Discutendo di autonomia, da Carlo Levi a oggi

Historians and exponents of the cultural and political world of the South of Italy discuss a category central to Levi's weltanshaung and to his political and intellectual biography: autonomy. The political origins of the concept go back to the XIX century federalist, liberalist and anti-politics ideas, and to the «question of Southern Italy». Autonomy permeates Gobetti's thought, who initiated Levi into politics. Autonomy is viewed also as a radical philosophy of liberty as well as an existential and psychological trait. The possibility of self-government in Southern Italy, in the light both of federalism and of a rearrangement of identities, is also debated. Levi's legacy is important here both as specific memory of the confinement setting and to contrast the homologation of Southern society induced by modernization.