Letteratura Italiana Contemporanea (PhD)

Fear or Freedom: For a Conception of "Border" in Carlo Levi's Work

The course aims to explore the concept of "border" in Carlo Levi's work as a locus of tension between "fear" and "freedom," and in relation to the work Fear of Freedom, written by Levi in ​​1939 during his escape to France. Through reading the Turin-born writer's major narratives, essays, paintings, and political-civil works, the seminar will analyze how Carlo Levi transforms the border from a simple line of geographical or political separation into an interpretive device for modernity and the human condition.

From the experience of fascist confinement in Lucania, recounted in Christ Stopped at Eboli, to reflections on the relationships between North and South, between city and peasant world, between individual and state, Levi develops a conception of the border as an ambivalent space: on the one hand, a place of fear, marginalization, and control; on the other, an opportunity for crossing, knowledge, and liberation. The frontier never coincides with a definitive barrier, but rather appears as a contact zone where alternative forms of life, knowledge, and coexistence emerge: these are harbingers of intellectual, artistic, and political thought and action that resist and are an alternative to fascism.

The course will engage Levi's work with some of the key twentieth-century reflections on limits and frontiers—from Georg Simmel to Hannah Arendt, from Ernesto De Martino to G. L. Mosse's reflections on sexuality and nationalism—examining the relevance of Levi's thought in an age of migration, new political geographies, and crises of national belonging.

Particular attention will be paid to the author's interdisciplinary dimension, considering the relationship between writing, painting, and civic engagement as complementary tools for exploring the visible and invisible boundaries that traverse contemporary societies.