Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:28:37.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sandro Penna and anti-Oedipal impegno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

John Champagne
John Champagne*
Affiliation:
Penn State University, Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
*
∗Email: champagne3@mac.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A number of Italianists have recently argued the need to reconsider the term impegno in the light of feminist and queer critiques. Such critiques do not simply highlight the way in which impegno has usually been construed as a masculine, heterosexual domain. They also note that its employment often presupposes a gendered, heteronormative account of politics itself. Complicating this sense of politics via a reading of recent work in queer theory which insists that desire and need are intertwined, this essay argues for a reconsideration of the work of Italian poet Sandro Penna – someone whose oeuvre has regularly been construed by literary critics as apolitical – as an example of impegno. Bringing together psychoanalysis, the work of Michel Foucault, and historical materialism, the essay argues that, in their historical context, Penna's poems staged a resistance to what Freud termed the genital organisation of the libido and are thus ‘anti-Oedipal’.

Keywords

impegnoPennaFascismhomosexualityhistorical materialismpsychoanalysisqueer
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 339 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, W. L. 2004. “Modernism in Florence: The Politics of Avant-Garde Culture in the Early Twentieth Century.” In Italian Modernism, Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, edited by Somigli, L., and Moroni, M., 221–242. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, R. 1993. The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art, and Homosexual Fantasy. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonello, P., and Mussgnug, F., eds. 2009. Postmodern Impegno, Ethics and Commitment in Contemporary Italian Culture. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Bataille, G. 1985. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, edited by Stoekl, A. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bataille, G. 2001. Story of the Eye. San Francisco: City Lights Books.Google Scholar
Bellassai, S. 2005. “The Masculine Mystique: Anti-Modernism and Virility in Fascist Italy” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10(3):314–335.Google Scholar
Benadusi, L. 2005. Il Nemico dell'uomo nuovo: l'omosessualità nell'esperimento totalitario fascista. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Boscagli, M. 1996. Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Burns, J. 2001. Fragments of Impegno: Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative, 1980–2000. Leeds: Northern Universities Press.Google Scholar
Butcher, J. 2002. “Enigma and Euphemism in the Poetry of Sandro Penna” Quaderni d'Italianistica: Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 23(1):105–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champagne, J. 1995. The Ethics of Marginality, a New Approach to Gay Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Champagne, J. 2013. Aesthetic Modernism and Masculinity in Fascist Italy. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cowie, E. 1993. “Pornography and Fantasy, Psychoanalytic Perspectives.” In Sex Exposed, Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, edited by Segal, L., and McIntosh, M., 132–152. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Crowther, P. 1997. The Language of Twentieth Century Art: A Conceptual History. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, D. T. 1993. Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Floyd, K. 2009. The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1982. “The Discourse on Language.” In The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, 215–238. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1986. The Use of Pleasure. Vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality , Translated by Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction , Translated by Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translated by Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Freud, S. 1963a. “The Infantile Genital Organization of the Libido: A Supplement to the Theory of Sexuality.” In Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, 171–175. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Freud, S. 1963b. “The Passing of the Oedipus Complex.” In Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, 176–182. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Freud, S. 1990. Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, Translated by Strachey, James. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Freud, S. 2000. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Translated by Strachey, James. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Freud, S. 2010. The Interpretation of Dreams, Translated by Strachey, James. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Garboli, C. 2010. “Prefazione.” In Poesie, by Penna, Sandro, VII–XIII. Milan: Garzanti.Google Scholar
Goretti, G., and Giartosio, T. 2006. La città e l'isola, omosessuali al confino nell'Italia fascista. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Hennessy, R. 2000. Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hewitt, A. 1996. Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist Imaginary. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Macrì, O. 1994. “Il ‘divino fanciullo’ di Sandro Penna: nevrosi e poesia.” In Semeia; itinerari per Marcello Pagnini, edited by Innocenti, L., Marucci, F., and Pugliatti, P., 409–424. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
O'Leary, A. 2009. “Marco Tullio Giordana, or the Persistence of Impegno.” In Postmodern Impegno, Ethics and Commitment in Contemporary Italian Culture, edited by Antonello, P., and Mussgnug, F., 213–231. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Pavese, C. 1962. “Interpretation of Walt Whitman, Poet.” In American Literature, Essays and Opinions, Translated and with an introduction by Fussell, Edwin, 117–141. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pecora, E. 1984. Sandro Penna: una cheta follia. Milan: Frassinelli.Google Scholar
Pecora, E. 1999. “Sandro Penna.” In Storia generale della letturatura italiana, edited by Borsellino, N., and Pedullà, W., 352–374. Milan: Federico Motta.Google Scholar
Penna, S. 2010. Poesie. Milan: Garzanti.Google Scholar
Petrosino, D. 1996. “Traditori della stirpe: il razzismo contro gli omosessuali nella stampa del fascismo.” In Studi sul razzismo italiano, edited by Casali, L., and Burgio, A., 89–107. Bologna: CLUEB.Google Scholar
Pinkus, K. 1995. Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising Under Fascism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rocke, M. 1996. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedita, G. 2006. “Sandro Penna e il regime. ‘Non fuggono i divieti alla felicità’” Strumenti Critici: Rivista Quadrimestrale di Critica Letteraria 21(2):289–296.Google Scholar
Settis, S. 2012. “Impegnarsi in Italia? Mitologie e destini dell”intellettuale impegnato'” Italian Culture 30(1):68–75.Google Scholar
Shreve, J. 1992. “Sandro Penna.” In Twentieth-Century Italian Poets: First Series, edited by Wedel De Stasio, G., Cambon, G., and Illiano, A., 196–203. Detroit: Thomson Gale.Google Scholar
Spackman, B. 1996. Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Theweleit, K. 1987. Male Fantasies, Vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tinkcom, M. 2002. Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Valesio, P. 2004. “Foreword: After The Conquest of the Stars.” In Italian Modernism, Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, edited by Somigli, L., and Moroni, M., IX–XXIII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Warner, M. 1999. The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar