Years of Alienation in Italy

Alessandra Diazzi is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Manchester, UK. Her work focuses primarily on the reception of psychoanalysis in Italian culture, with a particular focus on the relationship between psychoanalysis and impegno in Italy. She has published articles on contemporary Italian literature and cinema.Alvise Sforza Tarabochia is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Kent, UK. His research encompasses visual culture and psychiatry in Italy. He has published a monograph on the theoretical implications of Basaglia’s thought, as well as articles on Italian literature, biopolitics, visual culture, and psychoanalysis.

• 1. Introduction: Social and Mental Alienation in Italy between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead.- Part I. Spaces of Alienation.- 2. Into the De/Construction of the Psychiatric Space.- 3. Doctor in Slaughter: Emilio De Rossignoli’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.- Part II. Workers at Olivetti.- 4. Volponi-Ottieri-Olivetti and the Ills of Homo industrialis: Returning to a ‘Civiltà della natura’ as a Questionable Antidote to the Urban-Industrial Malaise.- 5. “Sentirsi Scorticati Vivi”: The Theme of Alienation in Ottiero Ottieri’s Works.- 6. Paolo Volponi’s Memoriale: Industry between Alienation and Utopia.- Part III. Psychoanalysis and Alienation.- 7. Alienation and Psychoanalysis: Some Notes on Italy in the Years of the Economic Miracle.- 8. Psychoanalysis in Milan in the Age of Dis-alienation: The Case of Elvio Fachinelli.- 9. From the Factory to the Asylum…and Back: A Lacanian Perspective on the Cinematic Representation of Alienation in Elio Petri’s La classe operaia va in paradiso.- Part IV. The Asylum.- 10. Manicomiche: Madness, Language and the Dismantling of the Asylum in Gianni Celati’s Comiche.- 11. Mental Social, and Visual Alienation in D’Alessandro’s Photography.- 12. ‘L’alienato nella cella è libero.’ Mario Tobino between Le libere donne di Magliano and Per le antiche scale.

“As a total contribution to the cultural history of the economic boom, this volume is a welcome, successful, and impressive accomplishment.” (Jim Carter, Italian Studies, November 22, 2019)