Matters of taste: the neoclassical furniture in the Italian portraits from the late eighteenth century to the Restoration

Analysis and description of the furniture shown on Italian portraits from the late eighteenth century to the period of the Restoration. We have studied real examples of environments still exist with their furniture, chairs, mirrors, lamps, etc. in different areas of Italy. All this to explain the refined taste and cosmopolitan of the characters painted in the portraits, that for this reason they were considered fashionable

The firm. Techno-organizational changes, industrial relations and performances. An enquiry on Reggio Emilia local industrial system

It is not unknown that the evolution of firm theories has been developed along a path paved by an increasing awareness of the organizational structure importance. From the early “neoclassical” conceptualizations that intended the firm as a rational actor whose aim is to produce that amount of output, given the inputs at its disposal and in accordance to technological or environmental constraints, which maximizes the revenue (see Boulding, 1942 for a past mid century state of the art discussion) to the knowledge based theory of the firm (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005), which recognizes in the firm a knnowledge creating entity, with specific organizational capabilities (Teece, 1996; Teece & Pisano, 1998) that allow to sustaine competitive advantages. Tracing back a map of the theory of the firm evolution, taking into account the several perspectives adopted in the history of thought, would take the length of many books. Because of that a more fruitful strategy is circumscribing the focus of the description of the literature evolution to one flow connected to a crucial question about the nature of firm’s behaviour and about the determinants of competitive advantages. In so doing I adopt a perspective that allows me to consider the organizational structure of the firm as an element according to which the different theories can be discriminated. The approach adopted starts by considering the drawbacks of the standard neoclassical theory of the firm. Discussing the most influential theoretical approaches I end up with a close examination of the knowledge based perspective of the firm. Within this perspective the firm is considered as a knowledge creating entity that produce and mange knowledge (Nonaka, Toyama, & Nagata, 2000; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005). In a knowledge intensive organization, knowledge is clearly embedded for the most part in the human capital of the individuals that compose such an organization. In a knowledge based organization, the management, in order to cope with knowledge intensive productions, ought to develop and accumulate capabilities that shape the organizational forms in a way that relies on “cross-functional processes, extensive delayering and empowerment” (Foss 2005, p.12). This mechanism contributes to determine the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, it also shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves. After having recognized the growing importance of the firm’s organizational structure in the theoretical literature concerning the firm theory, the subsequent point of the analysis is that of providing an overview of the changes that have been occurred at micro level to the firm’s organization of production. The economic actors have to deal with challenges posed by processes of internationalisation and globalization, increased and increasing competitive pressure of less developed countries on low value added production activities, changes in technologies and increased environmental turbulence and volatility. As a consequence, it has been widely recognized that the main organizational models of production that fitted well in the 20th century are now partially inadequate and processes aiming to reorganize production activities have been widespread across several economies in recent years. Recently, the emergence of a “new” form of production organization has been proposed both by scholars, practitioners and institutions: the most prominent characteristic of such a model is its recognition of the importance of employees commitment and involvement. As a consequence it is characterized by a strong accent on the human resource management and on those practices that aim to widen the autonomy and responsibility of the workers as well as increasing their commitment to the organization (Osterman, 1994; 2000; Lynch, 2007). This “model” of production organization is by many defined as High Performance Work System (HPWS). Despite the increasing diffusion of workplace practices that may be inscribed within the concept of HPWS in western countries’ companies, it is an hazard, to some extent, to speak about the emergence of a “new organizational paradigm”. The discussion about organizational changes and the diffusion of HPWP the focus cannot abstract from a discussion about the industrial relations systems, with a particular accent on the employment relationships, because of their relevance, in the same way as production organization, in determining two major outcomes of the firm: innovation and economic performances. The argument is treated starting from the issue of the Social Dialogue at macro level, both in an European perspective and Italian perspective. The model of interaction between the social parties has repercussions, at micro level, on the employment relationships, that is to say on the relations between union delegates and management or workers and management. Finding economic and social policies capable of sustaining growth and employment within a knowledge based scenario is likely to constitute the major challenge for the next generation of social pacts, which are the main social dialogue outcomes. As Acocella and Leoni (2007) put forward the social pacts may constitute an instrument to trade wage moderation for high intensity in ICT, organizational and human capital investments. Empirical evidence, especially focused on the micro level, about the positive relation between economic growth and new organizational designs coupled with ICT adoption and non adversarial industrial relations is growing. Partnership among social parties may become an instrument to enhance firm competitiveness. The outcome of the discussion is the integration of organizational changes and industrial relations elements within a unified framework: the HPWS. Such a choice may help in disentangling the potential existence of complementarities between these two aspects of the firm internal structure on economic and innovative performance. With the third chapter starts the more original part of the thesis. The data utilized in order to disentangle the relations between HPWS practices, innovation and economic performance refer to the manufacturing firms of the Reggio Emilia province with more than 50 employees. The data have been collected through face to face interviews both to management (199 respondents) and to union representatives (181 respondents). Coupled with the cross section datasets a further data source is constituted by longitudinal balance sheets (1994-2004). Collecting reliable data that in turn provide reliable results needs always a great effort to which are connected uncertain results. Data at micro level are often subjected to a trade off: the wider is the geographical context to which the population surveyed belong the lesser is the amount of information usually collected (low level of resolution); the narrower is the focus on specific geographical context, the higher is the amount of information usually collected (high level of resolution). For the Italian case the evidence about the diffusion of HPWP and their effects on firm performances is still scanty and usually limited to local level studies (Cristini, et al., 2003). The thesis is also devoted to the deepening of an argument of particular interest: the existence of complementarities between the HPWS practices. It has been widely shown by empirical evidence that when HPWP are adopted in bundles they are more likely to impact on firm’s performances than when adopted in isolation (Ichniowski, Prennushi, Shaw, 1997). Is it true also for the local production system of Reggio Emilia? The empirical analysis has the precise aim of providing evidence on the relations between the HPWS dimensions and the innovative and economic performances of the firm. As far as the first line of analysis is concerned it must to be stressed the fundamental role that innovation plays in the economy (Geroski & Machin, 1993; Stoneman & Kwoon 1994, 1996; OECD, 2005; EC, 2002). On this point the evidence goes from the traditional innovations, usually approximated by R&D investment expenditure or number of patents, to the introduction and adoption of ICT, in the recent years (Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 2000). If innovation is important then it is critical to analyse its determinants. In this work it is hypothesised that organizational changes and firm level industrial relations/employment relations aspects that can be put under the heading of HPWS, influence the propensity to innovate in product, process and quality of the firm. The general argument may goes as follow: changes in production management and work organization reconfigure the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, they shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves; cooperative industrial relations may lead to smother adoption of innovations, because not contrasted by unions. From the first empirical chapter emerges that the different types of innovations seem to respond in different ways to the HPWS variables. The underlying processes of product, process and quality innovations are likely to answer to different firm’s strategies and needs. Nevertheless, it is possible to extract some general results in terms of the most influencing HPWS factors on innovative performance. The main three aspects are training coverage, employees involvement and the diffusion of bonuses. These variables show persistent and significant relations with all the three innovation types. The same do the components having such variables at their inside. In sum the aspects of the HPWS influence the propensity to innovate of the firm. At the same time, emerges a quite neat (although not always strong) evidence of complementarities presence between HPWS practices. In terns of the complementarity issue it can be said that some specific complementarities exist. Training activities, when adopted and managed in bundles, are related to the propensity to innovate. Having a sound skill base may be an element that enhances the firm’s capacity to innovate. It may enhance both the capacity to absorbe exogenous innovation and the capacity to endogenously develop innovations. The presence and diffusion of bonuses and the employees involvement also spur innovative propensity. The former because of their incentive nature and the latter because direct workers participation may increase workers commitment to the organizationa and thus their willingness to support and suggest inovations. The other line of analysis provides results on the relation between HPWS and economic performances of the firm. There have been a bulk of international empirical studies on the relation between organizational changes and economic performance (Black & Lynch 2001; Zwick 2004; Janod & Saint-Martin 2004; Huselid 1995; Huselid & Becker 1996; Cappelli & Neumark 2001), while the works aiming to capture the relations between economic performance and unions or industrial relations aspects are quite scant (Addison & Belfield, 2001; Pencavel, 2003; Machin & Stewart, 1990; Addison, 2005). In the empirical analysis the integration of the two main areas of the HPWS represent a scarcely exploited approach in the panorama of both national and international empirical studies. As remarked by Addison “although most analysis of workers representation and employee involvement/high performance work practices have been conducted in isolation – while sometimes including the other as controls – research is beginning to consider their interactions” (Addison, 2005, p.407). The analysis conducted exploiting temporal lags between dependent and covariates, possibility given by the merger of cross section and panel data, provides evidence in favour of the existence of HPWS practices impact on firm’s economic performance, differently measured. Although it does not seem to emerge robust evidence on the existence of complementarities among HPWS aspects on performances there is evidence of a general positive influence of the single practices. The results are quite sensible to the time lags, inducing to hypothesize that time varying heterogeneity is an important factor in determining the impact of organizational changes on economic performance. The implications of the analysis can be of help both to management and local level policy makers. Although the results are not simply extendible to other local production systems it may be argued that for contexts similar to the Reggio Emilia province, characterized by the presence of small and medium enterprises organized in districts and by a deep rooted unionism, with strong supporting institutions, the results and the implications here obtained can also fit well. However, a hope for future researches on the subject treated in the present work is that of collecting good quality information over wider geographical areas, possibly at national level, and repeated in time. Only in this way it is possible to solve the Gordian knot about the linkages between innovation, performance, high performance work practices and industrial relations.

