Pasolini's Legacy: Italy's Anthropological Mutation and the Danger of Monumentalization

On the 40th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's death, Christian Caliandro argues that Italy has monumentalized the poet, rendering him inactive and irrelevant. He contends that Pasolini's prophecies about Italy's anthropological mutation have been realized and surpassed, with the country now unrecognizable even to the poet. Caliandro calls for a different approach: to "eat the master in spicy sauce," as Marco Belpoliti suggested, by using Pasolini's tools to understand the present and future. He draws parallels between Pasolini and Philip K. Dick, both of whom perceived a fundamental change in human structure, and suggests science fiction as a narrative mode to extract Pasolini from the cage of monumentalization. Caliandro revisits Pasolini's concept of the "two Italies" from his 1974 article "Il romanzo delle stragi," arguing that the division between a clean, honest country and a dirty, dishonest one still exists, though the names have changed. The article reflects on the distortion of culture's role over the 30 years since Pasolini's death, with the loss of social reality leading to a loss of cultural reality. Caliandro warns against reducing Pasolini to a saint, martyr, or alien, and instead advocates for a fecund appropriation of his insights.