita di Giulio Andreotti/Il Divo (Sorrentino, 2008), Vincere/To Win (Bellocchio, 2009) – in the attempt of defining the space of effectiveness of this new line of development within the huge field of political cinema.
K. Revue trans-européenne de philosophie et arts, 2020
Giuliano Montaldo's biopic "Giordano Bruno" marks a turn in the history of Italian biographical c... more Giuliano Montaldo's biopic "Giordano Bruno" marks a turn in the history of Italian biographical cinema. This essay analyses this movie in the light of Bruno's thought, highlighting its relevance for the present "biographical turn" as well as the importance of film theory and practice in the framework of the so-called "Italian Thought". By considering them as strictly intertwined, the essay aims at underlying the crucial theoretical role played by biopics in the definition of specific key concepts of the present time.
Fata Morgana. Quadrimestrale di cinema e visioni, 2016
In Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Pasolini's last work, the myth loses its positive and or... more In Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Pasolini's last work, the myth loses its positive and originary features to intrinsically link to a death spectacle. The memory of fascism, polemically questioned by the director, is elaborated as a thanatopolitical mythological machinery to which an utopia able to affirm and regenerate life is counterposed. Through the analysis of the topological articulation disclosed by the film, this paper attempts to rethink some of its interpretative keys, by lingering on the theoretical level proposed by the filmic discourse.
In Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), opera ultima di Pasolini, il mito perde la sua tonalità positiva e originante per legarsi intrinsecamete a uno spettacolo di morte. La memoria del fascismo, affrontata polemicamente dal regista, viene elaborata come macchina mitologica tanatopolitica alla quale si contrappone un'utopia capace di affermare e rigenerare la vita. Attraverso l'analisi dell'articolazione topologica dispiegata dal film, distinta tra spazio utopico, eterotopico e reale, il presente intervento prova a ripensarne alcune chiavi interpretative, soffermandosi sul livello teorico costruito dal discorso filmico.
Contemporary cinema has widely inquired the regime of violence deployed by financial capitalism, ... more Contemporary cinema has widely inquired the regime of violence deployed by financial capitalism, detecting continuities and differences compared with other forms and figures of coercion which mark social fabric. From this respect, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) by Martin Scorsese represents a particularly interesting object: this film indeed attempts to elaborate an appropriate representation of the forms-of-life and power relationships arisen from market globalization and the dematerialization of the goods, despite being completely different from the director's stylistic tradition and even though it has been considered ethically controversial.
The narration of a return to a savage and primordial dimension of violence thus stages a state of nature which is foreign to the laws ruling social behavior and nevertheless becomes the ground for a new contractuality opposed to the existing state of right. In turn, this thematic dimension seems to be constantly doubled by an enunciational level, since it is the image itself to use violence against spectatorial gaze, imposing the main character's unique and swallowing point of view, which seems to expunge any form of otherness and difference.
This paper aims at proposing a reflexion through images about the forms of subjectivation specific of the animal competition transposed to the virtual world of financial trade, intertwining the theory in action inside the film with Aesthetics and Critical Theory positions.
La confessione, secondo Foucault, è un dispositivo discorsivo particolarmente efficace che instau... more La confessione, secondo Foucault, è un dispositivo discorsivo particolarmente efficace che instaura una specifica relazione di potere, diventando così un elemento centrale per la costituzione di un corpo sociale moralizzato. Alcuni film italiani ne hanno affrontato la diffusione nelle società contemporanee; tra questi, è stato Todo modo (1976) di Elio Petri a dispiegare compiutamente tale dimensione di dispositivo nella cornice della rappresentazione del potere, congiungendo strategie di enunciazione e dinamiche di soggettivazione secondo un direttrice critica e diagnostica.
The confession – according to Foucault – is an effective discursive apparatus able to settle a specific relation of power, so becoming a pivotal element for the constitution of a moralized social body. Some Italian films have faced its diffusion in contemporary societies; among these, it was Elio Petri's Todo modo (1976) which fully disclosed this dimension of apparatus in the framework of the representation of power, merging strategies of enunciation and dynamics of subjectivation towards a critical and diagnostic direction.
