Gianluca Didino's 'Essere senza casa' Explores Disorientation in Hypermodernity

Gianluca Didino's book 'Essere senza casa. Sulla condizione di vivere in tempi strani' (minimum fax, 2020) examines the existential disorientation of contemporary life. The Piedmontese writer and essayist, part of a generation of precarious cognitive workers, uses his own search for a home in pre-Brexit London as a starting point. Didino analyzes how external factors create a perpetual state of the uncanny (unheimlich), transforming urban spaces and generational imaginaries. London is portrayed as a hub of financial power and a platform for immaterial labor. The book references Mark Fisher's 'The weird and the eerie,' for which Didino wrote the afterword. Didino describes a hypermodernity dominated by loss of reference points, collective hypnosis, and a 'time out of joint' marked by platform capitalism, Covid-19, SpaceX launching a Tesla Roadster toward Mars, Elon Musk, Grimes, and 'Guccification.' He recalls a 2007 Turin party themed to the 1950s that felt like 'Back to the Future,' where time seemed stuck in an eternal, eerie present. The essay offers tools to dismantle and reassemble reality, urging readers to embrace the unknown without fear.