by Pier Paolo Pasolini
In Pier Paolo Pasolini's (1922-1975) extensive body of work, journalism plays a special role. Rather than being silenced, the author's passions and idiosyncrasies are amplified in an exploration of civilization and customs that runs through his entire work. Even today, italian culture struggles to acknowledge some of the positions Pasolini expressed with polemical flair and prophetic clarity. Consider his criticism of the 1968 youth revolt, for example. In a poem published in "L'Espresso" magazine, Pasolini condemned the positions of the students involved in clashes with police in Valle Giulia, Rome, taking many readers by surprise. The article we are republishing here, which appeared in june 1972 in the weekly magazine "Tempo" (full title: "Il Mongoloide alla Biennale è il prodotto della sottocultura italiana" ["The Mongoloid at the Biennale is the product of italian subculture"]), targets the neo-avant-garde of the time and its flirtation with the demands of the student movement. The target chosen by Pasolini - a generation of intellectuals, artists, and academics who are still influential today - explains why this enlightening text is still largely ignored. In 1972, faced with the boy with Down syndrome exhibited by Gino De Dominicis at the Venice Biennale, Pasolini seems to conform to the methodological guidelines that could have come from De Dominicis himself. That is to say: a work of art is so elusive, unclassifiable, and complex that it is not even worth talking about or attempting to interpret, except as an exercise in style. And indeed, paradoxically, Pasolini only mentions De Dominicis' work at the end of the article. But the long preamble is anything but an intellectual digression; even with a dated vocabulary, steeped in the political and social ferment of the time, Pasolini conducts a rigorous analysis. And the conclusions are not long in coming: if art is by its very nature a producer of metaphors, Pasolini suggests in the last lines of the article, then art attuned to aphasia and sociological justification can only become a metaphor itself, not of complexity but of nothingness. The boy exhibited at the Biennale is not a denunciation or discomfort or challenge to conventions. He is simply a reflection, a void activated by the greater void that produces him, offers him alibis, and critically assists him. For the book edition of the article, see P.P. Pasolini,Saggi sulla letteratura e sull'arte, edited by Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude, Mondadori, Milan 1999, II, pp. 2612-2615. Translation is ours.
About a dozen years ago, the neo-avant-garde movement emerged in italian literature. Reacting against the “commitment” that had been popular during the previous decade, it advocated for a new way of life and a new relationship with society. Poverty was no longer present; prosperity was. The owner was no longer present; the technician was. Integration was inevitable, so it was better to embrace it with cynicism and elegance. The neo-avant-garde accepted the new, as yet undefined values of neo-capitalism: and it was in the service of neo-capitalism that it destroyed – in the linguistic and literary fields – the classical values of classical capitalism.
The great “internal” revolution of capitalism, which began in the early 1960s – in which bourgeois civilization was renewing itself, planning a kind of palingenesis – had found its servants – as usual, fools and hooligans – in the writers of the neo-avant-garde. The first concern of these writers was to strip the writers of the previous generation, still tied to both classical and recent traditions and still naively fulfilling their role as “court jesters” (both of bourgeois power and of the opposition), of all value, to the point of complete discredit.
Then came 1968 and the student revolt, which overwhelmed and destroyed the neo-avant-garde (although its cynicism caused it to join and become confused with the student movement). The new left, seemingly born during that revolt, presented itself in the literary field as strictly content-oriented and utilitarian. It contested the “disengagement” of the neo-avant-garde without considering or questioning it – it seemed so marginal and frivolous – and returned to the previous literary idea of “engagement,” but with a crude, neo-zdanovist radicalism.
From this maximalist point of view, students also contested the historical “commitment” of the 1950s, considering it to be ambiguous, weak, and compromised with both power and traditional opposition to power. For the students of ’68, the primary concern was to strip the proponents of established culture of all value and discredit them completely. In the space of a decade, traditionalist culture (both classical and recent) – in itself and in its exponents – was stripped of value and discredited twice. The points of view from which it was criticized “globally”, to the point of total deconsecration, were diametrically opposed, yet the result was the same.
The neo-avant-garde carried out a purely verbal revolution that played into the hands of the new bourgeoisie. The new bourgeoisie wanted to get rid of the old classicist rubbish, including its new, “committed” forms. Even the students, unintentionally, played the same game; they did nothing but devalue and discredit what those in power call “culturame”.
However, this is not the only similarity between the fatuous, careerist, purely literary revolution of the neo-avant-garde and the neo-marxist revolution of 1968. These two “revolutions” also share a critical language taken from the sociology and human sciences of the neo-bourgeois world.
This ideological identity permitted a sort of amalgamation between the neo-avant-garde and the student movement. It enabled disengaged neo-avant-gardists to casually join the committed students and allowed students to exploit ready-made arguments against their elders’ “commitment.” This amalgamation, which was completely absurd, was due to the cynicism (or neurosis) of the neo-avant-gardists and the literary ignorance of the students.
How did the italian subculture react to all this? As is typical of every subculture, it responded with conformity and a complete absence of critical thinking. In other words, it succumbed to the pressures of current events and fashion.
Initially, he accepted the devaluation of Italian culture in the literary realm by the neo-avant-garde, justifying it as a historical revision of values. Then, he accepted the devaluation of Italian culture in the ideological and political realms by the student movement, succumbing to its terrorism.
Today, therefore, everything appears to be “devalued”. It is true that the reasons behind the neo-avant-garde have since gone out of fashion and are no longer relevant; and it is equally true that the reasons behind the student movement have also gone out of fashion and are no longer relevant. But Italian subculture has “crystallized the devaluation”, operated for reasons so different from those of the neo-avant-garde and the student movement: it has done so for reasons of its own, which are historically relevant: namely, indifference. What the neo-avant-garde first and then the student movement reduced to zero has become fixed at zero in the Italian petty bourgeois subculture, which is happy with this. It has embraced the easy anti-traditionalism of the neo-avant-garde and, at the same time, the pragmatism and utilitarianism (which are so congenial to it) of the student movement.
Every cultural moment has its own idea – perhaps indescribable – of the work of art. Now that all values have been brutally reduced to zero, what is the idea of the work of art that is in the mind and critical eschatology of Italian subculture? It is a monstrous fusion of the neo-avant-garde’s absolute experimentalism, which is so extreme that it becomes illegible and useless, and the student movement’s most readable and useful content.
This monstrosity looms large over every aspect of Italian life in recent years. In fact, even outside of literature, this monstrosity manifests itself in everyday life as a fusion of two irreconcilable cultural points of view implemented in historical subculture. Consider the extreme case of provocateurs, a figure inconceivable until a few years ago, at least in such large numbers. The existence of this figure is made possible by the common ground between fascists and leftists, populists and marxists. Thus, the provocateur can be welcomed and accepted everywhere because he is the product of a confusion that monstrously mixes the most diverse positions. De Dominicis’ case is the typical product of this monstrous confusion; he can be considered a metaphor for it. He combines the provocations of the neo-avant-garde – such as pop art taken to its extreme, and so on – with the neo-marxist provocation of small groups and unrealistic, verbal denunciations, also taken to their extreme consequences. The subnormal boy he exhibited is a living symbol of the current idea of art that determines judgments in the italian cultural (subcultural) world.
Homepage: Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of his film “The Canterbury Tales”, 1972. Below: Pier Paolo Pasolini's article published in “Tempo” on June 25, 1972.
