Contro il materialismo. Le 'due culture' in Italia: bilancio di un secolo (Against Materialism: The 'two cultures' debate in 20th century Italy)

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Contro il materialismo aims to provide a historical overview of the so-called "two cultures" debate in 20th century Italy, with special reference to the literary and philosophical fields. The book investigates the extent to which and explains the reasons why the Italian cultural elites have constantly shown an overt hostility towards science and technology and how this has affected both the representation of this subjects in literature and art, and the general Italian cultural and ideological climate, with repercussions at political, pedagogical, and mediatic level. It shows how the rapid modernization and industrialization of Italy in the 20th century produced only a marginal increase in the scientific literacy in the country, and because of the specific cultural, philosophical and ideological formation of the intellectual elites (mostly tied to various forms of idealism), the reception of science and technology was not marked by a discussion about their potentially emancipating, pragmatic or pedagogical values. Instead they were mostly perceived either in apocalyptic terms or were simply equated to the instruments of capitalistic expansion. In particular, starting with the thesis expounded by Sebastiana Timpanaro in his fundamental "One Materialism" (1971), the book highlights the equivocal and contradictory philosophical relationship between the leftist intellighenzia and the so-called historical materialism, which was understood and received in Italy mostly through an idealistic lens, and which produced a radical misunderstanding about the role of science and technology could play in contemporary societies, seen in a negative and ultimately apocalyptic light, sharing therefore a perspective which was not very dissimilar from the one espounded by more conservative forces. On this score, the book also attempts to define a possible alternative genealogy of materialist writers and thinkers in Italy, questioning the common critical Marxist (Fortini-Pasolini-Volponi) and proposing an unconventional paradigm in Leopardi-Gadda-Levi, the first seen from the critical exegetical lens of the so-called "1947 generation" of critics and intellectuals such as Cesare Luporini and Sebastiana Timpanaro.The book will be structured chronologically starting with the famous Croce-Pirandello polemical exchange in 1904 and the general anti-positivist climate of the first decades of the century, then considering the contradictory role played by science during the fascist period and the ideological resistance to the general cultural effects of modernization, and a more fortunate reception and discussion during the first decade of the post-WWII period particularly in journals such as "II politecnico" and "Civilta delle macchine", and by a new generation of philosophers such as Ludovico Geymonat, Eugenio Garin, Giulio Preti, and Enzo Paci. Particular attention will be devoted to the '60s, with the crucial discussions triggered by the Italian translation of C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" in 1962 (which engaged authors such as Elio Vittorini, Preti and ltalo Calvina), and the reception of structuralism within the literary critical field. Chapters will be also devoted to the ghettoization of science-fiction in Italy as literary genre, and to writers who 'dared' to venture into the representation of scientific subjects. It finally explores the last decades of the century which were marked, with the exception of a brief spell of interest in the late 70s, by a further retreat from engagement with the sciences on the part of the literati, and with the dominance of the post-structuralist and hermeneutic philosophical koine (Vattimo, Severino, Galimberti) which exacerbated the polemical refusal to discuss about science in the critical field.