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Introduction: Social and Mental Alienation in Italy Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead

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The Years of Alienation in Italy

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the multiple meanings of the notion of alienation, providing some essential coordinates for the understanding of such a slippery concept. This chapter proceeds by contextualizing what we call the “years of alienation” and explaining why we believe this is a particularly telling label for Italy’s sociopolitical and cultural situation between the so-called Economic Boom and the Years of Lead (1958–1980). In order to do so, we explore, on the one hand, the ideological debate on alienation understood in its sociopolitical connotations, which found in literature and cinema a privileged site of elaboration; and on the other hand, Franco Basaglia’s subversion of the field of psychiatric health care. In particular, we pay attention to the clinical and the political meanings that mental alienation took on in this context, and the influence this revolution in psychiatry had on literature, cinema, and popular music.

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Change history

  • 10 October 2019

    The book was inadvertently published with the given name and family name of the author differently abbreviated in all the chapters as A. S. Tarabochia; whereas it has been updated as A. Sforza Tarabochia.

Notes

  1. 1.

    For data on Italy’s role in the European market see Ginsborg’s chapter ‘The Economic Miracle’ (Ginsborg 1990, pp. 212–216).

  2. 2.

    For a complete overview of the relationship between Adriano Olivetti and Italian writers see La letteratura al tempo di Adriano Olivetti (Lupo 2016).

  3. 3.

    The debate included, among the others: Vittorini (1961), Scalia (1961), Eco (1962), Moravia (1962). Responses by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Enzo Siciliano followed on L’Espresso, June 3 1962. In this context, we will only focus on the articles that specifically discussed the issue of alienation and its literary representation.

  4. 4.

    The first ten short stories now collected in Marcovaldo were published on L’Unità between 1952 and 1956.

  5. 5.

    For an overview of Italy’s letteratura industriale and its major exponents see Bigatti and Lupo (2013).

  6. 6.

    For instance: Foot (2015) develops a comprehensive historical study of Basaglia’s work in Gorizia and other, contemporary “radical” experiences in psychiatry. Pivetta (2014) wrote Basaglia’s biography. See Colucci and Di Vittorio (2001) and Sforza Tarabochia (2013) for studies on Basaglia’s philosophy. See Donnelly (1992) and Babini (2009) for wide-ranging studies on the Italian reform in the context of the history of Italian psychiatry, and, finally, Crossley (2006) for a study of Basaglia’s work in an international context.

  7. 7.

    Much like Frank Drummer from Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, on which De Andrè based the entire album, and similarly to Sartre’s Ogier P., the self-taught man of The Nausea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Alessandra Diazzi

  2. Department of Modern Languages, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Alvise Sforza Tarabochia

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  1. Alessandra Diazzi
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Correspondence to Alessandra Diazzi or Alvise Sforza Tarabochia .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Alessandra Diazzi

  2. Department of Modern Languages School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Alvise Sforza Tarabochia

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Diazzi, A., Sforza Tarabochia, A. (2019). Introduction: Social and Mental Alienation in Italy Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead. In: Diazzi, A., Sforza Tarabochia, A. (eds) The Years of Alienation in Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8_1

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