Pasolini vs. Calvino, One More Time: The Debate on the Role of Intellectuals and Postmodernism in Italy Today

From Dante on, writers and intellectuals have played a crucial role in Italy, acting as a sort of collective “critical conscience” and providing some sense of a common identity in spite of the country’s chronic socio-political, economic and cultural fragmentation. In recent years, the usual laments over the “decline” and failures of Italian intellectuals, bemoaning especially the disappearance of impegno in the postmodern era, have multiplied and turned into a peculiar genre of its own. Many scholars have repeatedly issued indictments against the postmodern in all its guises, taking it as a betrayal of Marxism, Gramscian theory, the politics of commitment and even of historical truth itself. In this article, I discuss recent works in light of the wider context of the current debate, and I highlight some of the pitfalls that derive from framing the question of intellectual commitment in oppositional terms, pitting “Pasolini” and his realist myth against “Calvino” and his putatively irresponsible postmodernism.