Narrative Catastrophe and its Aftermath: On the Potentiation of Notation as a Form of Negative Virtuality in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Work

Authors

  • Chiara Caradonna Hebrew University of Jerusalem

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.27.29074

Keywords:

Pasolini, notation, film, poetry, transmediality, form, decolonization, negative virtuality.

Abstract

From the 1960s and until his death Pier Paolo Pasolini elevated notation to his work’s central formal paradigm, with the aim of challenging and subverting the literary and cinematic conventions of European modernity. Taking its cue from the African American writer and thinker Frank B. Wilderson’s observations on narrative catastrophy, the article situates Pasolini’s use of notation within the broader framework of his reflection on the possibilities of narration in the age of decolonization and globalised late capitalism. It outlines the development of the note and its rise to prominence in Pasolini’s work as a way for the Western author to relinquish his authority and the exertion of narrative power. Crucially, the article illustrates how, in contrast to frequently held assumptions about notation as an unfinished form subordinated to a potentially finished product, Pasolini conceives and potentiates notation as a form of negative virtuality that does not abide by the logic of positive finality. 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Chiara Caradonna, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chiara Caradonna is Senior Lecturer at the Departments of Romance Studies and of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She works on the intersections between literature, philosophy, anthropology, photography and cinema. In her book, titled Opaque. Shadows of Knowledge in the “Meridian” and in the poem “Schwanengefahr” (Wallstein 2020) she analyzes epistemological and hermeneutic aspects in Paul Celan’s later poetry. She has published on Paul Vale?ry and Edmund Husserl, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Osip Mandelštam, Hannah Arendt and Gustav Landauer, and on the German contemporary poet Rainer Rene? Mueller. Lately she has been focusing on the modern and contemporary literature of Sicily, investigating both the modern reception of its Arab-Muslim past and the depiction of fishermen communities in literature and film.  

References

Antoniani, Riccardo, De Laude, Silvia, Giovannetti, Giovanni, Grieco, Davide, Maccioni, Stefano, Siti, Walter. “I capitoli mancanti di Petrolio”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 283-311.

 

Armiero, Marco. Wasteocene. Stories from the Global Dump. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

 

Barthes, Roland. La préparation du roman. Cours au Collège de France 1978-79 et 1979-80. Ed. Nathalie Léger. Paris: Seuil, 2015.

 

Bazzocchi, Marco Antonio. “Pasolini ritratto da Dino Pedriali”. Doppiozero, 14 June 2011, http://www.doppiozero.com/materiali/recensioni/pasolini-ritratto-da-dino-pedriali. Accessed 20 June 2023.

 

Benedetti, Carla. “Per una letteratura impura”. A partire da Petrolio. Pasolini interroga la letteratura. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Maria Antonietta Grignani. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1995, pp. 9-13.

 

Benedetti, Carla. Pasolini contro Calvino. Per una letteratura impura. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2022.

 

Benedetti, Carla. “Petrolio 25 anni dopo”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 15-26.

 

Caminati, Luca. Orientalismo eretico: Pier Paolo Pasolini e il cinema del terzo mondo. Milano: Mondadori, 2007.

 

Casarino, Cesare. “The Southern Answer: Pasolini, Universalism, Decolonization”. Critical Inquiry, 36, 2010, pp. 673-696.

 

Chiesi, Roberto. “La scena della visione. Sguardi estranei, luminismi, sovrimpressioni: Petrolio e il cinema di Pasolini”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 221-236.

 

De Laude, Silvia. “Esperienze di un editore di Petrolio”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 41-54.

 

Desogus, Paolo. “Il disincanto della mimesi attraverso Petrolio di Pier Paolo Pasolini”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 249-260.


Fiorillo, Alessandro. “‘Esso mi è ripugnante’. Il personaggio nell’opera di Pasolini”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 197-210.

 

Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.

 

Foucault, Michel. Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979). Ed. Michel Senellart. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2004.

 

Fusillo, Massimo. La Grecia secondo Pasolini. Mito e cinema. Roma: Carocci, 2022.

 

Giovannetti, Giovanni. “I tre discorsi di Cefis e alcune fotografie in Petrolio”. Petrolio 25 anni dopo. (Bio)politica, eros e verità nell’ultimo romanzo di Pier Paolo Pasolini. Eds. Carla Benedetti, Manuele Gragnolati, Davide Luglio. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2020, pp. 27-40.