Indagine sulla nozione di fatto urbano ne L'architettura della città di Aldo Rossi

Questa tesi di dottorato di ricerca ha come oggetto la nozione di fatto urbano elaborata e presentata da Aldo Rossi nel libro L’architettura della città edito nel 1966. Ne L’architettura della città sono molteplici le definizioni e le forme con cui è enunciata la nozione di fatto urbano. Nel corso della tesi si è indagato come la costruzione nel tempo di questo concetto è stata preceduta da diversi studi giovanili intrapresi dal 1953, poi riorganizzati e sintetizzati a partire dal 1963 in un quaderno manoscritto dal titolo “Manuale di urbanistica”, in diversi appunti e in due quaderni manoscritti. Il lavoro di ricerca ha ricostruito la formulazione della nozione di fatto urbano attraverso gli scritti di Rossi. In questa direzione la rilevazione della partecipazione di Rossi a dibattiti, seminari, riviste, corsi universitari o ricerche accademiche è apparsa di fondamentale importanza, per comprendere la complessità di un lavoro non riconducibile a dei concetti disciplinari, ma alla formazione di una teoria trasmissibile. Il tentativo di comprendere e spiegare la nozione di fatto urbano ha condotto ad esaminare l’accezione con cui Rossi compone L’architettura della città, che egli stesso assimila ad un trattato. L’analisi ha identificato come la composizione del libro non è direttamente riferibile ad un uso classico della stesura editoriale del trattato, la quale ha tra i riferimenti più noti nel passato la promozione di una pratica corretta come nel caso vitruviano o un’impalcatura instauratrice di una nuova categoria come nel caso dell’Alberti. La mancanza di un sistema globale e prescrittivo a differenza dei due libri fondativi e il rimando non immediato alla stesura di un trattato classico è evidente ne L’architettura della città. Tuttavia la possibilità di condurre la ricerca su una serie di documenti inediti ha permesso di rilevare come negli scritti a partire dal 1953, sia maturata una trattazione delle questioni centrali alla nozione di fatto urbano ricca di intuizioni, che aspirano ad un’autonomia, sintetizzate, seppure in modo non sistematico, nella stesura del celebre libro. Si è così cercato di mettere in luce la precisazione nel tempo della nozione di fatto urbano e della sua elaborazione nei molteplici scritti antecedenti la pubblicazione de L’architettura della città, precisando come Rossi, pur costruendo su basi teoriche la nozione di fatto urbano, ne indichi una visione progressiva, ossia un uso operativo sulla città. La ricerca si è proposta come obiettivo di comprendere le radici culturali della nozione di fatto urbano sia tramite un’esplorazione degli interessi di Rossi nel suo percorso formativo sia rispetto alla definizione della struttura materiale del fatto urbano che Rossi individua nelle permanenze e che alimenta nella sua definizione con differenti apporti derivanti da altre discipline. Compito di questa ricerca è stato rileggere criticamente il percorso formativo compiuto da Rossi, a partire dal 1953, sottolinearne gli ambiti innovativi e precisarne i limiti descrittivi che non vedranno mai la determinazione di una nozione esatta, ma piuttosto la strutturazione di una sintesi complessa e ricca di riferimenti ad altri studi. In sintesi la tesi si compone di tre parti: 1. la prima parte, dal titolo “La teoria dei fatti urbani ne L’architettura della città”, analizza il concetto di fatto urbano inserendolo all’interno del più generale contesto teorico contenuto nel libro L’architettura della città. Questo avviene tramite la scomposizione del libro, la concatenazione delle sue argomentazioni e la molteplicità delle fonti esplicitamente citate da Rossi. In questo ambito si precisa la struttura del libro attraverso la rilettura dei riferimenti serviti a Rossi per comporre il suo progetto teorico. Inoltre si ripercorre la sua vita attraverso le varie edizioni, le ristampe, le introduzioni e le illustrazioni. Infine si analizza il ruolo del concetto di fatto urbano nel libro rilevando come sia posto in un rapporto paritetico con il titolo del libro, conseguendone un’accezione di «fatto da osservare» assimilabile all’uso proposto dalla geografia urbana francese dei primi del Novecento. 2. la seconda parte, dal titolo “La formazione della nozione di fatto urbano 1953-66”, è dedicata alla presentazione dell’elaborazione teorica negli scritti di Rossi prima de L’architettura della città, ossia dal 1953 al 1966. Questa parte cerca di descrivere le radici culturali di Rossi, le sue collaborazioni e i suoi interessi ripercorrendo la progressiva definizione della concezione di città nel tempo. Si è analizzato il percorso maturato da Rossi e i documenti scritti fin dagli anni in cui era studente alla Facoltà di Architettura Politecnico di Milano. Emerge un quadro complesso in cui i primi saggi, gli articoli e gli appunti testimoniano una ricerca intellettuale tesa alla costruzione di un sapere sullo sfondo del realismo degli anni Cinquanta. Rossi matura infatti un impegno culturale che lo porta dopo la laurea ad affrontare discorsi più generali sulla città. In particolare la sua importante collaborazione con la rivista Casabella-continuità, con il suo direttore Ernesto Nathan Rogers e tutto il gruppo redazionale segnano il periodo successivo in cui compare l’interesse per la letteratura urbanistica, l’arte, la sociologia, la geografia, l’economia e la filosofia. Seguono poi dal 1963 gli anni di lavoro insieme al gruppo diretto da Carlo Aymonino all’Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, e in particolare le ricerche sulla tipologia edilizia e la morfologia urbana, che portano Rossi a compiere una sintesi analitica per la fondazione di una teoria della città. Dall’indagine si rileva infatti come gli scritti antecedenti L’architettura della città sviluppano lo studio dei fatti urbani fino ad andare a costituire il nucleo teorico di diversi capitoli del libro. Si racconta così la genesi del libro, la cui scrittura si è svolta nell’arco di due anni, e le aspirazioni che hanno portato quello che era stato concepito come un “manuale d’urbanistica” a divenire quello che Rossi definirà “l’abbozzo di un trattato” per la formulazione di una scienza urbana. 3. la terza parte, dal titolo “La struttura materiale dei fatti urbani: la teoria della permanenza”, indaga monograficamente lo studio della città come un fatto materiale, un manufatto, la cui costruzione è avvenuta nel tempo e del tempo mantiene le tracce. Sul tema della teoria della permanenza è stato importante impostare un confronto con il dibattito vivo negli anni della ricostruzione dopo la guerra intorno ai temi delle preesistenze ambientali nella ricostruzione negli ambienti storici. Sono emersi fin da subito importanti la relazione con Ernesto Nathan Rogers, le discussioni sulle pagine di Casabella-Continuità, la partecipazione ad alcuni dibatti e ricerche. Si è inoltre Rilevato l’uso di diversi termini mutuati dalle tesi filosofiche di alcune personalità come Antonio Banfi e Enzo Paci, poi elaborati dal nucleo redazionale di Casabella-Continuità, di cui faceva parte anche Rossi. Sono così emersi alcuni spostamenti di senso e la formulazione di un vocabolario di termini all’interno della complessa vicenda della cultura architettonica degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta. 1. Si è poi affrontato questo tema analizzando le forme con cui Rossi presenta la definizione della teoria della permanenza e i contributi desunti da alcuni autori per la costruzione scientifica di una teoria dell’architettura, il cui fine è quello di essere trasmissibile e di offrire strumenti di indagine concreti. Questa ricerca ha permesso di ipotizzare come il lavoro dei geografi francesi della prima metà del XX secolo, e in particolare il contributo più rilevante di Marcel Poëte e di Pierre Lavedan, costituiscono