Interview with Ann Goldstein

Email on March 1, 2016 In person on March 5, 2016

GRB/SL: How and why did you learn Italian?

AG: I had always had a desire to learn Italian, and, in particular, I wanted to read Dante in Italian. A class was organized in my office; we studied grammar for a year, learning the basics, and then we spent two years reading Dante. That class went on for many years, although it became more of a conversation class, or group. I took a couple of courses but mainly I read.

GRB/SL: Having translated The Days of Abandonment in 2004–2005, did you at that point have any idea that Ferrante was going to become so popular?

AG: No, I had no idea. I loved the book, and in fact it did sell quite well, but obviously nothing like the Neapolitan Novels.

GRB/SL: How do you explain Ferrante’s tremendous popularity with the American reading public? What do you think particularly resonates with that audience?

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 313 G.R. Bullaro, S.V. Love (eds.), The Works of Elena Ferrante, Italian and Italian American Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57580-7 314 Interview with Ann Goldstein

AG: I think that, ultimately, it’s a product of the books themselves, in particular the Neapolitan tetralogy. Ferrante’s exploration of the sixty-year friendship between two women, and her forensic (as some have called it) examination, or excavation (a word she herself uses), of relationships and emotions is tremendous and moving. Readers become immersed in the lives of Elena and Lila, get to know their families, their friends, their experience, what happens to them—marriages, births, deaths, loves, hatreds— over these many decades. In the background—and sometimes pushing into the foreground—is the history of Italy from the postwar period to the present. We really know these people and their struggles; we see them grow up and change and age and, in some cases, die, as we do with people in our own life. It’s not so much that we identify with the details of these lives—most of us did not grow up amid the violence and poverty of an outlying neighborhood of Naples, which is Elena and Lila’s childhood world. But I think we do identify with, and recognize, the people themselves and their relationships with each other and with life, and, perhaps, with their desire to find order or sense in their lives. Joanna Biggs in the London Review of Books starts her review with this: “Are Elena Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels even books? I began to doubt it when I talked about them with other people – mostly women. We returned to life too quickly as we spoke: who was your Lila, the childhood friend who effort- lessly dazzled everyone?” and so on.

GRB/SL: You have also recently published The Complete Works of Primo Levi (Liveright, 2015). What are some of the main differences in translat- ing Primo Levi compared with Ferrante?

AG: First I would note that I was the editor of The Complete Works; I translated three of the books and edited the others. Ferrante’s prose is dense; she uses a lot of words, not in a redundant way but in order to get at the precise truth of, say, an emotion, and because she is often describing emotional states. Sometimes in a single sentence she takes you through a range of actions-emotions. It can be tricky to preserve the intensity created by the rush or pileup of words within an English syntax and without losing the meaning. Italian tolerates the run- on quality of the sentences better than English. Levi is a more formal writer; you are aware of the scientist weighing, measuring, considering, although there is still an intensity of emotion. The structure of Levi’s sentences is often complex, but it’s also balanced. He is more detached as a Interview with Ann Goldstein 315 writer. I wouldn’t say there is less emotion, but he achieves it in a very dif- ferent way. One of the main difficulties in translatingL evi is, precisely, the science: the description of a scientific process, as in the chapter “Carbon,” in The Periodic Table, or in the essay “Asymmetry and Life.” In Levi, the detailed descriptions tend to be of the physical world, whereas in Ferrante they are of emotions.

GRB/SL: More specifically, how would you describe Ferrante’s style in the context of Italian literature and its traditional conventions? Is she innovative on a thematic or stylistic level?

AG: Her style is not conventionally beautiful, especially in the context of Italian literature. Indeed, she speaks of avoiding beauty of style because she believes that it can get in the way of truth. I think the theme of friendship between women is innovative, and, in the Italian cultural context, where motherhood is usually treated in positive terms, the ambiguity of Ferrante’s protagonists’ feelings about motherhood is original.

