0000000000003928
AUTHOR
De Spuches
Il paesaggio e la nazione plurale: The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
The article is part of the volume Configurazioni e trasfigurazioni. Discorsi sul paesaggio mediato. The book asks to question the relationship between the landscape and its worlds (literary, cinematographic, virtual). The fundamental question of the article is how one can grasp the sense of the landscape of the Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994). Therefore, analyzing the famous film, the essay wants to correlate the sense of the landscape and the idea of nation. The landscape as a symbol is the frame of reference that will be examined, in particular the line of thought that imagines the landscape as the mental construction of a subject. In this way it wil…
Geographies of Mediterranean
The article aims to interpret Mediterranean dissonances by reading the boundaries through three theoretical-methodological ways: the metaphor of existence, the concept of community and that of the diaspora. In a Mediterranean Sea viewed as a mobile boundary, human movements produce dissemination, identities that are not unidirectional but rather transnational; the partiality of the subjectivity that follows is an interesting way to question us. The article therefore shows how the migrations seen from the “North” are closely linked to the implementation of security devices rather than welcoming politics. Moreover, the institution, through its changing laws, creates precarious lives in the fi…
Ça marche. Creare uno spazio collettivo camminando per Palermo
The paper analyses two marches of resistance in Palermo with references to the public space as in Goheen’s (1998) theses. In the first one, the public space gradually loses relevance and presents the citizens as consumers; in the second one, it remains an arena of the fights of those groups that claim to visibility and recognition. The itinerant ritual of Wu Ming 2 and the last Gay Pride in Palermo are the two kinds of march capable of creating collective spaces. In the former case, the itinerary has made the forgotten traces of history resurface and has linked them to our contemporary themes. In the latter, the attention to the precariousness of bodies has been claimed in a consenting Pale…
Viaggio in Italia tra gli spettri dell’emigrazione. Geografie delle terrae incognitae
Nella didattica degli ultimi vent’anni ho spesso mostrato “Poveri Noi” per parlare dell’emigrazione italiana. Questo documentario di documentari finito nel 1998 ma uscito nel 1999, a firma di Gianni Amelio, racconta circa trent’anni di storia italiana. La natura delle immagini, di matrice neorealista, crea una tensione tra lo ieri e l’oggi; come direbbe John Berger, non guardiamo mai qualcosa di per sé ma sempre in relazione a noi o, in questo caso, alla nostra epoca, al nostro mondo. La mobilità e l’immobilità dell’Italia meridionale e insulare, dagli anni ’50 agli inizi dei ’70, costituiscono queste geografie che perseguitano al cui titolo ci si riferisce. All’indomani della guerra c’è un…
Walking among the ghosts of colonialism. The haunting onomastic of Palermo
This article aims to reflect on the ghosts of the city of Palermo through the experience conducted during Manifesta 12: the first Great Walking Ritual against Colonialism conceived by Wu Ming 2 and the collective Fare Ala. It is a matter of reconstructing walkscapes to bring out the urban silences that surround us: a path of apprehension capable of creating, metaphorically, a feeling of fear but, at the same time, of knowledge (Careri, 2006). This state of ambiguous apprehension is revealed in the streets of the city through toponymy, and the absence or presence of symbols and signs. This article – which follows the schematic tripartite division proposed by Vanolo (2018) – intends to reflec…
Il brand «Palermo arabo-normanna» e le sue geografie immaginarie
In 2015, Unesco included the Arab-Norman itinerary of Palermo, Cefalù and Monreale in its list of World Heritage Sites. The application dossier states: “is the international confirmation of the beauty and cultural, artistic and historical greatness of Palermo [...] it will represent (...) a stimulus of tourism development and new economy”. The intentions of the promoting committee are immediately stated: it will be the cultural lever that will set in motion the new foundations of the experience economy (Pine e Gilmore, 1999), now dominant since the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. The underlying question will be “who possesses the powers of imagination – and – where they a…