American Studies <i>as</i> Italian Theory
Abstract
Mena Mitrano
Loyola University Chicago
JFRC
American Studies as Italian Theory
Considering Roberto Esposito's narrative of Italian Theory, according to which Italian Theory first started as a US-based phenomenon and only later irradiated in other parts of the world, this paper explores the consequences of that narrative and the questions that it might raise for American Studies: Might Italian Theory rightfully belong to the Americanist's domain of inquiry? If so, what impact might it have on the identity of the Americanist? What is an Americanist? The paper argues that this new wave of theory illuminates the confluence of American Studies and critical thought, both involved in a simultaneous movement of deterritorialization that pushes them outside their established boundaries.
Keywords: American Studies, literary and cultural theory, Italian American Studies, Italian Theory
Keywords
American Studies; literary and cultural theory; Italian American Studies; Italian Theory
References
Agamben, Giorgio. “Bartleby o della contingenza.” Bartleby: la formula della creazione, edited by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben. Quodlibet, 1993, pp. 45-89.
Aravamudan, Srinivas. “The Return of Anachronism. ” Modern Language Quarterly, vol.62, no. 4, 2001, pp. 331-353.
Bazzicalupo, Laura. “L'economia come logica di governo.” SpazioFilosofico, vol. 1, 2013, pp. 21-29.
Bazzicalupo, Laura. Biopolitica. Una mappa concettuale. Carocci, 2012.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
Binswanger, Ludwig and Aby Warburg. La guarigione infinita. Storia clinica di Aby Warburg, edited by Davide Stimilli. Trans. Chantal Marazia and Davide Stimilli. Neri Pozza, 2005, pp. 153-156.
Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Duke UP, 2010.
Chiesa, Lorenzo and Alberto Toscano. “Introduction.” The Italian Difference., edited by Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano. re.press, 2009, pp. 1-10.
Chiesa, Lorenzo and Frank Ruda, “The event of language as force of life: Agamben's linguistic vitalism.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 16, no. 3, 2011, pp. 163-180.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. Verso, 1994.
Dimock, Wai Chee, “Weak Theory: Henry James, Colm Tóibín, and W. B. Yeats.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 39, no. 4, 2013, pp. 732-753.
Edwards, Brian T. and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, eds. Globalizing American Studies. U of Chicago P, 2010.
Elias, Amy J. and Christian Moraru, The Panetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twentieth-First Century. Northwestern UP, 2015.
Esposito, Roberto. Da Fuori: Una Filosofia per l'Europa. Einaudi, 2016.
Esposito, Roberto. “German Philosophy, French Theory, Italian Thought.” Trans, Mena Mitrano. “Forum: American Studies and Italian Theory.” RSA Journal, vol. 26, 2015, pp. 104-114.
Esposito, Roberto. “German Philosophy, French Theory, Italian Thought.” Differenze Italiane, edited by Dario Gentili and Elettra Stimilli. DeriveApprodi, 2015, pp. 9-20.
Esposito, Roberto. Pensiero Vivente. Origine e attualità della filosofia italiana. Einaudi, 2010.
Esposito, Roberto. Terza Persona. Politica della vita e filosofia dell'impersonale. Einaudi, 2007.
Giles, Paul. The Global Remapping of American Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011.
Giles, Paul. Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary. Duke UP, 2002.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time. Columbia UP, 2015.
Hebdige, Dick. “The Worldliness of Cultural Studies.” Cultural Studies, vol. 29, no.1, 2015, pp. 32-42.
Kadir, Djelal. “America and Its Studies.” PMLA, vol. 118, no. 1, 2003, pp. 9-24.
Kadir, Djelal. “America.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 23, no. 2-3, 2006, pp. 417-419.
Lacan, Jacques. “Function and field of speech and language.” Écrits. Trans. Alan Sheridan. W.W. Norton & Company, 1977, pp. 30-113.
Liciani Petrini, Enrica. “Per una ‘Filosofia dell'Impersonale’: In Dialogo con Roberto Esposito.” Impersonale: In Dialogo con Roberto Esposito, edited by Laura Bazzicalupo. Mimesis, 2008, pp. 39-55.
Malandrini, Matteo. “Beyond Nihilism: Notes Towards a Critique of Left-Heideggerianism in Italian Philosophy of the 1970s.” The Italian Difference, edited by Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano. re.press, 2009, pp. 55-79.
Negri, Antonio. “The Italian Difference.” The Italian Difference. The Italian Difference, edited by Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano. re.press, 2009, pp. 13-24.
Pease, Donald. “Gramsci/Agamben: Re-Configurations of American Literary Studies.” RSA Journal, vol. 26, 2015, pp. 115-120.
Pease, Donald and Robyn Wiegman. “Futures.” The Futures of American Studies. Eds. Donald E. Pease and Robyn Wiegman. Duke UP, 2002, pp. 1-42.
Perniola, Mario. “The Difference of the Italian Philosophical Culture.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 1984, pp. 103-16.
Probyn, Elspeth. Blush: Faces of Shame. U of Minnesota P, 2005.
Probyn, Elspeth. “Everyday Shame.” Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 2-3, 2004, pp. 328–349.
Radway, Jan. “What's in a Name.” The Futures of American Studies, edited by Donald E. Pease and Robyn Wiegman. Duke UP, 2002, pp. 45-75.
Rovatti, Pier Aldo. “Foucault Docet.” Trans. Lorenzo Chiesa. The Italian Difference, edited by Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano. re.press, 2009, pp. 25-29.
Sontag, Susan. “One Hundred Years of Italian Photography.” Where the Stress Falls. Vintage, 2003, pp. 216-222.
Tarizzo, Davide. Introduzione a Lacan. Laterza 2003.
Loyola University Chicago, John Felice Rome Center United States
Mena Mitrano is an Adjunct Professor of Literature at Loyola University Chicago, the John Felice Rome Center, where she convenes the Discourses of Modernity Seminar, which is part of a new international network on Italian Thought and European Philosophies (WORKITEPH). Her new book, In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), continues her investigation of the intimate link between modernism and theory. Mitrano is the author of Gertrude Stein: Woman Without Qualities (Ashgate 2005), Language and Public Culture (Edizioni Q 2009) and the co-editor of The Hand of the Interpreter: Essays on Meaning After Theory (Peter Lang 2009). Her essays appeared in Modern Language Studies, Women’s Studies, College Literature, Callaloo, Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, and Modernism/Modernity; she has also contributed entries to the Routledge Online Encyclopaedia of Modernism (edited by Stephen Ross). She serves on the editorial board of the RSA Journal (Rivista di Studi Americani), the official journal of the Italian Association of North American Studies.
The Copyright Holder of the submitted text is the Author. The Reader is granted the rights to use the material available in the RIAS websites and pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Any commercial use requires separate written agreement with the Author and a proper credit line indicating the source of the original publication in RIAS.
- License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY 4.0 license.
- Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution - By the same conditions 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
- User Rights
Under the Creative Commons Attribution license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
- Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