le fonti principali e il campo d’indagine maggiormente esplorato da Rossi per definire la teoria della permanenza e i monumenti. Le permanenze non sono dunque presentate ne L’architettura della città come il “tutto”, ma emergono da un metodo che sceglie di isolare i fatti urbani permanenti, consentendo così di compiere un’ipotesi su “ciò che resta” dopo le trasformazioni continue che operano nella città. Le fonti su cui ho lavorato sono state quelle annunciate da Rossi ne L’architettura della città, e più precisamente i testi nelle edizioni da lui consultate. Anche questo lavoro ha permesso un confronto dei testi che ha fatto emergere ne L’architettura della città l’uso di termini mutuati da linguaggi appartenenti ad altre discipline e quale sia l’uso di concetti estrapolati nella loro interezza. Presupposti metodologici Della formulazione della nozione di fatto urbano si sono indagate l’originalità dell’espressione, le connessioni presunte o contenute negli studi di Rossi sulla città attraverso la raccolta di fonti dirette e indirette che sono andate a formare un notevole corpus di scritti. Le fonti dirette più rilevanti sono state trovare nelle collezioni speciali del Getty Research Institute di Los Angeles in cui sono conservati gli Aldo Rossi Papers, questo archivio comprende materiali inediti dal 1954 al 1988. La natura dei materiali si presenta sotto forma di manoscritti, dattiloscritti, quaderni, documenti ciclostilati, appunti sparsi e una notevole quantità di corrispondenza. Negli Aldo Rossi Papers si trovano anche 32 dei 47 Quaderni Azzurri, le bozze de L’architettura della città e dell’ Autobiografia Scientifica. Per quanto riguarda in particolare L’architettura della città negli Aldo Rossi Papers sono conservati: un quaderno con il titolo “Manuale d’urbanistica, giugno 1963”, chiara prima bozza del libro, degli “Appunti per libro urbanistica estate/inverno 1963”, un quaderno con la copertina rossa datato 20 settembre 1964-8 agosto 1965 e un quaderno con la copertina blu datato 30 agosto 1965-15 dicembre 1965. La possibilità di accedere a questo archivio ha permesso di incrementare la bibliografia relativa agli studi giovanili consentendo di rileggere il percorso culturale in cui Rossi si è formato. E’ così apparsa fondamentale la rivalutazione di alcune questioni relative al realismo socialista che hanno portato a formare un più preciso quadro dei primi scritti di Rossi sullo sfondo di un complesso scenario intellettuale. A questi testi si è affiancata la raccolta delle ricerche universitarie, degli articoli pubblicati su riviste specializzate e degli interventi a dibattiti e seminari. A proposito de L’architettura della città si è raccolta un’ampia letteratura critica riferita sia al testo in specifico che ad una sua collocazione nella storia dell’architettura, mettendo in discussione alcune osservazioni che pongono L’architettura della città come un libro risolutivo e definitivo. Per quanto riguarda il capitolo sulla teoria della permanenza l’analisi è stata svolta a partire dai testi che Rossi stesso indicava ne L’architettura della città rivelando i diversi apporti della letteratura urbanistica francese, e permettendo alla ricerca di precisare le relazioni con alcuni scritti centrali e al contempo colti da Rossi come opportunità per intraprendere l’elaborazione dell’idea di tipo. Per quest’ultima parte si può precisare come Rossi formuli la sua idea di tipo in un contesto culturale dove l’interesse per questo tema era fondamentale. Dunque le fonti che hanno assunto maggior rilievo in quest’ultima fase emergono da un ricco panorama in cui Rossi compie diverse ricerche sia con il gruppo redazionale di Casabella-continuità, sia all’interno della scuola veneziana negli anni Sessanta, ma anche negli studi per l’ILSES e per l’Istituto Nazionale d’Urbanistica. RESEARCH ON THE NOTION OF URBAN ARTIFACT IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY BY ALDO ROSSI. Doctoral candidate: Letizia Biondi Tutor: Valter Balducci The present doctoral dissertation deals with the notion of urban artifact that was formulated and presented by Aldo Rossi in his book The Architecture of the City, published in 1966. In The Architecture of the City, the notion of urban artifact is enunciated through a wide range of definitions and forms. In this thesis, a research was done on how the construction of this concept over time was preceded by various studies started in 1953 during the author’s youth, then re-organized and synthesized since 1963 in a manuscript titled “Manual of urban planning” and in two more manuscripts later on. The work of research re-constructed the formulation of the notion of urban artifact through Rossi’s writings. In this sense, the examination of Rossi’s participation in debates, seminars, reviews, university courses or academic researches was of fundamental importance to understand the complexity of a work which is not to be attributed to disciplinary concepts, but to the formulation of a communicable theory. The effort to understand and to explain the notion of urban artifact led to an examination of the meaning used by Rossi to compose The Architecture of the City, which he defines as similar to a treatise. Through this analysis, it emerged that the composition of the book is not directly ascribable to the classical use of editorial writing of a treatise, whose most famous references in the past are the promotion of a correct practice as in the case of Vitruvio’s treatise, or the use of a structure that introduces a new category as in the Alberti case. Contrary to the two founding books, the lack of a global and prescriptive system and the not immediate reference to the writing of a classical treatise are evident in The Architecture of the City. However, the possibility of researching on some unpublished documents allowed to discover that in the writings starting from 1953 the analysis of the questions that are at the core of the notion of urban artifact is rich of intuitions, that aim to autonomy and that would be synthesized, even though not in a systematic way, in his famous book. The attempt was that of highlighting the specification over time of the notion of urban artifact and its elaboration in the various writings preceding the publication of The Architecture of the City. It was also specified that, despite building on theoretical grounds, Rossi indicates a progressive version of the notion of urban artifact, that is a performing use in the city. The present research aims to understand the cultural roots of the notion of urban artifact in two main directions: analyzing, firstly, Rossi’s interests along his formation path and, secondly, the definition of material structure of an urban artifact identified by Rossi in the permanences and enriched by various contributions from other disciplines. The purpose of the present research is to revise the formation path made by Rossi in a critical way, starting by 1953, underlining its innovative aspects and identifying its describing limits, which will never lead to the formulation of an exact notion, but rather to the elaboration of a complex synthesis, enriched by references to other studies. In brief, the thesis is composed of three parts: 1. The first part, titled “The Theory of urban artifacts in The Architecture of the City”, analyzes the concept of urban artifact in the more general theoretical context of the book The Architecture of the City. Such analysis is done by “disassembling” the book, and by linking together the argumentations and the multiplicity of the sources which are explicitly quoted by Rossi. In this context, the book’s structure is defined more precisely through the revision of the references used by Rossi to compose his theoretical project. Moreover, the author’s life is traced back through the various editions, re-printings, introductions and illustrations. Finally, it is specified which role the concept of urban artifact has in the book, pointing out that it is placed in an equal relation with the book’s title; by so doing, the concept of urban artifact gets the new meaning of “fact to be observed”, similar to the use that was suggested by the French urban geography at the beginning of the 20th century. 