Dissertation Final
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We Animals, We Cyborgs: Rethinking Anthropocentrism in Postwar Italian Literature By Chiara Cecchelli A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Barbara Spackman, Chair Professor Mia Fuller Professor Katherine Snyder Summer 2018 1 Abstract We Animals, We Cyborgs: Rethinking Anthropocentrism in Postwar Italian Literature by Chiara Cecchelli Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Barbara Spackman, Chair The challenge to anthropocentrism is at the core of critical animal studies, that draws from and contributes to the reflections of posthumanistic thought. By turning their attention from what are usually considered criteria to separate and place in a hierarchy human and nonhuman animals (most prominently, reason and language) to what they have in common, namely their embeddedness and materiality, the animal studies challenges at their very roots the humanistic ideals that dictate what a human beings are, how they look like, what their privileges are. As Cary Wolfe puts it, “underneath them all [human and nonhuman animals] [...] is a shared finitude, a shared ‘passivity’ [...] that runs directly counter to the liberal model of the subject as above all a creature of volition, autonomy, and agency” (Posthumanism 139). By shifting the focus from agency to vulnerability, animal studies seeks to transfigure a principle of exclusion into a common, constitutive ground on which to envision a new way of conceiving the relations among living beings. In this dissertation I analyze texts that reject, each in its own way, the neatness of the distinction between humanness and animality. Their four authors - Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920), Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998), Primo Levi (1919-1987), and Paolo Volponi (1924-1994) - populate their pages with human characters who look at and interact with nonhuman animals as characters in their own right, and not as mere rhetorical and symbolic props or projections of human feelings, states of mind, or behaviors. The attitude of these writers and of (most of) their characters is born of the intuition of what all animals, human and non human, share - namely their finitude, their vulnerability, the thick, inescapable materiality of their bodies. In this intuition is the germ of a challenge to anthropocentrism through the implicit and sometimes explicit critique of the Cartesian paradigms of mind/body dualism and of the animal-machine, both based on the preeminence of reason as the criterion for the ontological superiority of (a selected few) human animals. i Table of contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction iv 1. The Theoretical Framework: Posthumanism and Animal Studies iv 2. Animal Studies and Italian Studies: The Current Landscape and My Contribution vii Chapter 1 Animality, Anima, Animism: Federigo Tozzi’s Surrender to Posthumanism 1 1. The Decline of Rationality and the Emergence of Animalization 1 2. From the Paradigm of Personaggio-Uomo to a Posthumanistic Narration 13 3. Anima, Animality, Animism: Exploring the Boundaries between Spirit and Matter 20 Chapter 2 Copernicus Interruptus: Anna Maria Ortese as a Visionary and a Reactionary 28 1. New Kinships and Human Sacrifice 29 2. The Ridiculous Pride in the Faculty of Reasoning: Ortese’s Copernican Revolution 34 2.1 L’Iguana and a Tentative Reformulation of Logocentrism 37 2.2 Il cardillo addolorato: Ortese’s Critique of the Enlightenment 41 2.3 Alonso: Reason as Vision; Thought as Malady 45 3. Christ and Time, Platonism and Embeddedness: Ortese’s Gospel of Justice 49 Chapter 3 Unnatural Histories: Primo Levi’s Human-like Machines, Paolo Volponi’s Machine-like Humans 56 1. Primo Levi and Nonhuman Animals 58 1.1 - Animals on a Continuum, but in a Hierarchy 58 1.2 - Letting the (Suffering) Nonhuman Animals Speak 61 1.3 - Interspecies Encounters, Interrupted: Levi’s Empathetic Logocentrism 63 2. Chronicles from a Near Dystopian Future: The NATCA Machines 65 2.1 - “The Versifier:” Language, Corporeality, and the Machine 66 2.2 - Machines and Sex as Threats to the Autonomy of the Self 70 2.3 - Coda: “Un vago senso di disagio” - Humans Become Machines 73 3. Paolo Volponi: The Introjection of Nonhuman Animals and the Explosion of the Self 74 3.1 - Appropriation and Gendering of the Nonhuman Other 75 3.2 - Mutations and Hybridity: The Bomb as a Threat and as a Palingenetic Dream 78 3.3 - What if We Were Never in Control? Humans Become Cyborgs 83 3.4 - Don Quixote on a Rocking Horse: Narrative as an Identity-Making Device 87 Conclusion We Animals, We Cyborgs. We Plants? Or: Taking Human Animals Down a Peg 90 Bibliography 92 ii Acknowledgments I am immensely grateful to the faculty