Il ritorno del popolo. Un’introduzione
Luca Scuccimarra
The Return of the People.
An Introduction
In the last years the term «people» has assumed a growing centrality
at all levels of the public discourse, imposing itself progressively as a
privileged sign of the widespread anti-system sentiments encouraged
by the crisis of values and principles of representative democracy.
Opposing any essentialist use of this word, this issue of «Meridiana»
reconsiders the role played by the «semantics of people» in the space
of political experience of «our» modernity. This issue adopts therefore
a multidisciplinary perspective focused on the numerous factors – both
historical and theoretical – that are currently involved in the dynamics
of constitution of modern forms of collective identity. The result is
a polyphonic contribution moving from the founding experiences of
the «Age of Democratic Revolutions» to the most advanced political
experimentations taking place in the tumultuous context of the present
«post-national era».
Le reinvenzioni del popolo
Alfio Mastropaolo
Reinventing the People
Democratic regimes govern in the name of the People. The idea that
they have of the People is apparently very simple. The People is made up
of individuals, equal among themselves, who would regularly elect their
own representatives, subject to just and unarbitrary laws, equal before
those laws, and free to profess their own faith. Nevertheless, evoking
the People is not enough to make them a political actor, and yet this is
what involuntarily occurred. Once sovereignty had been attributed to
the People, this immediately postulated an intricate tangle of problems.
These were destined to weigh on representative regimes first, and on
democratic ones later. How these problems have been solved? The point
is that the People have been since always a crucial stake of political
struggle. Each party is willing to design the People according to its
preferences. One of the main tools used to shape the People is political
representation. But there are many others. For instance educational
policies. But the most important tool is the itself definition of the People.
This paper underlines the most recent ones, which were adopted in the
second half of XXth century: the definition of the People as made of
taxpayers, consumers, and stake-holders.
Ethnos e Demos. Per una genealogia del populismo
Pier Paolo Portinaro
Ethnos and Demos.
For a Genealogy of Populism
During the last decades «populism» has become a sort of catchword both
in the political and scholarly debate. Given that global transformations are
calling into question the fundamentals of modern politics, the concepts
of «ethnos» and «demos» can be considered a privileged point of view
that can be analytically used to grasp the currently dominant view
among historians and sociologists that nationalism has to be seen as a
uniquely modern phenomenon established by industrialization and mass
communication in the nineteenth century. The article also discusses the
view of those who criticize and reject the exclusive identification of the
nation with modernity. Nations emerged at a certain point in history.
They form and disappear, and are therefore not «primordial» in this sense.
Furthermore, the national phenomenon has evolved in history, so even the
term «perennial» is insufficiently reflective of historical change. Another
important question raised by the nationalism-debate has to deal with the
role of religion in political life (particularly, the modern Reformation and
the sacralization of nation in the post-revolutionary era). The ultimate
aim of this analytical review is to propose a sort of general framework to
interpret the transformations of political collective identities in the longterm
perspective of Nation-building and in the context of a global society.
La demagogia, ieri e oggi
Valentina Pazé
The Demagogy,
Yesterday and Today
While «populism» is quite a new word, «demagogy» is an ancient one,
but they relate to something very similar. «Demagogy» was the name of
a degeneration of democracy that ancients knew very well. The author
recalls some texts of Plato and Aristotle on this subject and uses them to
reflect on some problems of contemporary democracies. According to
Plato there is no difference between democracy and demagogy. The only
alternative to the power of the demos, incompetent and impolite, is the
rule of the wiser men: a form of aristocracy. In the opinion of Aristotle,
on the other hand, it is possible to distinguish between democracy and
demagogy: in the former the power of the mass is limited by the law; in
the latter the demos rules without restrictions. The reforms of IV century
b. C., in Athens, that subtracted a part of the power to the assembly and
gave it to the college of nomothetai and to courts, can be understood as
a remedy against demagogy. Modern representative democracies have
invented procedures with the same purpose.
Dal popolare al populismo: ascesa e declino degli studi demologici in Italia
Fabio Dei
From «Popular» to «Populism»:
The Rise and Fall of Demological Studies in Italy
In this paper, I discuss three major paradigm-shifts in Italian folklore
studies of the second half of XX century. The first shift follows the
publication of «Observations on folklore» in A. Gramsci’s Prison
Notebooks. Gramsci proposed to connect cultural differences with
social differences, treating folklore as the distinctive culture of subaltern
classes. Scholars like E. De Martino and G. Bosio followed this approach,
producing a radical break from previous positivist traditions. The second
shiftis the birth of «demology», a new discipline which tried to reconcile
the Gramscian theory with a continuity of folkloric studies and the
centrality of their classical object (the peasant oral traditions). I argue
that there is a crucial contradiction in demology: the refuse to investigate
mass consumption and culture, that is the culture of present subaltern
classes. The result is the decline of the hegemonic-subaltern topic and
the third shift towards a «patrimonial» paradigm, influenced by Unesco
«Convention for the Safaguarding of Cultural Intangible Heritage».
The paradox is that scientific interest for the «popular» was abandoned
in the same years of the great populist strategies of «berlusconismo»,
leaving scholars unable to understand the cultural bases of this political
movement.
L’Europa democratica nella strettoia fra populismo e tecnocrazia
Cesare Pinelli
Democratic Europe in the Narrow
Between Populism and Technocracy
While examining the striking bottleneck between populism and
technocracy affecting representative democracy in Europe, the Author
argues that both the scholarly discourse on ‘postnational’ governance
and the political debate on the EU democratic deficit that took place
in the past decade fail to capture the nature of the crisis affecting the
EU. In particular, the contribution tends to demonstrate that both these
discourses neglect the mechanisms governing the Member States-EU
relationship, that have gradually perverted the ‘output’ not less than
the ‘input legitimacy’ of the EU, whose whole project is thus under
deep stress. Against such a background, changes of these mechanisms
are here suggested that seek to adapt some acquisition of comparative
constitutionalism out of the traditional state’s realm.