 

González García, Fernando. “El ruiseñor en Palestina. Sopralluoghi”. Studi Pasoliniani, 9, 2015, pp. 23-37. [1]

 

González García, Fernando. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Los Apuntes como forma poética, Santander: Shangrila, 2015. [2]

 

Gragnolati, Manuele. “Analogy and Difference: Multistable Figures in Pasolini’s Appunti per un’Orestiade africana”. The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Geographies, Traditions. Eds. Luca Di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2012, pp. 119-134. 

 

Hartman, Saidiya. The Plot of Her Undoing. Notes on Feminisms 2, 2019. https://feministartcoalition.org/essays-list/saidiya-hartman. Accessed 21 June 2024.

 

Halliday, Jon. Pasolini on Pasolini: Interviews with Oswald Stack. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

 

Krauthausen, Karin. “Vom Nutzen des Notierens. Verfahren des Entwurfs”. Notieren, Skizzieren, Schreiben und Zeichnen als Verfahren des Entwurfs. Eds. Karin Krauthausen, Omar W. Nasim. Zürich: Diaphanes, 2010, pp. 7-26.

 

Mazzini, Silvia. “Pasolini and India: De- and Re-Construction of a Myth”. The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Geographies, Traditions. Eds. Luca Di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2012, pp. 135-150.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. La Divina Mimesis. Romanzi e racconti II. Eds. Walter Siti, Silvia De Laude. Milano: Mondadori, 1998.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Il cinema impopolare”. Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte I, a cura di W. Siti e S. De Laude, Milano: Mondadori, 1999, 1600-1610.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “La Resistenza negra”. Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte II. Eds. Walter Siti, Silvia De Laude. Milano: Mondadori, 1999, pp. 2344-2355.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Atena bianca”. Per il cinema I. Eds. Walter Siti, Franco Zabaglia. Milano: Mondadori, 2001, pp. 1202-1204.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Appunti per un poema sul terzo mondo”. Per il cinema II. Eds. Walter Siti, Franco Zabaglia. Milano: Mondadori, 2001, pp. 2676-2686.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Tutte le poesie II. Ed. Walter Siti. Milano: Mondadori, 2003.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Petrolio. Ed. Silvia De Laude. Milano: Mondadori, 2005.

 

Patti, Emanuela. Pasolini after Dante. The ‘Divine Mimesis’ and the Politics of Representation. Cambridge, New York: 2016.


Siti, Walter. “L’opera rimasta sola”. Tutte le poesie II. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Milano: Mondadori, 2003, pp. 1899-1946.

 

Siti, Walter. “Note e notizie sui testi”. Tutte le poesie II. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Milano: Mondadori, 2003.

 

Trento, Giovanna. “Pasolini and Pan-Meridional Italianness”. The Scandal of Self-Contradiction: Pasolini’s Multistable Subjectivities, Geographies, Traditions. Eds. Luca Di Blasi, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey. Wien: Turia + Kant, 2012, pp. 59-84.

 

Vighi, Fabio. “Beyond objectivity: the utopian in Pasolini’s documentaries”. Textual Practice, 16, 2002, pp. 491-510.

 

Welch, Rhiannon Noel. “Here and Then, There and Now: Nation Time and Colonial Space in Pasolini, Oriani and Marinetti”. Italica, 91, 2014, pp. 625-653.

 

Wilderson, Frank B. III, Afropessimism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

 

Filmography

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il Vangelo secondo Matteo (Location Scouting in Palestine for the Gospel according to Matthew). Arco Film, 1965.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Appunti per un film sull’India (Notes for a Film on India). RAI, 1968.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Appunti per un Orestiade africana (Notes for an African Orestes). Gian Vittorio Baldi e IDI Cinematografica (Roma), I Film dell’Orso, 1970.

 

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Sciopero dei netturbini, Roma 24 aprile 1970. (Strike of the Waste Collectors). http://patrimonio.aamod.it/aamod-web/film/detail/IL8600001941/22/sciopero-netturbini-roma-24-aprile-1970.html?startPage=0&idFondo. Accessed 24 June 2024.

Downloads

Published

2024-07-24

How to Cite

Caradonna, C. (2024). Narrative Catastrophe and its Aftermath: On the Potentiation of Notation as a Form of Negative Virtuality in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Work. EU-topías. A Journal on Interculturality, Communication, and European Studies, 27, 133–148. https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.27.29074
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    62
  • PDF
    24

Issue

Section

DOSSIER

Metrics

Similar Articles

<< < 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.