of the Department of Italian Studies for welcoming me at UC Berkeley, where I spent the six most challenging and rewarding years of my life. It has been an honor to share this journey with my professors and colleagues, to all of whom I am indebted for my intellectual and human growth. Thank you to my advisor, Barbara Spackman, for pushing me to sharpen my writing skills, for her astute reading of my work, and for her unparalleled talent as a teacher. Thank you for introducing me to Derrida’s essay on the Animal, which has become the point of departure for this dissertation. Thank you to Mia Fuller for her honesty, her kindness, her emotional support and professional advice. Thank you to Katie Snyder for her warmth and insightfulness. Thank you to Albert Ascoli, whose voice I heard on the phone on a day in January six years ago when I learned that I had been accepted to the program. Thank you for your constant encouragement. The Department is a sadder place without the wit and kindness of Steven Botterill. We are lucky to have the most graceful, kind, competent staff. Thanks to Moriah VanVleet for her support and her all-around amazingness. Thanks to Seth Arnopole for his help in navigating the Berkeley bureaucracy, to Elizabeth LaVarge-Baptista and Amanda Minafo for being always kind and supportive. Thank you to Sandy Jones, whose comfort during the period of my qualifying exam I will never forget. These years at Berkeley wouldn’t have been half as special without my colleagues and friends. Thank you now and always to my amiche pazze, Margherita Ghetti and Bianca Facchini. Thank you for your support, for your understanding, for the laughs and the love. And, of course, for our pranzi pazzi. Thank you Marghi for always being there, for your honesty, for your wisdom. Blanche, thank you for always seeing the best in me. Thank you to Jennifer Mackenzie, dear friend and traveling companion extraordinaire. Thanks to Emily Rabiner, for the movies and the dinners we shared, but most of all for the mysterious marche sceme. Thank you to Zack Bekowies and Kyle (yes, KYLE!) Thomson, who even in my darkest moments were able to make me feel like a Reginr™. Teaching was an incredibly rewarding experience thanks to the wit and enthusiasm of the students whom I had to honor to teach; they were always able to brighten my day. A special place in my heart is reserved for Maria Jelvis and Dasom Nah, the brightest and most gracious young women, who are still patiently waiting for a reply to an invitation for dinner. Here’s to many more dinner dates to come. And to the inimitable Italian 2 crew, with whom I shared sensational cat tattoos and who introduced me to that staple of American culture that is the Bachelor franchise. Haley Bartl-Geller, Kimchi Dang, Erin Bennett, Kathrin Neyzberg, Roberto Ulloa: thank you guys. Would you accept these roses? I am immensely grateful to Gwen Weil and Laura McCamy, without whose help this dissertation would have probably never been finished. Thanks to my friend Gaia, who cheered me up when I needed it and gave me a pen that reads: “Make it happen.” Guess what, Gaia - I did! Thanks to Arturo, reliable source of candies, books, and random anecdotes. Thank you to Manu and Sara for their friendship and their warmth. Thank you to my friends on the other side of the ocean, who during these years have had children, changed jobs, got married, but never ceased to make me feel their love and support. Mary, thank you because every time I come to Turin you make me feel at home. I am so happy iii that our friendship is still alive and well. Fanciu, thanks for always being my greatest supporter. Liana, Fra, Luca, I cannot wait to see you. Thanks to my mother, my father, to Paolo and Serena, because I know you are there for me. My deepest gratitude goes to Gianmarco, who every day has had to deal with my anxiety, my distress, my doubts of every kind; upon whom I forced countless housebound weekends. Thank you for your love, for your patience, and for never a moment ceasing to believe in me, and in us. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Questa tesi è dedicata a mamma e papà, che mi hanno dato le ali per spiccare il volo, ma non potevano prevedere quanto distante dal nido mi avrebbero portato. A loro il mio grazie più grande. iv Introduction Un tempo io fui già fanciullo e fanciulla, arbusto, uccello e muto pesce che salta fuori dal mare. Da un frammento di Empedocle (Primo Levi, “Autobiografia”)1 [Once I was both boy and girl, bush, bird and silent fish jumping out the sea. From a fragment by Empedocles (Primo Levi, “Autobiography”)]2 The epigraph to Primo Levi’s poem “Autobiografia” [“Autobiography”] presents an “I” with a composite heritage, cutting through time, genders, species, plant and animal life.