Search results for: Edoardo Schinco

Authors: Edoardo Schinco

Abstract:

Studying the Marxist intellectual tradition, it is possible to verify that there were numerous cases of philosophical regression, in which the important achievements of detailed studies have been replaced by naïve ideas and previous misunderstandings: one of most important example of this tendency is related to the question of ideology. According to a common Enlightenment approach, the ideology is essentially not a reality, i.e., a factor capable of having an effect on the reality itself; in other words, the ideology is a mere error without specific historical meaning, which is only due to ignorance or inability of subjects to understand the truth. From this point of view, the consequent and immediate practice against every form of ideology are the rational dialogue, the reasoning based on common sense, in order to dispel the obscurity of ignorance through the light of pure reason. The limits of this philosophical orientation are however both theoretical and practical: on the one hand, the Enlightenment criticism of ideology is not an historicistic thought, since it cannot grasp the inner connection that ties an historical context and its peculiar ideology together; moreover, on the other hand, when the Enlightenment approach fails to release people from their illusions (e.g., when the ideology persists, despite the explanation of its illusoriness), it usually becomes a racist or elitarian thought. Unlike this first conception of ideology, Gramsci attempts to recover Marx’s original thought and to valorize its dialectical methodology with respect to the reality of ideology. As Marx suggests, the ideology – in negative meaning – is surely an error, a misleading knowledge, which aims to defense the current state of things and to conceal social, political or moral contradictions; but, that is precisely why the ideological error is not casual: every ideology mediately roots in a particular material context, from which it takes its reason being. Gramsci avoids, however, any mechanistic interpretation of Marx and, for this reason; he underlines the dialectic relation that exists between material base and ideological superstructure; in this way, a specific ideology is not only a passive product of base but also an active factor that reacts on the base itself and modifies it. Therefore, there is a considerable revaluation of ideology’s role in maintenance of status quo and the consequent thematization of both ideology as objective force, active in history, and ideology as cultural hegemony of ruling class on subordinate groups. Among the Marxists, the French philosopher Louis Althusser also gives his contribution to this crucial question; as follower of Gramsci’s thought, he develops the idea of ideology as an objective force through the notions of Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). In addition to this, his philosophy is characterized by the presence of structuralist elements, which must be studied, since they deeply change the theoretical foundation of his Marxist thought.

Keywords: Althusser, enlightenment, Gramsci, ideology

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Authors: Erika Mattio , Edoardo Casolo

Abstract:

This project studies in a complete and innovative way the lesser known southern roman border: the limes africanus. In this work, thanks to the comparison of archaeological, historical and epigraphic sources, the evolution and changes that occurred in the cities and areas around the limes were analysed. As of now, there are many studies relative to the roman imperial period, however there are not that many analysing the evolution of the limes from the Islamic conquest to the modern day, comparing the ancient, byzantine, islamic and contemporary periods, understanding the significance of the limes, it s role and the cities and commerce that were defined by it in north Africa. Using modern methods of remote sensing and landscape archaeology, a georeferencing of the area documented in the thirties of the last century by French military aviation colonel Jean Baradez was created, showing that the limes africanus had survived the fall of the roman empire and continued to be important also for the Islamic dynasties that came later, even until the italo-turkish war and the Italian conquest of Libya. With this research we wish to demonstrate the continuation through time of the limes africanus and whether today it exists still or not.

Keywords: Limes Tripolitanus, Muslim, North Africa, Romans

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Authors: Edoardo Lomi

Abstract:

A problem of central interest in anthropology concerns the ethnographic displacement of modernity’s conceptual sovereignty over that of native collectives worldwide. Part of this critical project has been the association of Western modernity with a dualist, naturalist ontology. Despite its demonstrated value for comparative work, this association often comes at the cost of reproducing ideas that lack an empirical ethnographic basis. This paper proposes a way forward by bringing to bear some of the results produced by an ethnographic study of a village in Wiltshire, South England. Due to its picturesque qualities, this village has served for decades as a ready-made set for fantasy movies and a backdrop to fictional stories. These forms of mediation have in turn generated some apparent paradoxes, such as fictitious characters that affect actual material changes, films that become more real than history, and animated stories that, while requiring material grounds to unfold, inhabit a time and space in other respects distinct from that of material processes. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork and interviews with locals and tourists, this paper considers the ways villagers engage with fiction as part of their everyday lives. The resulting image is one of convergence, in the same landscape, of people and things having different ontological status. This study invites reflection on the implications of this image for diversifying our imagery of Western lifeworlds. To this end, the notion of ‘real fictions’ is put forth, connecting the ethnographic blurring of modernist distinctions–such as sign and signified, mind and matter, materiality and immateriality–with discussions on anthropology’s own reliance on fictions for critical comparative work.

Keywords: England, ethnography, landscape, modernity, mediation, ontology, post-structural theory

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