Impossibile ma vero, vero ma impossibile. La questione della rappresentanza dei gruppi di interesse civico
Giovanni Moro
Impossible but Real, Real but Impossible.
The Question of Representation of Civic Interest Groups
According to several scholars the idea of a representative role of
citizens’ organizations is a contradiction: since representation is by
definition making present someone that is absent, when civil society get
organized and act in the public arena there is no need for representation.
This argument, however, is put under question by several empirical
evidences: self-organized citizens that act in the public arena exert the
roles of «standing for» and «acting for», which are the hard core of
the concept of representation. Moreover, this role is widely recognized
by public and private interlocutors of active citizenship organizations.
On the other side, the matter that this representative role is practiced
and recognized does not avoid short circuits and paradoxes that
seem impossible to overcome in the framework of the representation
Standard View. Adopting as point of reference the recent literature
on «non-electoral» and «informal» forms of representation and in
particular, the redefinition of the issue set up by Dario Castiglione
and Mark Warren, the author proposes a thematization that could
give reason for this contradiction and offer suggestions on the way to
address it.
La parte. Note sulla politica del «popolo» in Jacques Rancière
Gianluca Bonaiuti
The Part.
Notes on People’s Politics in Jacques Rancière
This paper suggests a philosophical re-reading of popular
communication and the role of People in western democratic systems.
Rancière’s anti-elitist notion of democracy helps to reframe the
discussion of the People as a key-concept of our political systems: it
is not defined by an en-or decoding instance or a notion of identity,
but by a particular mode of conflict-making, as an action of «a part
that has no part». Drawing from heterogeneous material (especially, La
Mésentente and other political works), it is argued that the problem of
the People arises when a functional system has to represent something
that transgresses the system’s universality as an equality instance against
ordinary decision-making. That which the system has to exclude to
become a political system re-emerges as a ‘part that has no part’, thus
pointing at a universality that is, on the one hand, an opportunity
for a further universalization and, on the other, a threat to the very
universality of the political system. The ‘People’ thus acquires a hybrid
position by articulating these two dimensions: Rancière has explored
the consequences of the equality’s presumption — that everyone is
immediately and equally capable of thought. Against those who argue
that only the appropriately educated or privileged are authorized
to think and speak, Rancière’s most fundamental assumption is that
everyone thinks. Everyone shares equal powers of speech and thought,
and this «equality is not a goal to be attained but a point of departure, a
supposition to be maintained in all circumstances».
Dalle lotte sociali alla globalizzazione delle rivolte. Il movimento bracciantile nelle zone capitalistiche del Mezzogiorno
Francesco Di Bartolo
From Social Struggles to Revolts of Globalization.
Farm Workers in the Capitalist Areas of Southern Italy.
This paper aims to develop a reflection on the theme of transformation
of the struggles of farm workers in the areas of agrarian capitalism in
the South, on the production of citrus fruits. In particular, we intend
to compare the structured dimension of the struggles of the labour
movement of agricultural workers in the province of Siracusa in the sixties
with the current state of exploitation of agricultural workers in the Plain
of Rosarno. We have analyzed the case of the struggles of agricultural
workers that led to the massacre of Avola (1968) and the revolt of the
immigrant workers in Rosario in 2010. The main objective of this study
is to introduce an assessment of how the macro-economic and social
trends have influenced the responses of the workers movement and also
to analyze the role of trade unions in their attempt to govern economic
transformations and to represent social problems associated with them.
La struttura unitaria e verticistica della ’ndrangheta delle origini
Fabio Truzzolillo
«Criminale» and «Gran Criminale».
The Unitary and Vertical Structure of the ’Ndrangheta at its Origins
This article reconstructs the discovery in the 1930s that the ’Ndrangheta,
then known as the «Montalbano Family», had a unitary and vertical
structure. During the Fascist repression, a series of verdicts in court
sessions in Reggio Calabria made it increasingly clear that the criminal
groups active in that province were part of a single larger organisation
with a hierarchical structure. Higher entities («Criminale» and «Gran
Criminale») had been created to coordinate the activity of the local
groups, prevent conflict among them and ensure respect for shared rules.
The court judgment of 2012 now known as «Crimine» has conclusively
established that the ’Ndrangheta has today a unitary structure. The analysis
of newly available documentary sources shows that the drive to create
this hierarchical organisation goes back to the origins of the ’Ndrangheta,
but that its development has not been a linear process: the ’Ndrangheta
has always had a difficult balance to strike between coordination and the
traditional autonomy of local groups. Developing this theme, the article
asks questions about the legitimation of the «Criminale» and «Gran
Criminale» which will require further consideration. It also raises issues
about the continuity of these authorities between the Fascist period and
the present day.
La politica di Bassolino e il contesto nazionale
Luciano Brancaccio
Bassolino’s Policy and the National Context
The book by Isaia Sales (Napoli non è Berlino. Ascesa e declino di
Bassolino e del sogno di riscatto del Sud, Dalai Editore, Milano 2012) is a
reflection on the rise and fall of the leadership of Antonio Bassolino, the
mayor of Naples from 1993 to 2000 and the president of the Campania
region from 2000 to 2010. The author has been part of Bassolino’s inner
circle and thus offers a point of view from the inside. He tries to balance the
negative opinions on the last phase, signed by the dramatic waste crisis of
2008, with the responsibilities of the national elite of the center-left coalition.
This short essay analyzes strengths and weaknesses of Sales’s contribution.