University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 Subjectivity And Politics In Pasolini's Bourgeois Tragic Theater Andrew Korn University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Italian Literature Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Korn, Andrew, "Subjectivity And Politics In Pasolini's Bourgeois Tragic Theater" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3139. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3139 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3139 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Subjectivity And Politics In Pasolini's Bourgeois Tragic Theater Abstract Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote his plays Affabulazione, Orgia and Porcile during his shift to theater in the late 1960s as a critical response to consumer culture in Italy and the West more generally. For him, this expanding mass, petit-bourgeois civilization displaced Italy’s premodern cultures and their sense of the sacred. In his plays, his bourgeois protagonists re-experience the sacred and undergo conversion. The works engender his new “bourgeois tragic” genre, in which the sacred’s return destroys modern subjectivity. They offer a unique examination of this subjectivity, its radicalizing breakdown and the potential radical politics that could emerge from that breakdown. To further these significant insights, this study systematically theorizes Pasolini’s Bourgeois Tragic Theater – his dramatic genre and its production through his “Word Theater” practices – as one of bourgeois subjectivity and politics. It is the first of its kind among the Italian- and English-language criticism, framed through psychoanalysis and classical and twentieth-century Western theater. The predominant form of radical subjectivity and politics is “self-destructive otherness” and martyrdom, the latter of which will be a falsity and no politics at all. However, Orgia and Porcile in its drafts formulate a more critical radical subjectivity and politics: the transformation of self-destructive otherness into the “Logic of Otherness,” which looks to reconstruct Otherness as a new ideology of liberation. The protagonists ultimately fail to act on this Logic, and the plays end ambiguously, suspending catharsis. When Pasolini’s dramas are staged through his Word Theater praxis, his complete Bourgeois Tragic Theater looks to realize this Logic itself. It gives spectators the task of creating their own catharsis through its post-performance dialogue, which contains a Platonic pedagogy with radicalizing effects for subjectivity and politics. Pasolini’s theater will contradict the conclusion among scholars that his tragedies signal the “Second Pasolini,” one who is unable to propose any affirmative and effective form of resistance to modernization in this period. In fact, his theater will be his most rigorous and concerted effort at a radical political art, attempting to answer the crisis of both Marxism and the Church, with foresight of the pitfalls of the Student Movement. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Kevin Brownlee Keywords Martyrdom, Otherness, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Politics, Subjectivity, Tragedy Subject Categories Italian Literature | Philosophy | Theatre and Performance Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3139 SUBJECTIVITY AND POLITICS IN PASOLINI’S BOURGEOIS TRAGIC THEATER Andrew F. Korn A DISSERTATION in Italian For the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Supervisor of Dissertation _________________ Kevin Brownlee Professor of Romance Languages Graduate Group Chairperson _________________ Eva Del Soldato, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages Dissertation Committee Kevin Brownlee, Professor of Romance Languages Eva Del Soldato, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages Gaetana Marrone-Puglia, Professor of French and Italian (Princeton University) Stefania Benini, Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian (Saint Joseph’s University) SUBJECTIVITY AND POLITICS IN PASOLINI’S BOURGEOIS TRAGIC THEATER COPYRIGHT 2018 Andrew F. Korn This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several people and places supported this study. The University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Program in Italian Studies and my dissertation committee, Kevin Brownlee, Eva Del Soldato, Gaetana Marrone-Puglia and Stefania Benini provided me with the opportunity and guidance to carry out the project. The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Italian Studies awarded me the Salvatori Research Grant for archival research. I am very grateful to Graziella Chiarcossi, who granted me permission to consult Pasolini’s archival materials, which are foundational to my study, at the Biblioteca nazionale in Rome and the Fondo Pasolini in Florence. Maria Maddalena Vigilante and Eleonora Cardinale in Rome, and Gloria Manghetti in Florence assisted me in the archives. Anna Peyron assisted me in the digital archive of Turin’s Teatro Stabile Centro Studi. My mother Mary Jane, my brother Steve and my sister Nina continually encouraged me. My mother made the rock on which I could set down my desk and get to work. iii ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVITY AND POLITICS IN PASOLINI’S BOURGEOIS TRAGIC THEATER Andrew F. Korn Kevin Brownlee Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote his plays Affabulazione, Orgia and Porcile during his shift to theater in the late 1960s as a critical response to consumer culture in Italy and the West more generally. For him, this expanding mass, petit-bourgeois civilization displaced Italy’s premodern cultures and their sense of the sacred. In his plays, his bourgeois protagonists re-experience the sacred and undergo conversion. The works engender his new “bourgeois tragic” genre, in which the sacred’s return destroys modern subjectivity. They offer a unique examination of this subjectivity, its radicalizing breakdown and the potential radical politics that could emerge from that breakdown. To further these significant insights, this study systematically theorizes Pasolini’s Bourgeois Tragic Theater – his dramatic genre and its production through his “Word Theater” practices – as one of bourgeois subjectivity and politics. It is the first of its kind among the Italian- and English-language criticism, framed through psychoanalysis and classical and twentieth-century Western theater. The predominant form of radical subjectivity and politics is “self-destructive otherness” and martyrdom, the latter of which will be a falsity and no politics at all. However, Orgia and Porcile in its drafts formulate a more critical radical subjectivity and politics: the transformation of self-destructive otherness into the “Logic of Otherness,” which looks to reconstruct Otherness as a new ideology of liberation. The protagonists ultimately fail to act on this Logic, and the plays end ambiguously, suspending catharsis. When Pasolini’s dramas are staged through his Word Theater praxis, his complete Bourgeois Tragic Theater looks to realize this Logic itself. It gives spectators the task of creating their own catharsis through its post-performance dialogue, which contains a Platonic pedagogy with radicalizing effects for subjectivity and politics. Pasolini’s theater will contradict the conclusion among scholars that his tragedies signal the “Second Pasolini,” one who is unable to propose any affirmative and effective form of resistance to modernization in this period. In fact, his theater will be his most rigorous and concerted effort at a radical political art, attempting to answer the crisis of both Marxism and the Church, with foresight of the pitfalls of the Student Movement. iv ABBREVIATIONS FPF: Fondo Pasolini, Archivio Contemporaneo “Alessandro Bonsanti,” Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux, Florence. BNR: Biblioteca nazionale centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome. LE2: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Lettere (1955-1975). Ed. Nico Naldini. Turin: Einaudi, 1988. PC1: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Per il cinema. Vol. 1. Eds. Walter Siti and Franco Zabagli. Milan: Mondadori, 2001. PC2: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Per il cinema. Vol. 2. Eds. Walter Siti and Franco Zabagli. Milan: Mondadori, 2001. SPS: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Saggi sulla politica e sulla società. Eds. Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude. Milan: Mondadori, 2012. SLA1: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte. Vol. 1. Eds. Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude. Milan: Mondadori, 1999. SLA2: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte. Vol. 2. Eds. Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude. Milan: Mondadori, 1999. TE: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Teatro. Eds. Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude. Milan: Mondadori, 2001. TP2: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Tutte le poesie. Vol. 2. Ed. Walter Siti. Milan: Mondadori, 2003. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... III ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... IV ABBREVIATIONS .........................................................................................................