2. The second part, titled “The formation of the notion of urban artifact 1953-66”, introduces the theoretical elaboration in Rossi’s writings before The Architecture of the City, that is from 1953 to 1966. This part tries to describe Rossi’s cultural roots, his collaborations and his interests, tracing back the progressive definition of his conception of city over time. The analysis focuses on the path followed by Rossi and on the documents that he wrote since the years as a student at the Department of Architecture at the Politecnico in Milan. This leads to a complex scenario of first essays, articles and notes that bear witness to the intellectual research aiming to the construction of a knowledge on the background of the Realism of the 1950s. Rossi develops, in fact, a cultural engagement that leads him after his studies to deal with more general issues about the city. In particular, his important collaboration with the architecture magazine “Casabella-continuità”, with the director Ernesto Nathan Rogers and with the whole redaction staff mark the following period when he starts getting interested in city planning literature, art, sociology, geography, economics and philosophy. Since 1963, Rossi has worked with the group directed by Carlo Aymonino at the “Istituto Universitario di Architettura” (University Institute of Architecture) in Venice, especially researching on building typologies and urban morphology. During these years, Rossi elaborates an analytical synthesis for the formulation of a theory about the city. From the present research, it is evident that the writings preceding The Architecture of the City develop the studies on urban artifacts, which will become theoretical core of different chapters of the book. In conclusion, the genesis of the book is described; written in two years, what was conceived to be an “urban planning manual” became a “treatise draft” for the formulation of an urban science, as Rossi defines it. 3. The third part is titled “The material structure of urban artifacts: the theory of permanence”. This research is made on the study of the city as a material fact, a manufacture, whose construction was made over time, bearing the traces of time. As far as the topic of permanence is concerned, it was also important to draw a comparison with the debate about the issues of environmental pre-existence of re-construction in historical areas, which was very lively during the years of the Reconstruction. Right from the beginning, of fundamental importance were the relationship with Ernesto Nathan Rogers, the discussions on the pages of Casabella-Continuità and the participation to some debates and researches. It is to note that various terms were taken by the philosophical thesis by some personalities such as Antonio Banfi and Enzo Paci, and then re-elaborated by the redaction staff at Casabella-Continuità, which Rossi took part in as well. Through this analysis, it emerged that there were some shifts in meaning and the formulation of a vocabulary of terms within the complex area of the architectonic culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, I examined the shapes in which Rossi introduces the definition of the theory of permanence and the references by some authors for the scientific construction of an architecture theory whose aim is being communicable and offering concrete research tools. Such analysis allowed making a hypothesis about the significance for Rossi of the French geographers of the first half of the 20th century: in particular, the work by Marcel Poëte and by Pierre Lavedan is the main source and the research area which Rossi mostly explored to define the theory of permanence and monuments. Therefore, in The Architecture of the City, permanencies are not presented as the “whole”, but they emerge from a method which isolates permanent urban artifacts, in this way allowing making a hypothesis on “what remains” after the continuous transformations made in the city. The sources examined were quoted by Rossi in The Architecture of the City; in particular I analyzed them in the same edition which Rossi referred to. Through such an analysis, it was possible to make a comparison of the texts with one another, which let emerge the use of terms taken by languages belonging to other disciplines in The Architecture of the City and which the use of wholly extrapolated concepts is. Methodological premises As far as the formulation of the notion of urban artifact is concerned, the analysis focuses on the originality of the expression, the connections that are assumed or contained in Rossi’s writings about the city, by collecting direct and indirect sources which formed a significant corpus of writings. The most relevant direct sources were found in the special collections of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where the “Aldo Rossi Papers” are conserved. This archive contains unpublished material from 1954 to 1988, such as manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks, cyclostyled documents, scraps and notes, and several letters. In the Aldo Rossi Papers there are also 32 out of the 47 Light Blue Notebooks (Quaderni Azzurri), the rough drafts of The Architecture of the City and of the “A Scientific Autobiography”. As regards The Architecture of the City in particular, the Aldo Rossi Papers preserve: a notebook by the title of “Urban planning manual, June, 1963”, which is an explicit first draft of the book; “Notes for urban planning book summer/winter 1963”; a notebook with a red cover dated September 20th, 1964 – August 8th, 1965; and a notebook with a blue cover dated August 30th, 1965 – December 15th, 1965. The possibility of accessing this archive allowed to increase the bibliography related to the youth studies, enabling a revision of the cultural path followed by Rossi’s education. To that end, it was fundamental to re-evaluate some issues linked to the socialist realism which led to a more precise picture of the first writings by Rossi against the background of the intellectual scenario where he formed. In addition to these texts, the collection of university researches, the articles published on specialized reviews and the speeches at debates and seminars were also examined. About The Architecture of the City, a wide-ranging critical literature was collected, related both to the text specifics and to its collocation in the story of architecture, questioning some observations which define The Architecture of the City as a conclusive and definite book. As far as the chapter on the permanence theory is concerned, the analysis started by the texts that Rossi indicated in The Architecture of the City, revealing the different contributions from the French literature on urban planning. This allowed to the present research a more specific definition of the connections to some central writings which, at the same time, were seen by Rossi as an opportunity to start up the elaboration of the idea of type. For this last part, it can be specified that Rossi formulates his idea of type in a cultural context where the interest in this topic was fundamental. Therefore, the sources which played a central role in this final phase emerge from an extensive panorama in which Rossi researched not only with the redaction staff at Casablanca-continuità and within the School of Venice in the 1960s, but also in his studies for the ILSES (Institute of the Region Lombardia for Economics and Social Studies) and for the National Institute of Urban Planning.

