Book review: Giani Stuparich, One Year of School and The Island

Abstract

ideas about being and impermanence. Fabio Camilletti takes yet another novel angle, analyzing a well-known—and quite literal—conceptualization of the posthuman: zombies. Tracing their history in literature, film, and music, Camilletti outlines the numerous uses and interpretations of zombies—from a disenfranchised proletariat, to a corporeal shell devoid of being, solely existing. Alienation from the human realm is a common thread shared by both his and Paolo Saportito’s (“New Materialism, Female Bodies and Ethics in Antonioni’s L’avventura, La notte, and L’eclisse”) arguments, showing how the exploration of the nonhuman tends to follow the disillusionment with the human. Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film will serve as an invaluable resource for a reader who wants to explore the multifaceted nature of posthuman studies. Situated among other recent publications in the burgeoning field such as The Posthuman Imagination: Literature at the Edge of the Human (2021) by Sarker Kindu and Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative (2021) by Sonia Baelo-Allué and Mónica Calvo-Pascual, Ferrara’s volume establishes itself squarely within the confines of Italian culture, literature, and film. But what really makes this volume unique is its point of departure. Ferrara and her collaborators examine the posthuman subject keeping in mind that both the reality which we experience and the worlds we construct in literature and film are merely linguistic, malleable byproducts. Therefore, the overarching question that all of the authors seek to answer is: How can one possibly overcome the Anthropocene using an established and purely anthropocentric language?