Elena Bellina

Paola Bonifazio

In a globalized world exposed to ever more dramatic dangers, the established legal order enters into crisis and the rhetoric of fear is deployed in order to legitimate states of exception. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has widely elaborated on the historical effects of the juridical concept of the state of exception, recalling the definition formulated by German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. The state of exception presents itself as an inherently elusive phenomenon, a juridical no-man's land where the law is suspended in order to be preserved. The juridical tensions inherent in the state of exception necessitate a constant interplay of anomie and nomos, an ongoing interaction between order and the suspension of order used to justify every conceivable abuse of power. Such interplay, epitomized by the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, has become central to today’s geopolitical scenario. This book examines the implications of the “state of exception” on both a macro and micropolitical level strongly informed by Italy's long history of exceptional uses of power. The book is divided into three parts. The first part explores philosophical issues related to the history of the state of exception within the frame of juridical, political, and economical principles. The second part focuses on Italian cultural and literary production during times of socio-political crisis, devoting special attention to the ways in which history may interact with its fictional representations. The third section is devoted to the literary and cinematic representations of the biopolitical effects of the state of exception on Italian urban areas and the spectacularization of terrorism in Italian cinema.

Cultural Responses to the Rhetoric of Fear

State of Exception

Paola Ugolini

Lindsay Eufusia

How do we represent ouselves and the cultures we live in? Is it possible to trace any boundaries between reality and self-representation? Because the self represented is the product of a process of selection and choice, in many ways to represent the self is, often simultaneously, to create the self and negate the self. What, then, becomes of the self once it is represented? Because the process of self-representation cumulates in a tangible result and given that any representation of the self is necessarily a construct which aims to render visible or knowable in concrete form the unseen and unknown, self-representation is vulnerable to assessments of its naturalness or artificiality, its honesty or deceit. Many issues affect the author or artist’s self-representation, both as process and form: the medium through which the self will be represented, the motivation for representing oneself, and the role of the audience, to name only a few relevant factors. This book explores the multifaceted nature of self-representation in relation to culture from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance up to contemporary Italian, American and Australian culture with reference to concepts and questions connected to literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, history, ethnicity studies, gender studies, and visual arts.

Elena Bellina

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