Sostanzialismo e relazionalismo dello spaziotempo alla luce della relatività generale

Until recently the debate on the ontology of spacetime had only a philosophical significance, since, from a physical point of view, General Relativity has been made "immune" to the consequences of the "Hole Argument" simply by reducing the subject to the assertion that solutions of Einstein equations which are mathematically different and related by an active diffeomorfism are physically equivalent. From a technical point of view, the natural reading of the consequences of the "Hole Argument” has always been to go further and say that the mathematical representation of spacetime in General Relativity inevitably contains a “superfluous structure” brought to light by the gauge freedom of the theory. This position of apparent split between the philosophical outcome and the physical one has been corrected thanks to a meticulous and complicated formal analysis of the theory in a fundamental and recent (2006) work by Luca Lusanna and Massimo Pauri entitled “Explaining Leibniz equivalence as difference of non-inertial appearances: dis-solution of the Hole Argument and physical individuation of point-events”. The main result of this article is that of having shown how, from a physical point of view, point-events of Einstein empty spacetime, in a particular class of models considered by them, are literally identifiable with the autonomous degrees of freedom of the gravitational field (the Dirac observables, DO). In the light of philosophical considerations based on realism assumptions of the theories and entities, the two authors then conclude by saying that spacetime point-events have a degree of "weak objectivity", since they, depending on a NIF (non-inertial frame), unlike the points of the homogeneous newtonian space, are plunged in a rich and complex non-local holistic structure provided by the “ontic part” of the metric field. Therefore according to the complex structure of spacetime that General Relativity highlights and within the declared limits of a methodology based on a Galilean scientific representation, we can certainly assert that spacetime has got "elements of reality", but the inevitably relational elements that are in the physical detection of point-events in the vacuum of matter (highlighted by the “ontic part” of the metric field, the DO) are closely dependent on the choice of the global spatiotemporal laboratory where the dynamics is expressed (NIF). According to the two authors, a peculiar kind of structuralism takes shape: the point structuralism, with common features both of the absolutist and substantival tradition and of the relationalist one. The intention of this thesis is that of proposing a method of approaching the problem that is, at least at the beginning, independent from the previous ones, that is to propose an approach based on the possibility of describing the gravitational field at three distinct levels. In other words, keeping the results achieved by the work of Lusanna and Pauri in mind and following their underlying philosophical assumptions, we intend to partially converge to their structuralist approach, but starting from what we believe is the "foundational peculiarity" of General Relativity, which is that characteristic inherent in the elements that constitute its formal structure: its essentially geometric nature as a theory considered regardless of the empirical necessity of the measure theory. Observing the theory of General Relativity from this perspective, we can find a "triple modality" for describing the gravitational field that is essentially based on a geometric interpretation of the spacetime structure. The gravitational field is now "visible" no longer in terms of its autonomous degrees of freedom (the DO), which, in fact, do not have a tensorial and, therefore, nor geometric nature, but it is analyzable through three levels: a first one, called the potential level (which the theory identifies with the components of the metric tensor), a second one, known as the connections level (which in the theory determine the forces acting on the mass and, as such, offer a level of description related to the one that the newtonian gravitation provides in terms of components of the gravitational field) and, finally, a third level, that of the Riemann tensor, which is peculiar to General Relativity only. Focusing from the beginning on what is called the "third level" seems to present immediately a first advantage: to lead directly to a description of spacetime properties in terms of gauge-invariant quantites, which allows to "short circuit" the long path that, in the treatises analyzed, leads to identify the "ontic part” of the metric field. It is then shown how to this last level it is possible to establish a “primitive level of objectivity” of spacetime in terms of the effects that matter exercises in extended domains of spacetime geometrical structure; these effects are described by invariants of the Riemann tensor, in particular of its irreducible part: the Weyl tensor. The convergence towards the affirmation by Lusanna and Pauri that the existence of a holistic, non-local and relational structure from which the properties quantitatively identified of point-events depend (in addition to their own intrinsic detection), even if it is obtained from different considerations, is realized, in our opinion, in the assignment of a crucial role to the degree of curvature of spacetime that is defined by the Weyl tensor even in the case of empty spacetimes (as in the analysis conducted by Lusanna and Pauri). In the end, matter, regarded as the physical counterpart of spacetime curvature, whose expression is the Weyl tensor, changes the value of this tensor even in spacetimes without matter. In this way, going back to the approach of Lusanna and Pauri, it affects the DOs evolution and, consequently, the physical identification of point-events (as our authors claim). In conclusion, we think that it is possible to see the holistic, relational, and non-local structure of spacetime also through the "behavior" of the Weyl tensor in terms of the Riemann tensor. This "behavior" that leads to geometrical effects of curvature is characterized from the beginning by the fact that it concerns extensive domains of the manifold (although it should be pointed out that the values of the Weyl tensor change from point to point) by virtue of the fact that the action of matter elsewhere indefinitely acts. Finally, we think that the characteristic relationality of spacetime structure should be identified in this "primitive level of organization" of spacetime.

