On the idea of end, as it seems, all our thoughts end up stranding. The thought of end is tangled up in a net of paradoxes and contradictions, whether it is conceived as the individual end we use to call "death" or as the collective end that western tradition conceives through the biblical symbols of Apocalypse or through the empirical paradigm of catastrophe. Nevertheless, imagination can pass the line where concept has to stop, the line beyond which our intellect experiences the dizzy absence of thought that comes with the idea of the end. We can't really think the idea of end, so on the end grows a wide and luxuriant forest of images. The project of Modern Age, with its affirmation of that particular form of absolutism of reality which aims to take the tecno-scientific and productive capacity of human kind to extremes, starts up a gigantic mechanism which removes the issue of end. This is the ideology of progress, that is to say the cosmic and historical projection of that same faith in infinite which used to characterize ancient Christian culture. But nowadays the adventure of Modern Age has finished. The crisis we are living in (which includes all the ecological, economic and political levels of crisis we are afflicted by) poses again the problem of end. For this reason, the imagination of end and of its symbolical and figurative dimensions is again of great importance. The "icons of end" that have been elaborated during the wide path of western tradition reoccupy the blank pages of our present, the spaces of our social imagery that now coincide with the myths of mass culture, motion pictures and popular narratives: Titanic, Apocalypse Now, The Day After, vampires, Frankenstein, mummies, up to the more recent and exotic zombies. This book offers a journey among images of individual and collective apocalypses that have always haunted the human mind.
Sull'idea della fine sembra che tutti i nostri pensieri debbano arenarsi. Che si tratti della fine individuale che chiamiamo morte o di quella fine collettiva che nella tradizione occidentale si e' intesa vuoi nei termini simbolici racchiusi nell'ultimo libro della Bibbia, l'Apocalisse, vuoi secondo il paradigma empirico della catastrofe, il pensiero della fine si blocca in un groviglio di paradossi e di contraddizioni. Eppure, la' dove il concetto si ferma e, anzi, la' dove il nostro intelletto sperimenta quella sorta di vertiginosa assenza di pensiero che la fine porta con se', l'immaginazione si mette al lavoro. Se della fine, quindi, non si da' pensiero, sulla fine cresce una vasta e lussureggiante foresta di immagini. Con il progetto culturale della modernita' e con la declinazione di quella particolare forma di assolutismo della realta' che deriva dall'assolutizzazione dell'uomo e della sua capacita' tecnico-scientifica e produttiva, si mette in atto un gigantesco meccanismo di rimozione della questione della fine. Si tratta dell'ideologia del progresso, ossia della proiezione cosmica e storica di quella stessa fede nell'infinito che caratterizzava l'antico credo cristiano. Ma oggi l'avventura del moderno pare esser giunta al suo capolinea. La crisi della modernita' che stiamo vivendo, il grande quadro che racchiude tutte le crisi di ordine ecologico, economico e politico che ci affliggono, ripropone prepotentemente la questione della fine. Ecco allora la ripresa dell'immaginazione della fine e del suo inventario figurale e simbolico. Ecco allora che le "icone della fine" elaborate all'interno del grande codice della tradizione occidentale rioccupano i vuoti del nostro presente, in quegli spazi dell'immaginario che sempre piu' coincidono con i miti della cultura di massa, del cinema e delle narrazioni popolari.
Icone della fine. Immagini apocalittiche, filmografie, miti
TAGLIAPIETRA , ANDREA
2010-01-01
Abstract
On the idea of end, as it seems, all our thoughts end up stranding. The thought of end is tangled up in a net of paradoxes and contradictions, whether it is conceived as the individual end we use to call "death" or as the collective end that western tradition conceives through the biblical symbols of Apocalypse or through the empirical paradigm of catastrophe. Nevertheless, imagination can pass the line where concept has to stop, the line beyond which our intellect experiences the dizzy absence of thought that comes with the idea of the end. We can't really think the idea of end, so on the end grows a wide and luxuriant forest of images. The project of Modern Age, with its affirmation of that particular form of absolutism of reality which aims to take the tecno-scientific and productive capacity of human kind to extremes, starts up a gigantic mechanism which removes the issue of end. This is the ideology of progress, that is to say the cosmic and historical projection of that same faith in infinite which used to characterize ancient Christian culture. But nowadays the adventure of Modern Age has finished. The crisis we are living in (which includes all the ecological, economic and political levels of crisis we are afflicted by) poses again the problem of end. For this reason, the imagination of end and of its symbolical and figurative dimensions is again of great importance. The "icons of end" that have been elaborated during the wide path of western tradition reoccupy the blank pages of our present, the spaces of our social imagery that now coincide with the myths of mass culture, motion pictures and popular narratives: Titanic, Apocalypse Now, The Day After, vampires, Frankenstein, mummies, up to the more recent and exotic zombies. This book offers a journey among images of individual and collective apocalypses that have always haunted the human mind.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
