85105 - Italian Political Thought (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will have the tools for gaining a basic understanding of the theoretical and practical issues debated in the history of Italian political thought in the modern and contemporary ages. By directly analysing the sources, students will define the theoretical specificities of the main authors of the history of Italian political thought and relate these to one another, communicating them in an effective, coherent way.

Course contents

This course will examine how in different historical moments ranging from the 16th century to the end of the 20th century some of the most renowned Italian thinkers have figured out the people and the multiple facets this notion has assumed in modern politics. In doing so, classes in Italian Political Thought will also explore some important specificities of modern Italian history, society and culture.

After a short methodological and theoretical introduction that will provide some basic elements and concepts to frame the overall issue (classes 1 and 2), the course will be structured in four parts, respectively focused on:

- Niccolò Machiavelli’s ideas on popular republic and civil principality, which emphasize the collective virtù and the conflictual agency of the people and Giovanni Botero's theories on the reason of state intended as a tool for achieving a firm domination over peoples through a careful government of the population (approximately, classes 3 to 6; main readings: selected passages from Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and The Prince; Botero’s Reason of State).

- The way in which 19th century writers such as Giacomo Leopardiand especially Alessandro Manzoni have represented the Italian people and envisioned the role of literature in the development of a modern and national consciousness in the aftermath of the French Revolution (approssimately, classes from 7 to 9; main readings: selected passages from Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone and his Discorso sui costumi degli italiani; selected chapters from Manzoni’s Betrothed).

- Antonio Gramsci's analysis of the shortcomings of the Italian process of national unification and its efforts to reckon with the emergence of modern mass societies and develop new strategies aimed at the involvement of the subaltern classes in political life (approximately classes from 10 to 12; main readings: selected passages from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, particularly those on the Italian History, those on Machiavelli, those on State and civil society).

- The critical positions of contemporary thinkers such as Mario Tronti and Giorgio Agamben, who have both challenged the image of the people intended as a unitary and homogeneous political subject in one case from a heterodox marxist viewpoint, in the other from a biopolitical perspective (approximately classes from 13 to 15; main readings: Mario Tronti’s Workers and Capital and Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer).

Readings/Bibliography

A reading list including selected passages or chapters from Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses on Livy; Botero's Reason of State; Leopardi's Zibaldone; Manzoni's Bethroted; Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and Tronti's and Agamben's essays will be presented to the students attending classes during the course and will constitute the basic bibliography for the final examination, together with the slides and other materials which will be uploaded on IoL.

The bibliography for non attending students will be indicatively based on the following groups of texts (including sources but also at least a critical essay that can serve as a guide):

Group A

N. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (any edition, Book I, chapters 1-13, 16-20, 37, 55, 58; Book II, chapters 1-2, 17-18, 20, 29; Book III, chapter 1, 8-9).

N. Machiavelli, The Prince (any edition).

F. Del Lucchese, The Political Philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2015 (pp. 1-113).

Group B

G. Botero, The Reason of State, Cambridge University Press (Book 1, 2, 3, 4, 7).

M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2007 (particularly pp. 87-134; 227-361).

Group C

A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare - G. Nowell Smith, New York, New York International Publisher, 2014 (pp. 1-276).

J. Schwarzmantel, The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, London-New York, Routledge, 2015 (pp. 1-212).

Group D

M. Tronti, Workers and Capital, New York, Verso Books, 2019 (Introduction; Factory and Society; The Plan of Capital; A New Type of Political Experiment: Lenin in England; The Strategy of Refusal).

S. Wright, Storming Heaven. Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, London, Pluto Press, 2002.

Group E

G. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998.

R. ten Bos, Giorgio Agamben and the Community Without Identity, «The sociological Review", n. 53 (supplement 1), 2005: 16-29.

A. Norris, Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead, «Diacritics», vol. 30, n. 4, Winter 2000: 38-58.

K. Attel, Potentiality, Actuality, Constituent Power, «Diacritics», vol. 39, n. 3, Fall 2009: 35-53.

T. Lemke, Biopolitics: ad advanced introduction, pp. 33-64.

Teaching methods

Classwork will be structured in part as lectures aimed at introducing the different authors, their context and their fundamental arguments, in part as a reading and a collective discussion of their texts. Students will be encouraged to actively take part in the debate and to contact the professor when they need further clarifications.

Assessment methods

Attending students may choose either to take a full oral exam based on the texts analyzed in class and aimed at testing their ability to read the sources and illustrate and connect their fundamental arguments or to propose a paper on a specific topic agreed with the teacher and discuss it as part of the oral exam, during which it will be in any case necessary to display an overall understanding of the topics discussed during the lectures (papers are to be sent at least 5 days before the date of the exam, but the assessment will consider both the essay and the student's capacity to discuss it and answer to possible questions and objections coming from the teacher).

Non attending students will have to choose at least two of the groups of texts listed above.

At any rate, non attending students or students who cannot attend classes with regularity are strongly recommended to get in touch with the professor before the exam in order to have more detailed information and set a specific program according to the necessities.

Assessing methods:

The assessment will mainly consider both the knowledge of the subject and the student’s skill in exposing the different themes and problems addressed in the texts with consistency and a proper terminology. It will be also assessed the capacity of a student to display an overall understanding of the topics addressed in class and to critically examine and connect them.

- In order to receive a high final grade, students should display their capacity to correctly analyze the sources and to clearly and critically discuss about them with a proper language and a good mastership of the issues address during classes.

- Average marks will be awarded to students who display an acceptable knowledge of the texts combined with a fair capacity to expose their content and with an overall understanding of the issues discussed in class, though with some minor imperfections and a less appropriate lexicon.

- A basic and mnemonic knowledge of the texts and of the main points addressed during classes will receive a lower or sufficient assessment.

- An unclear or significantly inaccurate exposition of the texts and the course's contents will be evaluated as insufficient to pass the examination.

Teaching tools

Slides with texts, summaries and other materials.

Office hours

See the website of Antonio Del Vecchio