Percorsi di gender performance: fotografia tra arte e moda dagli anni Novanta ad oggi

My project explores and compares different forms of gender performance in contemporary art and visual culture according to a perspective centered on photography. Thanks to its attesting power this medium can work as a ready-made. In fact during the 20th century it played a key role in the cultural emancipation of the body which (using a Michel Foucault’s expression) has now become «the zero point of the world». Through performance the body proves to be a living material of expression and communication while photography ensures the recording of any ephemeral event that happens in time and space. My questioning approach considers the gender constructed imagery from the 1990s to the present in order to investigate how photography’s strong aura of realism promotes and allows fantasies of transformation. The contemporary fascination with gender (especially for art and fashion) represents a crucial issue in the global context of postmodernity and is manifested in a variety of visual media, from photography to video and film. Moreover the internet along with its digital transmission of images has deeply affected our world (from culture to everyday life) leading to a postmodern preference for performativity over the more traditional and linear forms of narrativity. As a consequence individual borders get redefined by the skin itself which (dissected through instant vision) turns into a ductile material of mutation and hybridation in the service of identity. My critical assumptions are taken from the most relevant changes occurred in philosophy during the last two decades as a result of the contributions by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze who developed a cross-disciplinary and comparative approach to interpret the crisis of modernity. They have profoundly influenced feminist studies so that the category of gender has been reassessed in contrast with sex (as a biological connotation) and in relation to history, culture, society. The ideal starting point of my research is the year 1990. I chose it as the approximate historical moment when the intersection of race, class and gender were placed at the forefront of international artistic production concerned with identity, diversity and globalization. Such issues had been explored throughout the 1970s but it was only from the mid-1980s onward that they began to be articulated more consistently. Published in 1990, the book "Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity" by Judith Butler marked an important breakthrough by linking gender to performance as well as investigating the intricate connections between theory and practice, embodiment and representation. It inspired subsequent research in a variety of disciplines, art history included. In the same year Teresa de Lauretis launched the definition of queer theory to challenge the academic perspective in gay and lesbian studies. In the meantime the rise of Third Wave Feminism in the US introduced a racially and sexually inclusive vision over the global situation in order to reflect on subjectivity, new technologies and popular culture in connection with gender representation. These conceptual tools have enabled prolific readings of contemporary cultural production whether fine arts or mass media. After discussing the appropriate framework of my project and taking into account the postmodern globalization of the visual, I have turned to photography to map gender representation both in art and in fashion. Therefore I have been creating an archive of images around specific topics. I decided to include fashion photography because in the 1990s this genre moved away from the paradigm of an idealized and classical beauty toward a new vernacular allied with lifestyles, art practices, pop and youth culture; as one might expect the dominant narrative modes in fashion photography are now mainly influenced by cinema and snapshot. These strategies originate story lines and interrupted narratives using models’ performance to convey a particular imagery where identity issues emerge as an essential part of fashion spectacle. Focusing on the intersections of gender identities with socially and culturally produced identities, my approach intends to underline how the fashion world has turned to current trends in art photography and in some case turned to the artists themselves. The growing fluidity of the categories that distinguish art from fashion photography represents a particularly fruitful moment of visual exchange. Varying over time the dialogue between these two fields has always been vital; nowadays it can be studied as a result of this close relationship between contemporary art world and consumer culture. Due to the saturation of postmodern imagery the feedback between art and fashion has become much more immediate and then increasingly significant for anyone who wants to investigate the construction of gender identity through performance. In addition to that a lot of magazines founded in the 1990s bridged the worlds of art and fashion because some of their designers and even editors were art-school graduates encouraging innovation. The inclusion of art within such magazines aimed at validating them as a form of art in themselves supporting a dynamic intersection for music, fashion, design and youth culture: an intersection that also contributed to create and spread different gender stereotypes. This general interest in fashion produced many exhibitions of and about fashion itself at major international venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Since then this celebrated success of fashion has been regarded as a typical element of postmodern culture. Owing to that I have also based my analysis on some important exhibitions dealing with gender performance like "Féminin-Masculin" at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (1995), "Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose. Gender performance in photography" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (1997), "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum (2007), "Female Trouble" at the Pinakothek der Moderne in München together with the workshops dedicated to "Performance: gender and identity" in June 2005 at the Tate Modern of London. Since 2003 in Italy we have had Gender Bender - an international festival held annually in Bologna - to explore the gender imagery stemming from contemporary culture. In few days this festival offers a series of events ranging from visual arts, performance, cinema, literature to conferences and music. Being aware that any method of research is neither race nor gender neutral I have traced these critical paths to question gender identity in a multicultural perspective taking account of the political implications too. In fact, if visibility may be equated with exposure, we can also read these images as points of intersection of visibility with social power. Since gender assignations rely so heavily on the visual, the postmodern dismantling of gender certainty through performance has wide-ranging effects that need to be analyzed. In some sense this practice can even contest the dominance of visual within postmodernism. My visual map in contemporary art and fashion photography includes artists like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Hellen van Meene, Rineke Dijkstra, Ed Templeton, Ryan McGinley, Anne Daems, Miwa Yanagi, Tracey Moffat, Catherine Opie, Tomoko Sawada, Vanessa Beecroft, Yasumasa Morimura, Collier Schorr among others.

