Mafiapoetics. Why Mafiosi write and how they impersonate literary theory
Description
Due to industrial action, this seminar will now be a teach-out event to be kindly hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute from 1 to 3 pm.
In my recent book The Godfather and his shadow (Berlin 2021), I try to elucidate prose, poetry, and songs written by members of the Italian mafias in two directions: on the one hand, as a strategy to cope with danger and liminality intrinsic to criminal life, and on the other as an appropriation of bourgeois culture and its expectations. But I also read Mafia behavior and codes as the “verification” of modern literary theory, namely of the constitutive ambivalence of the symbolic. In this way, I try to explain why especially middle classes and the art world are obsessed with mafia - and how they got entrapped in its crafted discourse. In my talk I want to give a brief outline of my book with examples from my fieldwork in Naples and Calabria.
Key speakers
- Dr Ulrich van Loyen (University of Siegen)