TiConTre, May 18, 2014
Among Tzvetan Todorov's different fields of research, images play a small but highly meaningful t... more Among Tzvetan Todorov's different fields of research, images play a small but highly meaningful theoretical role. The work on visuality of the Bulgarian scholar is mainly confined within the apologetic diptych about Northern painting – namely Éloge du quotidien about Dutch painting of XVIIth Century and Éloge de l'individu about Flemish painting of Renaissance – and it shows a strong relationship with the interdisciplinary approach of French theory of art, a branch of the structuralist thought born during the Seventies under the influence of Hermeneutics and Anthropology. The importance of such an approach for contemporary research on images is constantly growing, since it focuses on the discursive level – by considering the picture as an apparatus of creation of meaning – rather than the thematic or stylistic levels, typical of the classical Art History, or the pure formal one. This paper aims at tracing a survey of the inputs springing from the aforementioned books, highlighting both the links with some of the most important scholars of this disciplinary field and the personal proposals of this unique research course. We will therefore take into consideration conceptual tangles such as the notions of text and theoretical object, as well as matters of methodological nature. Through Todorov's work, it is possible to point out some guidelines within the present time iconosphere, overwhelming the hesitations of a static and stiff approach to the processes of visual signification.
This article represents the outcome of a round table organized and conducted by Giacomo Tagliani ... more This article represents the outcome of a round table organized and conducted by Giacomo Tagliani about the Lessico del cinema Italiano/Lexicon of Italian Cinema (2014–2016). This research and editorial project comprises three volumes and 21 entries that address the history of Italian cinema through an original and challenging approach, namely to detect a list of conceptual clusters able to provide new perspectives over the heritage of Italian films. In this refined version, the authors who took part in that round table, that is, Roberto De Gaetano (also editor of the volumes), Massimiliano Coviello, Luca Venzi and Francesco Zucconi, outline their involvement in the research project, their specific methodological references, their peculiar vision of the history of Italian cinema and eventually their point of view onto its current situation. This written conversation offers a broad survey of Lessico’s key aspects and addresses important methodological, theoretical and critical issues, trying to establish an interdisciplinary dialogue among different fields of studies.
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Books by Giacomo Tagliani
Papers by Giacomo Tagliani
A partire da alcuni esempi emblematici, cinematografici (ad esempio Redacted, La bocca del lupo, Vincere) e amatoriali caricati in rete, la presente proposta intende affrontare queste due grandi forme di mediazione tra mondo e immagine per interrogare i regimi di credenza (Deleuze) contemporanei. Rileggendo alcuni passaggi classici della teoria del cinema, su tutti Ejzenstejn e Bazin, l’obbiettivo è quello di delineare le principali modalità di costruzione di specifiche “autorità” discorsive (Foucault, Lincoln) che orientano l’esperienza mediale contemporanea e definiscono la possibilità per lo spettatore di credere al mondo e alle immagini che lo rappresentano.
phenomena – both outwards to the Americas and inwards from North Africa –and highlight wo opposing outcomes: on the one hand, the strategies of homologating otherness, posed alternately as a threat to social stability or within a condition of suffering; on the other hand,
the formative processes that help to re-establish the migrant’s positive condition as the bearerof elements of creolisation, the promoter of discursive negotiation and translation of identities.
Terrorist and migrant are probably the major phobias of contemporary Western societies, the two figures that embody the fears of the present time the most. Media are crowded by tragedies associating with the landings of migrants and videos documenting attacks, beheadings and destructions of artistic heritage. What are the criteria of visibility of these images? Which iconographic and imaginary domains do they recall? What are the effects and passions produced on the public?
Migratory waves and terrorist attacks have been interpreted by media through distinct rhetoric, and yet enclosed in neighboring discursive fields, whose “boundaries” are marked by the different passional gradations (from fear to terror) that these would produce in public opinion. Starting from an audiovisual corpus consisting of the representations broadcasted by Italian media in the period coinciding with the attacks occurred in November 2015 in Paris, the paper will evaluate the theoretical and heuristic effectiveness of two specific ways of creating fear involving migrants and terrorists, that we propose to define respectively “low” and “high” intensity.