Ignazio Gardella, metodo e linguaggio nel progetto della residenza

La ricerca inquadra all’interno dell’opera dell’autore, lo specifico tema della residenza. Esso costituisce il campo di applicazione del progetto di architettura, in cui più efficacemente ricercare i tratti caratteristici del metodo progettuale dell’architetto, chiave di lettura dello studio proposto. Il processo che giunge alla costituzione materiale dell’architettura, viene considerato nelle fasi in cui è scomposto, negli strumenti che adotta, negli obbiettivi che si pone, nel rapporto con i sistemi produttivi, per come affronta il tema della forma e del programma e confrontato con la vasta letteratura presente nel pensiero di alcuni autori vicini a Ignazio Gardella. Si definiscono in tal modo i tratti di una metodologia fortemente connotata dal realismo, che rende coerente una ricerca empirica e razionale, legata ad un’idea di architettura classica, di matrice illuministica e attenta alle istanze della modernità, all’interno della quale si realizza l’eteronomia linguistica che caratterizza uno dei tratti caratteristici delle architetture di Ignazio Gardella; aspetto più volte interpretato come appartenenza ai movimenti del novecento, che intersecano costantemente la lunga carriera dell’architetto. L’analisi dell’opera della residenza è condotta non per casi esemplari, ma sulla totalità dei progetti che si avvale anche di contributi inediti. Essa è intesa come percorso di ricerca personale sui processi compositivi e sull’uso del linguaggio e permette un riposizionamento della figura di Gardella, in relazione al farsi dell’architettura, della sua realizzazione e non alla volontà di assecondare stili o norme a-priori. E’ la dimensione pratica, del mestiere, quella che meglio si presta all’interpretazione dei progetti di Gardella. Le residenze dell’architetto si mostrano per la capacità di adattarsi ai vincoli del luogo, del committente, della tecnologia, attraverso la re-interpretazione formale e il trasferimento da un tema all’altro, degli elementi essenziali che mostrano attraverso la loro immagine, una precisa idea di casa e di architettura, non autoriale, ma riconoscibile e a-temporale.

International Agricultural Trade under Regulatory Asymmetry: An Economic Analysis of SME Export Behavior

Over the last three decades, international agricultural trade has grown significantly. Technological advances in transportation logistics and storage have created opportunities to ship anything almost anywhere. Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have also opened new pathways to an increasingly global market place. Yet, international agricultural trade is often constrained by differences in regulatory regimes. The impact of “regulatory asymmetry” is particularly acute for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack resources and expertise to successfully operate in markets that have substantially different regulatory structures. As governments seek to encourage the development of SMEs, policy makers often confront the critical question of what ultimately motivates SME export behavior. Specifically, there is considerable interest in understanding how SMEs confront the challenges of regulatory asymmetry. Neoclassical models of the firm generally emphasize expected profit maximization under uncertainty, however these approaches do not adequately explain the entrepreneurial decision under regulatory asymmetry. Behavioral theories of the firm offer a far richer understanding of decision making by taking into account aspirations and adaptive performance in risky environments. This paper develops an analytical framework for decision making of a single agent. Considering risk, uncertainty and opportunity cost, the analysis focuses on the export behavior response of an SME in a situation of regulatory asymmetry. Drawing on the experience of fruit processor in Muzaffarpur, India, who must consider different regulatory environments when shipping fruit treated with sulfur dioxide, the study dissects the firm-level decision using @Risk, a Monte Carlo computational tool.

Essays in Behavioral Personnel Economics

The thesis contemplates 4 papers and its main goal is to provide evidence on the prominent impact that behavioral analysis can play into the personnel economics domain.The research tool prevalently used in the thesis is the experimental analysis.The first paper provide laboratory evidence on how the standard screening model–based on the assumption that the pecuniary dimension represents the main workers’choice variable–fails when intrinsic motivation is introduced into the analysis.The second paper explores workers’ behavioral reactions when dealing with supervisors that may incur in errors in the assessment of their job performance.In particular,deserving agents that have exerted high effort may not be rewarded(Type-I errors)and undeserving agents that have exerted low effort may be rewarded(Type-II errors).Although a standard neoclassical model predicts both errors to be equally detrimental for effort provision,this prediction fails when tested through a laboratory experiment.Findings from this study suggest how failing to reward deserving agents is significantly more detrimental than rewarding undeserving agents.The third paper investigates the performance of two antithetic non-monetary incentive schemes on schooling achievement.The study is conducted through a field experiment.Students randomized to the main treatments have been incentivized to cooperate or to compete in order to earn additional exam points.Consistently with the theoretical model proposed in the paper,the level of effort in the competitive scheme proved to be higher than in the cooperative setting.Interestingly however,this result is characterized by a strong gender effect.The fourth paper exploits a natural experiment setting generated by the credit crunch occurred in the UK in the2007.The economic turmoil has negatively influenced the private sector,while public sector employees have not been directly hit by the crisis.This shock–through the rise of the unemployment rate and the increasing labor market uncertainty–has generated an exogenous variation in the opportunity cost of maternity leave in private sector labor force.This paper identifies the different responses.