GRB/SL: In the present volume we have taken the concept of smarginatura (loosely and frequently translated as the blurring of boundaries) as our foundational premise. What role, if any, did the concept of boundaries and their permeability play in your translation on a stylistic level? In your opinion, does Ferrante break boundaries? If so which, and in what ways?

AG: I think she does break boundaries in her examination of women’s feelings about themselves and about their relationships: she is willing to, as she says herself, excavate as deeply as necessary to get at the truth of a feeling. And to admit that that truth may be ambiguous, or to appear to be ambiguous.

GRB/SL: Dialects are particularly difficult to learn. How familiar are you with the Neapolitan dialect and the culture?

AG: I’m not that familiar with the Neapolitan dialect or with the culture. But since Ferrante doesn’t write in dialect it was something of a non-issue in terms of translation.

GRB/SL : As is the case for many dialects, Neapolitan has embedded in it a socio-economic “register.” In other words, how far it deviates from 316 Interview with Ann Goldstein standard Italian is a marker of the speaker’s education, social class, and sometimes even age. How did you deal with that as a translator? Or did it prove to be a non-issue?

AG: Ferrante only rarely uses Neapolitan dialect. When you read “said in dialect” (or more likely shouted or cursed) she has written “disse in dialetto” (or a version of that) in the original, and what is said appears—is written—in Italian. But, obviously, it’s the language of the neighborhood, the language of families, of children, of both intimacy and rage. Toward the end of the fourth book, when both women are in their fifties, Elena says:

“It occurred to me that it [Lila’s unwillingness to talk] was now a linguistic question. She resorted to Italian as if to a barrier; I tried to push her toward dialect, our language of candor. But while her Italian was translated from dialect, my dialect was increasingly translated from Italian, and we both spoke a false language. She needed to explode, lose control of the words. I wanted her to say in the authentic Neapolitan of our childhood….” [362].

GRB/SL: Why do you think Ferrante wrote so little actual dialect in the Neapolitan Novels when there was an opportunity and justification for so much more?

AG: One reason that has been suggested is that many Italians wouldn’t understand the dialect and would be put off by it, and so by the books. Ferrante has said (for example, in the Paris Review) that her readers are important to her: “If I publish a book, I do it only so that it will be read: it’s the only thing that interests me. So I employ all the strategies I know to capture the reader’s attention, stimulate curiosity, make the page as dense as possible and as easy as possible to turn.” Another reason that has been suggested is that Neapolitan is mainly a spoken language, and it would lose its force on the page.

GRB/SL: Being faithful to the narrative pace is an ever-present concern in the mind of a translator. My impression as a reader was that whereas in the first three volumes of the Neapolitan Novels there seems to be a rela- tively even narrative pace, in volume 4, The Story of the Lost Child, Ferrante had finally lost interest in spinning out the plot and in many passages she jumped over years of events in a mere paragraph. Was this just my errone- ous impression? Do you have any thoughts on this? Interview with Ann Goldstein 317

AG: Certainly it’s true that the first three books take Lila and Elena from the age of six up to their early thirties, while the fourth book covers more than thirty years. When I was still working on the earlier books I was puzzled about it—if childhood and adolescence took up so many pages, there wouldn’t be enough left for adulthood (assuming that there would not be a fifth volume—although the original plan did change from three volumes to four). But then I thought about how generally, at a certain point, once you are an adult, life does, to a certain extent, settle down—a job, marriage, children (just to take the most obvious examples)—into a more or less fixed structure. Daily events don’t have the same intensity as when you’re a child, don’t mark you in the same way. Also—and this has been mentioned by both critics and readers—time seems to pass far more quickly when you’re older than when you’re a child. In the fourth book I think Ferrante captures both these qualities of life going along and of time speeding up.

GRB/SL: Did Ferrante’s anonymity make your work as a translator more difficult or were you able to consult with her through an intermedi- ary if it became necessary?

