Mafiapoetics. Why Mafiosi write and how they impersonate literary theory
10 February 2023 | 1pm – 3pm
Italian Institute of Culture, 82 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh
Key speakers: Dr Ulrich van Loyen (University of Siegen)
Dr Ulrich van Loyen explores why middle classes and the art world especially are obsessd with mafia – and how they got entrapped in its crafted discourse.
In my recent book The Godfather and his shadow (Berlin 2021), I try to elucidate prose, poetry, and songs written by members of the Italian mafias in two directions: on the one hand, as a strategy to cope with danger and liminality intrinsic to criminal life, and on the other as an appropriation of bourgeois culture and its expectations. But I also read Mafia behavior and codes as the “verification” of modern literary theory, namely of the constitutive ambivalence of the symbolic. In this way, I try to explain why especially middle classes and the art world are obsessed with mafia – and how they got entrapped in its crafted discourse. In my talk I want to give a brief outline of my book with examples from my fieldwork in Naples and Calabria (Dr Ulrich van Loyen).
Seminar open to all.