La contingenza della norma: il monstrum.

Autori

  • Giorgia Visentin Università degli Studi di Milano

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54103/2039-9251/20836

Abstract

What does it really mean to contemplate the “anomalous”, the “malformed”, the “anatomical- monster”? Why and how is it so disturbing? And what is the proper norm and status of the monster? The monster is what shocks, the weird, the eerie. The monster is the uncanny, the “unhomely”, das Unheimliche, to borrow from Freud’s famous expression. It’s the irruption of the improper that threatens the stability of life, as it indicates how the commonness of life itself is a precarious yet contingent state. The monster upsets us because it shows us the contingency of the norm. Based upon this assumption, we shall also touch upon other concepts. These might be: the transvaluation of values, the Einverleibung, the Great Health and the theory of the hopeful monster. It is, in the end, a new form of the same: the individual subtracts itself, therefore, from the individuality of the species, but it does so as to affirm a different same that is absolutely contingent. To borrow again from Deleuze, we might say: a “prodigious”, unexpected turn of the becoming.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Canguilhem, G., Il normale e il patologico (1972), tr. it. d D. Buzzolan, Einaudi, Torino 1998.

Id., La conoscenza della vita (1965), tr. it. di F. Bassani, Il Mulino, Bologna 1976.

Deleuze, G., Differenza e ripetizione (1968), tr. it. di G. Guglielmi, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 1997.

Foucault, M., Gli anormali. Corso al Collège de France (1974-1975), tr. it. e cura di V. Marchetti e A. Salomoni, Feltrinelli, Milano 2010.

Freud, S., Opere 1905-1921, Grandi Tascabili Economici Newton, Roma 1992.

Gould, S.G., Ontogenesi e filogenesi (1977), ed. it. a cura di M. Turchetto, Mimesis, Milano 2013.

Lewontin, R., La rivoluzione di Darwin, in Il sogno del genoma umano e altre illusioni della scienza (2000), tr. it. di M. Sampaolo, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004.

Mascherini, M., Stato e pluralismo conflittuale. Leviatano e Behemuth: mostri biblici e

metafore della politica, Milano 2021.

Montale, E., Tutte le poesie, Mondadori, Milano 2019.

Nietzsche, F., Al di là del bene e del male (1886), tr. it. di F. Masini, Adelphi, Milano 2011.

Dowloads

Pubblicato

2023-08-08 — Aggiornato il 2023-10-20

Versioni

Fascicolo

Sezione

The anomalous and the deformed in nature and in art: Monstrous births and human phenomena between myth and metaphor (ed. by M. Mascherini, B. Accarino)