AG: I was able to consult her through the publishers if I needed to. I’ve translated a lot of not-present authors, in fact, so I’m used to doing without an author. I usually consult native Italian speakers when necessary. In the case of Ferrante, as I said, her publishers; for another example, in the case of Primo Levi, I worked with someone at the Primo Levi Center in Turin.

GRB/SL: Do you think that Ferrante’s anonymity has cast more light on you as the translator?

AG: Her anonymity and her decision not to promote her books (at least in person) has definitely brought me more attention. I’m obviously not Ferrante, or even a stand-in for her, but I do feel a responsibility to represent the books, and the author, and, in particular, the fact that they are translated. My hope is that this attention would be a great advertisement for translators in general, for the work that translators do, and for translated books.

GRB/SL: Do you believe that the public’s and the critics’ obsession with her (his?) identity is a misplaced concern? Or is it valid? Did it play any role in your translations? And does it affect the reader’s experience of the text? 318 Interview with Ann Goldstein

AG: To me Ferrante’s “true identity” is the person who is writing the books, who is very present, very vivid, even if she is not, of course, the same as the “I” who is narrating the stories. I don’t want to say that any way of reading Ferrante is not valid, but at the same time I think that focusing on her identity is a distracting concern. She has said that the books are themselves: she has written them and has done her part. I have a strong sense of the person who is writing, and I don’t feel a need to know her any better than I do. Index

A Albertson, Ivan, 4 abandonment Aleramo, Sibilla, 10, 240, 245–50, of children, 4, 133, 245, 247, 248 257, 262, 263n7, 264n17 crime of, 255, 260 Alice in Wonderland, 189 ordeal of abandonment, 133, 140, alterity, 79 150 of the south, 79 symbolic, 261 ambivalence, 4, 86, 186, 210, 218–20, Abel, Elizabeth, 213, 214, 228 244 absence of sense, 131 ancient, 9, 28, 107, 120n3, 185, 186, Accati, Luisa, 238 190, 192, 197, 202, 279 affect anthropology, 5, 7, 186, 191 affective discipline, 75 linguistic, 7 affective poetics, 1 a partire da sé, 242 maternal, 247 archetypes, 185, 195, 196 tensions, 84 Arendt, Hannah, 263n10, 274, 275, agency 286, 289n28 agential cut, 146–8 Asad, Talal, 74 agential realism, 132, 145, 148, attachment, 9, 77, 123n28, 207–35, 155n37 285 agential reality, 140, 148, 150 Atwood, Margaret, 174 non-human, 147, 148 Austin, J. L. (speech acts theories), agential realism, 132, 145, 148, 135, 152n12 155n37

Note: Page number followed by “n” denotes note page number

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 319 G.R. Bullaro, S.V. Love (eds.), The Works of Elena Ferrante, Italian and Italian American Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57580-7 320 INDEX authorship, 11, 151, 271. See also The between words and things, 138 Blue Fairy Bourdieu, Pierre Ferrante’s undisclosed identity, 271 authorized language, 83 autobiograph, 26, 240, 245, 252, 301, contradictions of inheritance, 220, 305, 306 225 autonomy, 73, 74, 160, 174, 210, habitus, 76 211, 215, 223, 228, 230, 302 implicit pedagogy, 76 moral, 74 symbolic powe, 76 Autostrada del Sole, 18, 35 symoblic capital, 83 Braidotti, Rosi, 148–56, 155n42, 156n44 B Bullaro, Grace Russo, 6, 15–42, 78, backwardness, 52, 72, 79, 84, 91 82 of the south (see south) Burkert, Walter, 186 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 73, 84 Butler, Judith, 10, 131, 151n5, Barad, Karen, 132, 134, 135, 139, 153n19 141, 145, 146, 148, 155n37 Barthes, Roland, 173 Beckett, Samuel, 106 C Dan Rooney, 106 Caeser, Ann, 246 before, 6, 8, 16, 19, 20, 27, 30–2, 34, Cahill, Ann, 274, 281 38, 46, 50, 56, 58, 76, 80, 81, Camorra, 186 85, 87, 101, 104, 109, 110, campanilismo, 52 113–15, 118, 124n36, 134, 142, Cartesian, 74, 132, 135, 149 145, 170, 187, 194–6, 198, 200, Cassa del Mezzogiorno, 18, 23 213, 218, 221, 223, 245, 249, Castel dell’Ovo, 102, 118, 119n2, 253, 264n16, 272, 275, 278, 120n3, 125n51 283, 285, 290n33, 301, 307 Cavarero, Adriana, 241, 242, 263n10, as period of violence and poverty, 59 289n28 Benedetti, Laura, 2, 167, 169, 177n1, chain, 10, 21, 77, 104, 195, 211, 238–41, 262n3, 263n7 248–50, 252, 257, 260, 261, bildungsroman, 207, 216, 229 263n7, 307 The Blue Fairy, 58, 119, 299, 302 mother-daughter, 257 Bohr, Niels, 139 childbirth, 242, 277, 301 Bollas, Christopher, 222, 230n6 Chodorow, Nancy, 210, 211, 213 boundaries Christian Democrats, 32 of neighborhood, 6, 23, 57, 295, chronotope, 7, 71–95 304 modernist, 7, 71–95 of objects, 135–42, 144–8, 304, Cigarini, Lia, 286, 291n31 308 city between subjects and objects, 144, city without love, 86, 109 145 found a new city, 8, 101, 114 INDEX 321

