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

“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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Italian

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Sciubba, Jessica

Contributors dc:contributor

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

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

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Jessica Sciubba

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

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

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/99219