The rhetoric of invasion and preventive security is based on the gradual threat of a looming terror. This passional gradualness is also supported by implicit references to an epidemiological imaginary that originates from Hollywood cinema and is rooted around two “conceptual characters” – the zombie and the clone – and two genres – horror and science fiction. Forms of representation and passional variations will therefore be the focus around which the essay will articulate a reflection – related to a specific but nevertheless generalizable corpus – on the images of migrants and terrorists, two “extreme” forms of life that continually challenge our relationship with the Otherness.
and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film’s paradoxical nature, caught in an undecidability between past and present.
In Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), opera ultima di Pasolini, il mito perde la sua tonalità positiva e originante per legarsi intrinsecamete a uno spettacolo di morte. La memoria del fascismo, affrontata polemicamente dal regista, viene elaborata come macchina mitologica tanatopolitica alla quale si contrappone un'utopia capace di affermare e rigenerare la vita. Attraverso l'analisi dell'articolazione topologica dispiegata dal film, distinta tra spazio utopico, eterotopico e reale, il presente intervento prova a ripensarne alcune chiavi interpretative, soffermandosi sul livello teorico costruito dal discorso filmico.
The narration of a return to a savage and primordial dimension of violence thus stages a state of nature which is foreign to the laws ruling social behavior and nevertheless becomes the ground for a new contractuality opposed to the existing state of right. In turn, this thematic dimension seems to be constantly doubled by an enunciational level, since it is the image itself to use violence against spectatorial gaze, imposing the main character's unique and swallowing point of view, which seems to expunge any form of otherness and difference.
This paper aims at proposing a reflexion through images about the forms of subjectivation specific of the animal competition transposed to the virtual world of financial trade, intertwining the theory in action inside the film with Aesthetics and Critical Theory positions.
The confession – according to Foucault – is an effective discursive apparatus able to settle a specific relation of power, so becoming a pivotal element for the constitution of a moralized social body. Some Italian films have faced its diffusion in contemporary societies; among these, it was Elio Petri's Todo modo (1976) which fully disclosed this dimension of apparatus in the framework of the representation of power, merging strategies of enunciation and dynamics of subjectivation towards a critical and diagnostic direction.
A partire da alcuni esempi emblematici, cinematografici (ad esempio Redacted, La bocca del lupo, Vincere) e amatoriali caricati in rete, la presente proposta intende affrontare queste due grandi forme di mediazione tra mondo e immagine per interrogare i regimi di credenza (Deleuze) contemporanei. Rileggendo alcuni passaggi classici della teoria del cinema, su tutti Ejzenstejn e Bazin, l’obbiettivo è quello di delineare le principali modalità di costruzione di specifiche “autorità” discorsive (Foucault, Lincoln) che orientano l’esperienza mediale contemporanea e definiscono la possibilità per lo spettatore di credere al mondo e alle immagini che lo rappresentano.
phenomena – both outwards to the Americas and inwards from North Africa –and highlight wo opposing outcomes: on the one hand, the strategies of homologating otherness, posed alternately as a threat to social stability or within a condition of suffering; on the other hand,
the formative processes that help to re-establish the migrant’s positive condition as the bearerof elements of creolisation, the promoter of discursive negotiation and translation of identities.
Terrorist and migrant are probably the major phobias of contemporary Western societies, the two figures that embody the fears of the present time the most. Media are crowded by tragedies associating with the landings of migrants and videos documenting attacks, beheadings and destructions of artistic heritage. What are the criteria of visibility of these images? Which iconographic and imaginary domains do they recall? What are the effects and passions produced on the public?
Migratory waves and terrorist attacks have been interpreted by media through distinct rhetoric, and yet enclosed in neighboring discursive fields, whose “boundaries” are marked by the different passional gradations (from fear to terror) that these would produce in public opinion. Starting from an audiovisual corpus consisting of the representations broadcasted by Italian media in the period coinciding with the attacks occurred in November 2015 in Paris, the paper will evaluate the theoretical and heuristic effectiveness of two specific ways of creating fear involving migrants and terrorists, that we propose to define respectively “low” and “high” intensity.
