Inattualità di Carlo Levi

On Carlo Levi’s Out-datedness
The author reconsiders the intense debate on Levi that took place in the postwar period and claims that, despite its extraordinary value, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945) nowadays is a mere historic testimony. Owing to socio-cultural radical changes and to the fact that the «problem of the South of Italy» has been losing its peculiarities, Levi’s masterpiece should be regarded as an outdated book. Like Pasolini, Levi glorifies in the culture and anthropology of the ’50s where Italy retained pre-modern traits. However, Levi’s utopian and libertarian thought as developed in his works from Paura della libertà (1939) to Quaderno a cancelli (1974), may help ethnic minorities to tackle present-day cultural homologation.