La traduzione letteraria in Unione Sovietica (1930-1955)

In Unione Sovietica il partito mette in atto un sistema di istituzioni per controllare il mondo culturale e la produzione scritta: il Glavlit, il massimo istituto censorio, l’Unione degli scrittori, un’editoria centralizzata e statalizzata e un unico metodo creativo possibile, il realismo socialista. Il settore della traduzione letteraria e della ricezione della letteratura straniera vengono ugualmente posti sotto controllo. All’interno dell’Unione degli scrittori operano la Sezione dei Traduttori, a cui spetta la formazione dei nuovi traduttori sovietici, e la Commissione Straniera, che stabilisce quali autori e quali libri occidentali debbano essere tradotti. Il Reparto straniero del Glavlit controlla il materiale a stampa proveniente dall’estero, la sua distribuzione e le modalità di consultazione e si occupa di effettuare una censura sia sul testo in lingua straniera che su quello tradotto in lingua russa. Parallelamente, il codice estetico e normativo del realismo socialista comincia a influenzare lo sviluppo della teoria della traduzione. La traduttologia si allinea alla critica letteraria ufficiale e promuove un approccio libero al testo che permetta l’introduzione di modifiche testuali arbitrarie da parte del traduttore o del redattore.

Paul Flandrin (1811-1902), un nuovo sguardo sul paesaggio dell'Ottocento

Questa ricerca ha l’obiettivo di dare nuovi contributi alla conoscenza della pittura di paesaggio francese nell’Ottocento attraverso lo studio dell’opera di Paul Flandrin (1811-1902). Flandrin si colloca al crocevia di esperienze fondamentali nella ricerca artistica di metà Ottocento: l’eredità di Camille Corot, l’insegnamento di Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, la pratica del lavoro en plein air, la tradizione del paesaggio neoclassico. Il corpus di opere del pittore lionese Paul Flandrin (1811-1902) ricostruito in questa tesi è frutto di una sistematica operazione di ricerca sul campo e viene in seguito analizzato alla luce dei recenti studi sulla pittura di paesaggio neoclassico in Francia nel XIX secolo. La ricerca si fonda su una grande quantità di materiale inedito: dipinti, disegni, taccuini di studio en plein air, corrispondenza con colleghi e amici. Da questa ricerca la fisionomia artistica di Paul Flandrin emerge ben individuata singolarmente e al tempo stesso ancorata al contesto storico-artistico attraverso le relazioni con i colleghi, l’utilizzo di determinate tecniche, la frequentazione di mete comuni ai paesaggisti suoi contemporanei, la decisa presa di posizione a favore del paesaggio neoclassico.

Essays in structural heuristics

This dissertation introduces and develops a new method of rational reconstruction called structural heuristics. Structural heuristics takes assignment of structure to any given object of investigation as the starting point for its rational reconstruction. This means to look at any given object as a system of relations and of transformation laws for those relations. The operational content of this heuristics can be summarized as follows: when facing any given system the best way to approach it is to explicitly look for a possible structure of it. The utilization of structural heuristics allows structural awareness, which is considered a fundamental epistemic disposition, as well as a fundamental condition for the rational reconstruction of systems of knowledge. In this dissertation, structural heuristics is applied to reconstructing the domain of economic knowledge. This is done by exploring four distinct areas of economic research: (i) economic axiomatics; (ii) realism in economics; (iii) production theory; (iv) economic psychology. The application of structural heuristics to these fields of economic inquiry shows the flexibility and potential of structural heuristics as epistemic tool for theoretical exploration and reconstruction.

Le désert et la littérature de voyage européenne du XIXe siècle

L'Europe commence à découvrir le désert à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Ce milieu présente des aspects multiples aux premiers explorateurs, qui le décrivent comme un lieu vivant et varié. La géopolitique constitue le premier approche d'analyse : le désert peut être rendu plus viable si mieux administré, donc libre de la domination ottomane. Au cours du siècle, le tourisme se développe, aussi en raison de la colonisation ; l'expérience du désert devient commune, et les voyageurs partent en quête d'une expérience spirituelle aussi bien que d'une aventure. Le désert devient un écran de projection pour la rêverie et les souvenirs des Européens (la Bible et les topos traditionnels demeurent actifs dans l'imaginaire occidental) ; seules certaines caractéristiques de ce milieu sont dès lors appréciées par les voyageurs. Ensuite, avec l'âge du Réalisme, devient objet d'appréciation de la part des peintres. Grâce à la médiation de l'art, la littérature commence à regarder au désert d'un point de vue esthétique, et elle lui reconnaît un charme de la nudité et du dépouillement. La mort et le minéral caractérisent ce milieu vers la fin du siècle ; le désert se vide, et devient le "désert de sable" que nous tous connaissons aujourd'hui.

Oltre il postmodernismo: L'opera di David Foster Wallace tra autoriflessivita' e realismo

La presente ricerca si propone di delineare un orizzonte critico e filosofico che permetta di ridefinire il concetto di postmodernismo in America alla fine del XX secolo e, a partire dagli anni Novanta del Novecento, il tentativo di un suo superamento da parte della letteratura contemporanea. L’analisi si focalizza sull’opera dello scrittore David Foster Wallace che esemplifica le contraddizioni interne al postmodernismo e mostra il passaggio cruciale dal postmodernismo a una non-ancora-ben-definita letteratura contemporanea. Muovendosi in un’ottica interdisciplinare e comparata, la tesi si propone di mostrare come Wallace, riprendendo la metariflessività e alcune opere di scrittori postmodernisti, tenti un atto di liberazione dalle convenzioni postmoderne attraverso un «postmodern founders’ patricidal work»: un “parricidio” letterario, prima di accettazione e poi di superamento. Attraverso un percorso tematico, nonché strutturale, si cercherà dunque di porre in rilievo il recupero del realismo da parte di Wallace che, seppur nel suo breve periodo compositivo, rappresenta questa nuova direzione della letteratura americana.