without surprise: OBJECTION PURSUANT TO TIMES ARCORE «Lo stupore perché le cose che noi viviamo sono “ancora” possibili nel ventesimo secolo non è filosofico. Non sta all'inizio di alcuna conoscenza, se non di questa: che l'idea di storia da cui deriva non è sostenibile».
Walter Benjamin, 1940.
Con queste parole, Walter Benjamin impartiva una lezione di metodo critico che continua a valere: quando di fronte ad accadimenti politici ci si appella all'eccezione – oppure ci si indigna denunciando un regresso rispetto a una presunta norma di civiltà – ciò significa semplicemente che non si è capito nulla o non abbastanza, che non si dispone di strumenti adatti a comprendere il proprio tempo. A partire da questa considerazione – assunta come strategia metodologica – è possibile costruire una riflessione sugli scandali sessuali che hanno scosso la cronaca italiana delle ultime settimane, cercando di sottrarsi sia alla trappola del cinismo che a quella del moralismo.
«Lo stupore non è filosofico». In prima istanza, la massima suggerisce di sgomberare il campo dalle posizioni che – se pur in modi e con intenti differenti – considerano l'accaduto una deviazione rispetto alla regola dell'esercizio del potere, il risultato scabroso di vizi e perversioni private da cui difendere il corpo sano della democrazia. Questa, come si evince dai maggiori quotidiani nazionali, è l'opinione dominante nella sinistra istituzionale, condivisa anche da molti cittadini italiani e fondata su una sorta di soglia etica minima, equiparabile al buonsenso. I comportamenti del premier – si legge nei vari editoriali e appeals - offend the dignity of women and democracy. From this theorem, rather simplistic, follows a widespread feeling of indignation, a practice of collective moral outrage but not slow to show inclinations ambiguous and politically inconsequential, if not dangerous.
Behind the indignation In fact, you often come voyeurism, moralism and sexism. The latter, in particular, seems to be a defect which the Italian effort to rid public discourse to the point that, sometimes, the comments have far exceeded the facts. Perverse dynamic which holds the logic that it proved the existence of evil men (that horny octogenarians crave minors) combined existence of unscrupulous women (young men who sell to octogenarians to achieve personal ambitions) pushes an entire country to try to show that there are "other" women? Because the clearance of subjectivity seems so easily revocable in a genre as such (which incidentally is more than half the world's population) as soon as some belonging to the genre itself denies / transgresses the role of women "for good", leaving emerge all the contradictions that are lurking in the moral duplicity of the Italian public?
And why so many feel that he should suddenly show intelligent, to have to prove to the public and society to be different? Perhaps you've read a few publishing venture in the construction of syllogisms lopsided to demonstrate the obvious, namely that while Berlusconi is a man that does not mean that all men are Berlusconi? It was suggested that perhaps young Italians to think of Albert Einstein, in case the existence of narrow-minded men had made them question their identity? And why the existence of Marie Curie or other exceptional women should atone to commodify the fact that someone's life for lust for power? Because once the identity of women is attributed to the two archetypes - the whore and the holy - Embodied from time to time by real figures different?
If the paradigm of the scandal hides these and other pitfalls, can perhaps be useful to turn it over and identified, the exception, the norm. Not the norm, could be understood as the cynical and disillusioned wand that the moralist, but the rule of a conception of sovereignty.
If, in fact, the scandal is betrayal of a precise model of the sovereign power that was assumed established, could be the case, otherwise, so recent events - no longer shocking, but not least to gory - spell out the nature of a figure Sovereign different and unexpected. The indecency supersedes decency. Vice private takes the place of the virtues traditionally required to man the public (decorum, dignity, integrity, etc. ...). The real abuse of the democratic mandate replaces his theory and modern concept.