of Naples, 8, 101–7, 110, 112, 117, death, 8, 22, 27, 110, 129, 134, 148, 118, 186, 199, 202 149, 162, 163, 167, 173, 174, Civilization and Its Discontents, 295 187, 188, 194–6, 221, 232n20, class 240, 263n10, 271, 272, 275, social mobility, 52, 54, 56 278, 283, 285, 293, 295, 296, underclass1, 86 303, 309 upward mobility, 34, 83 de Beauvoir, Simone, 10, 296, 297 working-class female subjectivity, De Crescenzo, Luciano, 103, 120n5 212 de Lauretis, Teresa, 257, 258, 287 working-class injuries, 209 De Mauro, Tullio, 50, 57 working-class mothers, 86 Demeter and Persephone, myth of, 9, classed injury, 228 185, 195, 202 Clinton, Kevin, 186, 191 dialect. See language clothing, 22, 24, 165, 186, 192, Dick, Hilary Parsons, 72, 73, 84 196–200, 278, 283 Dido. See Virgil (The Aeneid) cognitive processes, 8, 143 di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, 110 cognitive subject, 8, 132, 133, 139, Diotima, 241 142, 144–6 disperazione, 21, 155n36 computer, 57, 77, 144, 145, 188, dolls, 6, 21, 60, 62, 64, 212, 213, 302 221, 294, 296–9, 304, 306, 308, conflict 309 class conflicts, 273 Duncan, Carol, 165 defuse, 63, 64 generational, 27 language, 25 E between patriarch and matriarchy, economic miracle, 6, 15–42 112 economic mobility, 52 personal and interpersonal, 78 education violent, 55 after unification, 50, 80 consumerism, 2, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, discipline, 75, 91 74 elementary school, 57, 81, 83 corporeality, 272 high school, 56, 58, 71, 77, 81, 85, Coupland, Nikolas, 59 86, 88, 91 Crainz, Guido, 18 language of classroom, 51, 57, 60, Crapanzano, Vincent, 89, 90 83 criminality, 3, 16 liceo, 81 critical reception, 196 literacy, 37, 300 middle school, 50, 58, 81, 87, 88, 93n19 D mother/teacher binary (see D’Azeglio, Massimo, 50 mother) De Amicis, Edmondo(Cuore), 82 riforma Berlinguer, 81 322 INDEX education (cont.) Ferrante Fever, 1–11 school, 7, 28, 50, 51, 56–8, 60, FIAT, 19, 35, 36 71–95, 115, 215, 223 Topolino, 35 school culture, 71 figlia simbolica, 257 schooling in modernity (Bonifazio, film, 5, 17, 19, 26, 36, 39n1, 79, 82, Paola), 79 155n42, 164, 178n3, 187, 271 school/neighborhood dichotomy, 9 film noir, 187 scuola dell’obbligo, 81 Forgacs, David, 15, 17–19, 21, 25, standard Italian, 83, 84, 93n19 30, 32, 33, 40n8, 79 teacher, 7, 51, 56, 71, 75, 82–8, fractal recursivity, 78 298 fragmentation, 132, 165, 171, 172, university, 80, 220 174, 175, 185, 186, 197 ekphrasis, 6, 8, 159–80 framing, 167, 168, 171, 176, 229 thematic and rhetorical function, frantumaglia. See la frantumaglia 167 Freud Eleusinian Mysteries, 9, 185, 190, 191 case of Dora, 208 Elwell, Leslie, 10, 173, 237–68 On Female Sexuality, 279 emotion, 56, 59, 60, 64, 65, 104, Oedipus, 241 192, 208, 226, 248, 279 friendship, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 66, 68, 103, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), 19 167, 207, 209, 210, 212, 216, entrustment (affidamento), 10, 243, 219, 221, 222, 225, 234n48, 246, 257 296–8, 303, 306 epistemology, 106, 118, 122n19, 132, female, 1–11, 167 137–9 The Future of an Illusion, 295 anthropocentric, 132, 137, 139 erasing all traces, 167, 176 erasure G of female part of self, 287 gender self-, 135, 167, 175, 177, 222 identity, 151n5 ethics, 111, 155n42, 296, 309 language, 7, 49, 131, 151, 282, European Recovery Program, 18 286, 287 violence, 7, 271–88 Gentile, Giovanni, 80, 92n16 F Gibran, Kahlil (The Prophet), 112 female body, 153n19, 160, 164, 174, Ginsborg, Paul, 15, 18, 19, 27, 28, 199, 277 30–32, 35, 39n3 female creativity, 177, 247, 298 Giorgio, Adalgisa, 177n1, 239, 240, female friendship, 2, 5, 6, 9, 167 242–4, 262n3 female genealogy, 241, 243, 250 Goldstein, Ann, 11, 125n51, 207 female initiations, 197 Gramsci, Antonio, 75, 76, 80, 88 femininity, 169, 186, 239, 275–9, Greek mythology, 9, 119, 185–205 286, 287, 297–9 Gundle, Stephen, 25, 32 INDEX 323

