Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity

The first essay, Gianna Comad's "Giacomo Leopardi's Book of the Future: The Zibaldone as an Encyclopedia for the Ecosophical Posthuman" (31-50), argues that similar notions had already been broached by Leopardi, who sought "an ontology based on a dynamic conception of the human being, distinguished by a non-unitary, transversal and collective form of subjectivity that develops and defines itself in relation to and through its interaction with other human and nonhuman beings" (49). After Comad and Godioli et al. on Leopardi and Pirandello, respectively, Enrico Vettore provides a Zen and ecopsychological reading of Gianni Celati's Narratori delle pianure and Quattro novelle suite apparenze, demonstrating Celati's view that the self and landscape me coextensive, along with the resulting ethical implications urging an increased sense of responsibility toward the other-than-human ("Lose Your Self: Gianni Celati and the Art of Being One with the World," 233-54). Several of the essays in the collection offer corollaries to Calvino ' s intuitions on language, from Marco Amici's analysis of the connection between language and the human/non-human power differential in Laura Pugno's work ("PostAnthropocentic Persepectives in Laura Pugno's Narrative," 73-92), to Ferrara on the erased separations between singular linguistic and material identity formations in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels ("Posthumanism and Identity in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels," 92-116).