When this happens, the power is shown as "ubuizzata" grotesque and strange, but no less authoritarian. Berlusconi embodies this form of sovereignty, is that while disregarding the rules in the name of liberty (slogan of his "people"), implements a policy of material exhaustion of the possibilities of self-determination of the subjects. The
young women today in the court of autoprostituiscono Arcore can then be regarded as a kind of perfect realization of the business model / existential every day is imposed on an entire generation.
The statement is not to be understood in a metaphorical sense - according to the maximum for which all of us cynical prostituiamo in one way or another for a little money - but in a more specific and precise. Firstly because the work - and above all female - is taking place today in a broader context prostitution in which the body (or parts of it) is always considered a bargaining potential. Often in the form of erotic - as in the commercial sector, where the woman is always the bearer of a value-added passing of her subject - but not necessarily. An example is the work of care and exploitation of more radical embodied in the figure of the carer, to which the body is literally taken away to be the subject of work to be sold is not only time but also the youth, the strength , health.
Only a moral double professed in bad faith, may consider the scandalous sale of the body, and accept without batting an eye a production model that can not help it. And the inability to tackle questions related to the contradictions at the political forces the debate in a loud but harmless moralism, able to attribute responsibility to the society of the spectacle of a fluid, post-modern. Without denying the role that mass media and stereotypes play in shaping the collective imagination, it is however important to note that the model-car business is not only a mirage of television, but the ideology that governs the choices of the government's welfare and work.
The White Paper Minister Sacconi, in fact, propina income to every citizen a model based on a common rule: the more you invent, it is versatile and resourceful, more road you can take. That is: the material conditions of life depend on subjective commitment the individual, whatever the initial conditions and the possibility of access to income. In this context, which completely removes any asymmetry of power between social actors, girls Arcore not represent an exception to a healthy youth, but simply a part of it that applies rules to the letter of the Minister: entrepreneurship and self- removal of power relations.
As soon as you leave the land of indignation, you subtract the dichotomy "good women" and "bad women." As soon as you stop to feel surprise, to analyze and try to understand, the problems take shape. We leave behind the cynicism and moralism. This is done away with the record and with scoop. And the excess becomes simply a figure of truth that illuminates the power, its forms and manifestations.
Who then, shocked and amazed, ask where are the women of this country will not answer personifying the image of "good girls" as opposed to the alleged "bad girls" or debates to show intelligence and a force that we possess. We will respond rather that we are in the places where every day you play the real conflicts in this country, where you build the conditions of our being and becoming women. "Where are you girls?" Headline a few days ago a signed editorial da Concita De Gregorio.
Ebbene eccoci: nelle lotte contro il modello di welfare alla Sacconi che ci vuole auto-imprenditrici anziché soggetti attivi entro relazioni materiali ben definite; nelle lotte universitarie contro una riforma che dietro lo slogan meritocratico nasconde l'umiliazione dei saperi e l'addomesticamento alla precarietà; nelle lotte di autodeterminazione – come quella piemontese contro la delibera Ferrero – contro chi pretende di espropriarci della libertà di scelta sulle nostre vite; nelle lotte per il territorio – ad esempio quella notav – perché nelle lotte popolari di resistenza sappiamo immaginare un’alternativa allo sviluppo predatorio e parassitario del late capitalism in the struggle against racism, because we do not want the alleged defense of our bodies, in whose name the security-all ideology is legitimate, is to hide behind the excuse to avoid facing the truth, certainly not reassuring that the majority of the violence against women occurs at the hands of a partner or ex, family, or acquaintances.
The right question for us is this: "Where are you, journalists and intellectuals?" This is the last chance you have to recognize the unique promise of the future that lurks in this country and begin to recount the battles in passion and understand the reasons. You could get help, rather than suffocate con il chiacchiericcio dei vostri salotti, dove, di certo, non ci troverete.
Laboratorio Sguardi sui generis , Torino.
February 12 Today we held a press conference, motivated by a desire to deny the reconstruction of the past employment of the seat of the PDL appeared today in Turin on most national newspapers. 