H indexical orders, 48, 55 Haaken, Janice, 273 indirect, 48, 56–8 Harley, George, 296 interiority, 7, 16, 215 Heffernan, James, 161 intimacy Hegemony. See Gramsci, Antonio emotion, 59, 60, 208 herethics, 10, 293, 296, 309 indexicality, 47 Herman, Judith, 10, 273, 274, 281–3, language, 47, 59, 60, 62, 212, 255 286 Irigaray, Luce, 10, 150, 156n44, 164, Hirsch, Marianne, 239, 240, 262, 241–3 267n53 Italian feminism, 240, 246, 263n7, history 264n15 Americanization, 25 Berlusconism, 38 colonialism, 38 J fascism, 78 Jones, Stephanie, 84, 86 feudalism of Naples, 107 jouissance, 175, 295 gli anni di piombo, 38 Jung, Carl, 187, 195, 196, 202 North/South divide (see south) post-World War II, 240 1968 protests, 3 K unification, 33, 50, 78 Keane, Webb, 72, 74, 75, 79 World War II, 15, 46, 240 Keats (Ode on a Grecian Urn), 161, Homeric Hymns, 189 166 homophobia, 258 Kinsey Report, 24 housewives, 27 Klein, Melanie, 67n14, 187, 201, 203 kore, 189–92, 195–7, 202 Kristeva, Julio, 10, 187, 201, 202, I 294–6, 298, 299, 308 Ibsen, Henrik (A Doll’s House), 245–7 identity educated, 7, 71–95 L female, 214 Lacan, Jacques, 199, 202, 295 loss of self, 169 la frantumaglia, 130, 131, 151n4, maternal, 296, 299 156n44, 164, 165, 260, 264n15, immigration, 79 276 discourses, 79 language indexicality accent, 48, 49, 53, 55, 262 dialect, 7, 46–50, 57, 66 bilingualism, 83 dialect and violence, 47 dialect, 4, 36–8, 45–68, 83, 93n19, direct, 48, 49 254, 255, 261, 262, 296, 298, direct and indirect, 48, 58 299, 302, 303 324 INDEX language (cont.) 248, 253, 255, 271–88, 294–8, grammar, 117 300, 303, 307, 309 ideologies, 46, 50, 82, 83, 90, 91, absence of, 102, 107, 108, 110, 240 113, 114, 117 influence of television, 36 Lucamante, Stefania, 177n1, 244–9 Italian history of, 45, 50 Lucey, Michael, 48 linguistic performativity, 132, 137 literary Italian, 72, 83, 84, 302 of modernity, 90 M mother tongue, 37, 244 madre simbolica, 260 multilingualism, 47 madre snaturata, 10, 247, 262n2 power of words, 62, 63, 66, 83, 84, male discourse, 275, 280, 282 132, 133, 135, 143, 161, 243 male gaze, 159, 162, 164–6, 171–6, school Italian, 51, 56, 83 277, 278, 282, 283 standard, 36, 37, 46, 51, 72, 83, 84, male power, 162 93n19 mamma, 33 standard vs. dialect, 7, 36, 37, 46, marriage, 2, 4, 26, 87, 168, 169, 176, 51, 83, 93n19 216, 224, 264n16, 303–5 women, 5, 9, 25, 49, 82, 161, 240, Martone, Mario, 4, 5, 164, 178n3, 242–4, 246, 251, 286, 287, 271 296 masculinity, 186, 276, 278 Ledeen, Michael, 102, 119n2, 120n3, Mater, 10, 241, 293–309 120n7, 121n8 maternal legends, 102, 110, 111, 118, 119n2 contiguity, 241, 243, 250 of city of Naples, 102, 110, 118 discourse/narrative, 7, 239, 252, Lemoine-Luccioni, Eugénie, 187, 267n53, 309 199, 202, 203 image, 297 Lepschy, Giulio, 37 maternity, 10, 11, 237–68, 296, 298, Lincoln, Bruce, 186, 191, 197, 304, 308, 309 204n9, 204n10 matriarchy, 112 linguistic ghetto, 57, 58 matricide, 188, 201, 208, 230, 241 linguistic unity, 52, 83 matrophobia, 241, 244 Little Women, 29, 82, 221, 299 Megaride, 102, 110, 118, 119n2, Lombardi, Giancarlo, 166, 167, 120n3 177n1, 178n7, 193 memory, 10, 20, 101, 102, 109, 113, Lonzi, Carla, 241 117, 139, 140, 146, 149, 196, love, 2–11, 25, 31, 44n44, 56, 59, 60, 198, 200, 231n7, 250, 254, 256, 64–6, 71–95, 102–4, 107–14, 273, 285, 301, 306 117, 118, 124n36, 129, 159–80, Merrell, Floyd, 48 185–205, 208–10, 212, 218, metalinguistic, 3, 45, 55, 61, 67 220, 223–30, 232n20, 237, 239, metamorphosis, 9, 185–205 INDEX 325

Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective mute mother, 293 (Libreria delle donne di Milano), mute woman, 286, 290n33 286 myth, 9, 102, 107, 110, 124n36, mimesis, 298 185–92, 202, 241, 309 generational, 300 modernity dichotomy, 7, 72, 78, 79, 84 N master narratives, 72, 91 Naples metonyms of, 72 fondaci, 104, 121n8 modern personhood, 73 Luzzatti district, 187 moral narratives, 74 narrative subject, 131 post-World War II, 2 nation-state promissory notes, 74 language ideologies (see language) Morante, Elsa, 186, 239 national imagination, 72 Moro, Elisabetta, 102 nature, 16, 23, 66, 67n4, 74, 109, mother 111, 112, 118, 123n23, 130, body of, 85, 134, 146, 178n7, 198, 132, 133, 144, 151, 163, 173, 208, 277 190, 191, 202, 207–9, 226, 297, ideal, 86 301, 306 mother/daughter relationship, 198, Negri, Antonio, 74 209 neighborhood (rione), 4, 7, 20, 22, mother-teacher conflict, 84 23, 29–31, 34, 35, 38, 51–60, mother/teacher dichotomy, 84 62, 63, 65, 66, 77n14, 71–9, 81, teacher/mother dichotomy, 88 83–91, 113, 114, 116, 167, 187, unfit, 4 213, 217, 218, 220, 273, 276, mother-daughter relationship, 5, 86, 285, 295, 298, 300–3, 306–8 188, 240, 241, 243, 262n3, 272, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 295 276, 294, 305 Nochlin, Linda, 163 motherhood nom de plume, 305 childbirth, 301 perspective of daughter, 244 mother-text, 10, 246, 247 O Muraro, Luisa, 10, 241–4, 254, 255, objectification, 8, 159, 160, 165, 166, 257, 258, 264n15 168–70, 175, 176, 274, 276, music 283–5, 287 Bongusto, Fred, 36 Ochs, Elinor, 48, 49, 51 Celentano, Adriano, 36 Oedipal, 300 De André, Fabrizio, 36 Olivero, Giuliana, 130 Fidenco, Nico, 36 ontology, 106, 118, 122n19, 135, Mina, 36 139, 146, 151 Modugno, Domenico, 36 O’Rourke, Meghan, 103 Mussolini, 50 Ottieri, Ottiero(Donnarumma), 19 326 INDEX

