Paradigms of refuse: waste abjection and rejection in contemporary Italian literature and cinema

Sciubba, Jessica

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99219 Copy

Description

Title

Paradigms of refuse: waste abjection and rejection in contemporary Italian literature and cinema

Author(s)

Sciubba, Jessica

Issue Date

2017-12-07

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Rota, Emanuel

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Rota, Emanuel

Committee Member(s)

• Calderwood, Eric
• Rushing, Robert
• Stoppino, Eleonora

Department of Study

French and Italian

Discipline

Italian

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Italian studies
• Contemporary Italian literature
• Italian cinema
• Environmental humanities
• Postcolonial studies
• Gender studies
• Migration studies
• Mediterranean studies

Abstract

“Paradigms of Refuse” explores Italy and the Mediterranean as landscapes of crisis, sites where environmental threats, social inequalities, and geopolitical turmoil converge. These landscapes are increasingly being transformed into dumping sites where the material as well as the human excess of our modern societies are discarded. In this study, I propose the concept of refuse– which refers both to the matter thrown away or rejected as worthless, as well as to the acts of refusing, declining and rejecting – as a theoretical tool to approach different dimensions of exclusion and exploitation with reference to both human beings and the natural environment. “Paradigms of Refuse” moves across these different meanings of refuse in order to offer an account of environmental and social unrest in contemporary Italy. By mapping the social as well as the material figuration of the refuse through close analysis of contemporary Italian literature and cinema, I expose not only the detrimental impact of the human over the environment, but also the ways in which the human/non-human remnants of our consumer culture can be approached in transformative ways as instruments of subversion. Refuse can become a tool to foster awareness, to shake consciences, to create discomfort and blur divides between human and non-human, nature and culture, the self and the other. Through refuse, I address the condition of the marginalized strata of the Italian society who are refused as the collateral waste of modernity while also refusing to conform to normalizing paradigms of inclusion: examples of these marginalized groups include migrants, the economically underprivileged, Roma communities, prostitutes. The employment of refuse as a theoretical tool allows to approach with coherence issues otherwise confined to distinct analytical paths, from the smuggling and disposal of waste, both human and non-human, to the insertion of the migrant, or other marginalized strata of Italian society, into the realm of worthless waste, with the consequent abjectification of the human (gendered) body.

Graduation Semester

2017-12

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99219

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Jessica Sciubba

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