The Years of Alienation in Italy Factory and Asylum Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead Edited by Alessandra Diazzi Alvise Sforza Tarabochia The Years of Alienation in Italy Alessandra Diazzi • Alvise Sforza Tarabochia Editors The Years of Alienation in Italy Factory and Asylum Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead Editors Alessandra Diazzi Alvise Sforza Tarabochia School of Arts, Languages and Department of Modern Languages Cultures School of European Culture and University of Manchester Languages Manchester, UK University of Kent Canterbury, UK ISBN 978-3-030-15149-2 ISBN 978-3-030-15150-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: estudio calamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland P reface The Years of Alienation in Italy project first took shape in 2014, when the editors of this volume began to discuss the possibility of organizing a con- ference on the cultural representations of the notion of alienation in Italy. The initial idea was to establish a dialogue among scholars who would explore, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the social and psychological implications of the concept in question. Our, and our speakers’, goal was twofold: first, to tackle the notion of alienation in spatial terms, by exam- ining the way in which literary and cinematic depictions of the factory and the asylum frequently blurred the dividing line between industrial alien- ation and clinical madness; secondly, to investigate the specificities of an Italian approach to alienation by interpreting the ubiquitous presence of the term in social and cultural discourses, in the light of the country’s troubled history in the 1960s and 1970s. The project took a more concrete form in 2015 when a two-day work- shop was cohosted by the University of Kent (May 15, 2015) and the University of Cambridge (May 22, 2015). The volume that we have the pleasure to introduce here is inspired by this exchange and discussion, the focus of which it maintains—and expands. While the contributions collected in this book still aim to inves- tigate the factory and the asylum as the concrete, spatial embodiment of the two theoretical meanings of alienation, at the same time they explore these meanings further and consider how the term in question was used in Italy at the time under consideration. The book includes Adriano Olivetti’s effort to challenge the equivalence between factory and alienation, and the reception of this industrial revolution in the literary work of writers v vi PREFACE such as Ottiero Ottieri and Paolo Volponi, who actively contributed to the project; the relevance this notion had in Italian psychoanalysis, in both its mental and social meaning; the transformation of the architecture of men- tal health institutions according to the ongoing psychiatric revolution, and the employment of the medium of photography to record this process of reform in psychiatric health care; the paradigm of the camp employed in literature to express the widespread feeling of estrangement and dehu- manization stemming from biopolitical forms of control over social devia- tion; and the way in which cinema and literature strongly criticized, or alternatively praised, the institutions of asylum and factory as spaces embodying ideals of order, care, and health. Through this wide-ranging approach, The Years of Alienation in Italy for the first time provides an interdisciplinary overview of the political and cultural meaning(s) that alienation has taken in Italy. The volume also looks at the national context as a paradigmatic case study, given Italy’s pioneering role in the revolution of mental health care and factories. The volume can therefore be read as a theoretical reflection on the concept of alienation in the context of national culture, across fictional and non-fic- tional representations. At the same time, the notion of alienation acts as an interpretative lens that is employed to highlight unexplored aspects of two crucial decades in Italian history. Completed during the fortieth anniver- sary of Basaglia’s Law, this book also tackles the long-lasting debate on Italian asylums from a novel perspective, proposing to read the revolution in the light of a broader social, cultural, and above all political debate on personal freedom and social control, one that cannot be confined to the psychiatric field. We hope that the interdisciplinary nature of this volume, its coverage of a crucial time in Italian history through a selection of cinematic and liter- ary case studies, and its organization in independent chapters, will mean it is a helpful didactic aid at different levels in higher education, as well as an essential contribution for scholars in the field of Italian studies, compara- tive literature, cultural history, and cinema and media studies. The editors of this volume wish to thank the Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Kent, the Italianist commit- tee, and the Italian Department of the University of Cambridge, which generously supported the workshops held in 2015. We are grateful to Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone for her help in ren- dering into English some idiomatic Italian sentences; Giovanni Fancello for his help with the history of the Italian Communist Party; Alex PREFACE vii Marlow- Mann for his insights into the history of Italian cinema; and Nicolò Morelli who kindly provided essential bibliographical material. We would also like to thank Shaun Vigil and Glenn Ramirez, our editors at Palgrave, for following this project so closely and kindly. Manchester, UK Alessandra Diazzi Canterbury, UK Alvise Sforza Tarabochia c ontents 1 Introduction: Social and Mental Alienation in Italy Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead 1 Alessandra Diazzi and Alvise Sforza Tarabochia Part I Spaces of Alienation 41 2 Into the De/Construction of the Psychiatric Space 43 Emanuela Sorbo 3 Doctor in Slaughter: Emilio De Rossignoli’s Dialectic of Enlightenment 61 Fabio Camilletti Part II Workers at Olivetti 77 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 79 David Albert Best ix x CONTENTS 5 “Sentirsi Scorticati Vivi.” The Theme of Alienation in Ottiero Ottieri’s Works 97 Fabrizio Di Maio 6 Paolo Volponi’s Memoriale: Industry Between Alienation and Utopia 115 Tiziano Toracca Part III Psychoanalysis and Alienation 133 7 Alienation and Psychoanalysis: Some Notes on Italy in the Years of the Economic Miracle 135 Alessandra Diazzi 8 Psychoanalysis in Milan in the Age of Dis- alienation: The Case of Elvio Fachinelli 155 Pietro Barbetta 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 173 Luca Di Gregorio Part IV The Asylum 191 10 Manicomiche: Madness, Language and the Dismantling of the Asylum in Gianni Celati’s Comiche 193 Michele Ronchi Stefanati 11 Mental Social, and Visual Alienation in D’Alessandro’s Photography 211 Alvise Sforza Tarabochia CONTENTS xi 12 “L’alienato nella cella è libero.” Mario Tobino Between Le libere donne di Magliano and Per le antiche scale 229 Wissia Fiorucci Index 247