P recognition failure, 210, 228, 230, painting, 6, 8, 159–68, 170–2, 174, 231n7, 231n8 175, 178n3, 192, 193, 195, 202, Red Brigades, 3, 38 238, 277, 295 reparation, 200–2 Parca, Gabriella, 306 representational realism, 132, 133, Parthenope, 8, 101–25 138, 151 Pascale, Antonio, 103–5, 120n5 representations of women, 163 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 15, 33–5, 103 repressed memories, 9, 186, 187, 198 patriarchy, 8, 112, 160, 239, 241, repressed memory, 9, 200, 271–88 242 Risi, Dino (Il sorpasso), 36 Peirce, Charles S., 48 rites performative realism, 8, 129–56 of passage, 191 performative subject, 150 ritual of loss, 190, 191 phallic signifier, 294 Rivière, Joan, 169 photography, 160, 164, 171, 173, Robbins, Joel, 74 174, 176 Roman Holiday, 36 Lila’s wedding photograph, 170 post-humanism critical, 148 S identities, 129–32, 141 sacrifice, 10, 18, 107, 190, 217, 243, posthumanist performativity, 133–5, 248, 249, 252, 261 139, 141, 145, 146 Sambuco, Patrizia, 2, 177n1, 238–40, poverty, 2–4, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 59, 262n3, 276, 288n2, 290n32 72, 77, 78, 101, 105, 114, 118, school/neighborhood dichotomy, 7, 121n9, 214, 217 72, 78. See also education psychic entrapment, 220 Sebold, Alice (The Almost Moon), 188, psychoanalysis 201, 208, 209 feminist movement, 273 selflessness, 214, 215, 219, 220 object relations psychoanalytic semiotics, 7, 46, 48, 66, 293–5, theory, 210 298–300, 305, 306, 308, 309 gender, 298 Serao, Matilde, 102–5, 111, 117, 119, Q 120n4, 121n8, 121n9 questione della lingua, 7, 46, 50, 67 sexuality, 26, 193, 196, 256, 258, 272, 279 shame, 9, 210, 211, 213–14, 217, R 219, 220, 222–4, 226, 230, radio, 30, 50 231n7, 233n36 realism. See also representational Shannon, Jonathan, 72 realism Shelley, Percy B.(On the Medusa of agential realism, 132, 145, 148, Leonardo da Vinci), 176 155n37 silence, 161, 176, 274, 281, 286, 287, performative, 8, 129–56 290n33, 294 INDEX 327