The rhetoric of invasion and preventive security is based on the gradual threat of a looming terror. This passional gradualness is also supported by implicit references to an epidemiological imaginary that originates from Hollywood cinema and is rooted around two “conceptual characters” – the zombie and the clone – and two genres – horror and science fiction. Forms of representation and passional variations will therefore be the focus around which the essay will articulate a reflection – related to a specific but nevertheless generalizable corpus – on the images of migrants and terrorists, two “extreme” forms of life that continually challenge our relationship with the Otherness.
and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film’s paradoxical nature, caught in an undecidability between past and present.
In Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), opera ultima di Pasolini, il mito perde la sua tonalità positiva e originante per legarsi intrinsecamete a uno spettacolo di morte. La memoria del fascismo, affrontata polemicamente dal regista, viene elaborata come macchina mitologica tanatopolitica alla quale si contrappone un'utopia capace di affermare e rigenerare la vita. Attraverso l'analisi dell'articolazione topologica dispiegata dal film, distinta tra spazio utopico, eterotopico e reale, il presente intervento prova a ripensarne alcune chiavi interpretative, soffermandosi sul livello teorico costruito dal discorso filmico.
The narration of a return to a savage and primordial dimension of violence thus stages a state of nature which is foreign to the laws ruling social behavior and nevertheless becomes the ground for a new contractuality opposed to the existing state of right. In turn, this thematic dimension seems to be constantly doubled by an enunciational level, since it is the image itself to use violence against spectatorial gaze, imposing the main character's unique and swallowing point of view, which seems to expunge any form of otherness and difference.
This paper aims at proposing a reflexion through images about the forms of subjectivation specific of the animal competition transposed to the virtual world of financial trade, intertwining the theory in action inside the film with Aesthetics and Critical Theory positions.
The confession – according to Foucault – is an effective discursive apparatus able to settle a specific relation of power, so becoming a pivotal element for the constitution of a moralized social body. Some Italian films have faced its diffusion in contemporary societies; among these, it was Elio Petri's Todo modo (1976) which fully disclosed this dimension of apparatus in the framework of the representation of power, merging strategies of enunciation and dynamics of subjectivation towards a critical and diagnostic direction.
autore dell’introduzione.
Precarious Identities. Female Investigators between Gender Issues, Memories and Borders
Unstable memories and precarious identities in Black Earth Rising
Massimiliano Coviello
In contemporary crime drama the contribution of Nordic Noir genre has proven to be crucial in problematizing the representation of female detectives (Turnbull 2014, Hill 2018) and challenge the traditional sexist heritage of crime genre, a genre whose tension towards an overturn of the order disrupted by a criminal act is usually conservative (Gates 2011). Moreover Nordic Noir’s female detectives represent an identity which reveals itself as precarious: on one hand, they do not feel compelled to adhere to the prescriptions of gender stereotypes anymore, but on the other, in their relationships they face permanent struggle for the recognition of their subjectivity.
The precariousness female detectives’ identities is able not only to challenge gender stereotypes but also to complicate the narrative strategies of crime genre. In fact, if every crime investigation always entails an in-depth exploration of mysterious events from the past (Todorov 1977), female detectives are often haunted by the spirits tormenting their memory. Living in the shadow of their traumatic past (Caruth 1996), gives them the ability to develop an empathetic relation with the victims and often the two narrative roles come to coincide.
This paper aims to analyse Black Earth Rising (2018) drama series, a case study which is particularly emblematic for the understanding of the interstitial role embodied by female detectives in European television crime series, not only for what concerns narrative structures of crime genre, but also for gender issues. In the series produced and distributed by Netflix, Kate Ashby is an investigator orphaned during Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and adopted by an international lawyer from London. Ashby’s investigations will bring her back to Rwanda, forcing her to cope with traumas and mysteries that still blur her memory, and to confront the violence that gave shape to the history of her country.
References
Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative and history, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Gates, P. 2011. Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film, Suny Press, Albany.
Hill, A. Saga’s Story. In Hansen, K. T., Peacock, S., Turnbull, S. (eds.) European Television Crime Drama and Beyond, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Todorov, T. 1977. Typology of Detective Fiction. In Id., Poetics of Prose, Blackwell, Oxford.
