Abstract
This chapter presents scopes and themes of the book. Above all, it introduces the case of Messina (Sicily, Italy), a city hit by a disastrous earthquake in 1908. With figures comprised between 65,000 and 86,000 victims, the scale of the event was apocalyptical. The Messina earthquake was the first massive disaster that hit Italy after the Unification. The event, thus, acquired symbolic and political meanings for the national government of the time, and it was intended by the State as an occasion to perform according to very modern notions of efficiency and effectiveness. The chapters suggests that this old crisis provides many familiar elements for today’s readers, and it can be considered an event to be re-visited—especially because it is a catastrophe that has never really ended and continues until now.
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Notes
- 1.
Indeed, the Messina disaster was also “modern” in the way that it was able to generate international aid organizations and donations. Although no study has analyzed this mechanism as a “system”—in the same way that disaster research has with cases such as Haiti (Schuller 2012)—and the available studies focus only on specific donors and nations, we can nonetheless draw an idea of the extension and logic of this organization of aid on the basis of the contributions by: Di Giacomo (2008), Mazzoli (2008), Di Paola (2010), Andreides (2010), Caroniti (2010), Bottaro (2010).
- 2.
The term “underclass” is highly problematic, and it expresses an ambiguous and controversial concept (Bhalla and Lapeyre 1999, p. 96). We agree with Katz (1989, p. 10) who has noticed that this word is a synonym for the undeserving poor. Although we continue to use it from time to time, we are aware that the experience of this societal component stems from processes that affect the whole of society (Buck 1996, pp. 278–279). Our use, then, is a synonym for “lumpen”, or the lower levels of the proletariat—the outcome of a structural order.
- 3.
Subalternity is a Gramscian concept whose interpretations and meanings depend on different intellectual traditions developed in different continents and political milieus. By utilizing this word, we point at the hierarchies within society and at those processes, led by local elites, which produce oppressed groups within a nation (in terms of wealth, ethnicity, cultural capital, etc.). Groups, moreover, whose (undesired) existence allows the self-definition of the dominant components of a nation. With regard to this latter and perhaps obscure aspect, the concept of subalternity expresses the exposition of powerless groups to public narrations, definitions, and stigmas produced by those who are in a position of power. Not by chance, in Gramsci’s terms, “For a social elite, the members of subaltern groups always have something of a barbaric or pathological nature about them” (Gramsci 1996, Q3 §12).
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Farinella, D., Saitta, P. (2019). Introduction. In: The Endless Reconstruction and Modern Disasters. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19361-4_1
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