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The Unpolitical. On the Radical Critique of Political Reason

2009; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/q.i..v30i2.11923

2293-7382

Massimo Cacciari, Alessandro Carrera, Mássimo Verdicchio, Davide Panagia,

Critical Theory and Philosophy

of Italy," Simon Levis Sullam traces a double itinerary, sketching a history of Jewish Italian linguists from Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (mid-Ottocento) to Rabbi Umberto Cassuto (early Novecento) and Benvenuto Terraccini (1920Terraccini ( -1960's)'s), and applying their precepts to the "questione della lingua" as manifested in the work of twentieth-century Italian Jewish authors.In this regard, Svevo displays a zerodegree of Jewish linguistic identification, while Saba devotes lively pages to local Italian Jewish speech in the section "Gli ebrei" of Ricordi-Racconti, as do Ginzburg in Lessico famigliare, Bassani in Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, and Levi in the "Argon" chapter of Il sistema periodico.Sullam concludes on a poignant note-that by now, these linguistic residues have lost their direct referential function and instead serve as signs of nostalgia, that the language of the Jews has become "a structure of memory more than a structure of life: a true lieu de mémoire" (194).It is in the final chapter that this volume reveals the historical extremes to which the polarities of its subtitle, "between inclusion and exclusion," can lead.Despite its benign tone, Guido Fink's essay, "Growing up Jewish in Ferrara: The Fiction of Giorgio Bassani," points to the tragic "signified" of twentieth-century Italian Jewish history.For the racial legislation of 1938 meant more than a repeat ghettoization-it meant a set of measures, by a government allied with Nazi Germany, that made possible the genocidal operations of 1943-1945.As a result of the racial laws, the dream of inclusion as full-fledged Italian citizens was shattered, while exclusion through mere separation was an option as flawed as it was obsolete.Fink's essay does not dwell on this point, focusing instead on the way in which Bassani's opus chronicles the Ferrarese Jewish community of the pre-and immediate post-WWII period, with special emphasis on the author's increasingly personal protagonism, through the transfigured narrative "I" of Gli occhiali d'oro and Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, and the alter ego Bruno Lattes, of both the latter novel and the short stories scattered over the pages of Storie ferraresi and L'odore del fieno.But Bassani's "I" is not the only first person pronoun to surface in this essay.Fink himself becomes an "I" whose Ferrarese childhood intersects with Bassani's literary production in a moving and unexpected way, showing that Italian Jewish history is no mere abstraction, but a concrete reality with ramifications in the scholarly sphere.