Silva, Jennifer, 212 Thesmophoria rites, 191 Silverstein, Michael, 48, 49 threshold of repugnance, 197 siren, 102, 103, 107, 110–12, 117–19 tigre europea, 17 Skeggs, Beverly, 214, 219, 231n8 Tookey, Chris, 4 smarginatura, 5, 8, 106, 108, 135–7, totemic, 297 141, 144 translation, 11, 38, 120n4, 151n1–3, sociolinguistics, 47 193, 227, 245, 246, 262n1 Sontag, Susan, 173 trauma, 10, 131, 133, 136, 148–50, south 185, 194, 200, 241, 274, 281, backwardness (arretratezza), 52, 285, 287, 306, 311n9 72, 79 othering, 80 (see also alterity) Spackman, Barbara, 169, 247, 248, U 268n55 Ulysses, 103, 110, 111, 118 Steedman, Carolyn, 213, 214, 219, 228 Stehle, Eva, 186, 191 V Strega literary prize, 271 Valletti, Camilla, 130 subjectivity violence idiomatic subjectivity, 9, 221 child abuse, 4, 273, 276 maternal, 242, 249 city of Naples, 101, 107, 186 suicide, 109, 110, 118, 149, 187, 240, domestic, 10, 26, 275, 278, 286, 250, 272 307 symbolic of father, 21, 22, 27, 34, 55, 62, 77, order, 170, 241–3, 295, 308 81, 162, 165, 166, 168, 171, pre-, 186, 293, 294, 300 187, 188, 193, 198, 272, 275, resources, 45, 66 277–81, 285, 286, 294, 295, symbolic resources, 45, 66 307 gender-based, 274 intimate partner, 273, 274 T of the neighborhood, 22, 59, 72, taboo, 298, 307 76 Tagg, John, 174 rape, 166, 275, 282, 284, 287, 307 Taylor, Charles, 72 sexist, 272 techniques of the body, 76 sexual, 187, 273, 275 Telemachus, myth of, 187 verbal and physical, 21, 55 television war, 16, 59, 72, 187, 306 Canzonissima, 33 Virgil (The Aeneid) Carosello, 32, 33 Aeneas/Dido story, 109 Lascia o raddoppia?, 32 Dido, 102, 107 RAI, 32, 37 Virgin Mary, 294, 295, 309 328 INDEX

Visconti, Luchino(Rocco e i suoi Wille, Robbert, 210, 222, 231n7, fratelli), 16 233n36 visual art Winnicott, Donald, 210–12, 230n6 nude model, 163, 164 Wittrock, Björn, 74 phallocentric artistic tradition, 171 Wong, Aliza, 78 poetics, 167 Wood, James, 1, 16, 264n15 visual repertoire, 161 working-class, 7, 75, 86, 88, 167, 209, visual representation, 160–2, 166, 210, 212–14, 220, 231n7, 168, 169, 174, 175, 190 231n8. See also class voice, 10, 11, 36, 48, 65, 84, 107, neighborhood, 7, 75, 86, 167, 213, 116, 118, 130, 131, 139, 160, 220 161, 166, 174, 176, 187, 194, writing 216, 217, 240, 241, 244, 246, Italian women, 272 247, 252–6, 261, 262, 274, 280, Naples, 65, 101–6, 114, 116–19, 293–11 272, 293, 302, 308 maternal, 9, 252, 255, 261, 293–11 problem of, 103 voyeurism, 238, 255

Y W Yllö, Kersti, 279 Webb, Ruth, 161 youth, 2–4, 24, 25, 36, 170, 199, Wertmüller, Lina (Ciao Professore), 82 250, 278, 285, 305