Turnbull S. 2014. The Tv Crime Drama, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Quindici anni fa iniziava su scala permanente la Guerra al terrore, la risposta dell'amministrazione Bush agli attacchi dell'11 settembre 2001. Come fu presto chiaro, in questa guerra dai contorni indefiniti le immagini assunsero presto un ruolo fondamentale: nascoste o moltiplicate, a seconda delle esigenze, queste sono diventate il mezzo attraverso quale gli spettatori occidentali hanno fatto esperienza di luoghi ed eventi distanti, vivendoli in diretta e al contempo in forma distaccata. Ma la forza delle immagini non è una prerogativa delle potenze alleate nella lotta al terrorismo: anche le organizzazioni terroristiche hanno cominciato a far ampio ricorso alle nuove tecnologie della comunicazione per fondare la loro efficacia, operativa e simbolica, arrivando sino ai video "hollywoodiani" realizzati dall'ISIS. Il cinema e le serie televisive degli ultimi anni si sono progressivamente sempre più concentrati su questa mole di immagini, rielaborandole in senso critico o rilanciandole per scopi propagandistici, decostruendone le componenti singole o assumendone le retoriche.
Fenomeni migratori e fenomeni terroristi sono stati interpretati dai media italiani attraverso retoriche distinte ma al contempo sono stati racchiusi in campi discorsivi limitrofi, i cui “confini” sono segnati dalle diverse gradazioni passionali della paura che questi produrrebbero nell’opinione pubblica. Ci sembra che sia proprio la componente passionale e suoi effetti ad aver generato dei fenomeni di prossimità tra le immagini dei migranti e quelle dei terroristi.
L’intervento proverà a interdefinire le strategie di rappresentazione e verificarne l'efficacia passionale.
nelle immagini del nuovo millennio"
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My proposal is an attempt of investigation of filmic text through an interdisciplinary approach which could interpolate Semiotics and Aesthetics, focusing on the political value inherent artistic experience. The starting point is the specific notion of "re-mediation" (Bolter&Grusin), seen as peculiarity of contemporary audiovisual dimension. Although it could remind former concept of "intertextuality", "re-mediation" introduces the idea of comparison between media (i.d. system of rules, instead of specific device; Sontag), extending its effectiveness. The aim of this work is therefore to probe how cinema works in relation to those rhetoric strategies and devices (Foucault, Agamben) which propose a "normal" and "agreeing" representation of society and the present (Rancière).
Contemporary Italian cinema represents the chartered ground of this reconnaissance. As a matter of fact, in its more self-conscious expressions, it seems to have renew its political attitude, tracing back Sixties and Seventies heritage of Pasolini, Rosi, Petri. Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino, Alina Marazzi and Marco Bellocchio are directors who, more than other, have tried to reflect on conditions of representation of the real conceived by mass-mediatic system. In doing this, they oppose stratified and complex images, which demand to the beholder a cognitive work, to stereotyped and "already-given" ones: for instance, the different masks adopted to represent the figure of Silvio Berlusconi in Il caimano by Nanni Moretti, the confrontation with the historical or social inquiry in Gomorra and Il divo by Garrone and Sorrentino respectively, the use of found-footage in Marazzi's films, the iconic efficacy into a collective imagery construction in Bellocchio's Vincere. Through an analysis of these texts, the challenge consists therefore in finding those distinctive elements which could give an account of that ethical dimension conceived as image's double capability: "to declare itself in lack of witness, and to invent the right forms to assume the whole debt" (Montani).
Call for papers for the next issue of Carte Semiotiche, "Images of Control. Visibility and the Government of Bodies". The issue will be edited by Maria Cristina Addis e Giacomo Tagliani (Università di Siena – Centro Omar Calabrese).
Appel à contribution du prochain numéro de Carte Semiotiche, "Les images du contrôle. Visibilité et gouvernement des corps". Le numéro sera édité par Maria Cristina Addis e Giacomo Tagliani (Università di Siena – Centro Omar Calabrese).
Call for paper del próximo número de Carte Semiotiche, titulado "Las imágenes del control. Visibilidad y gobierno de los cuerpos". El número será coordinado por Maria Cristina Addis y Giacomo Tagliani (Universidad de Siena – Centro Omar Calabrese).