Policentrismo e resistenze periferiche nella storia dell’arte italiana: Centro e periferia di Castelnuovo e Ginzburg

The contribution deals with “Centro e periferia”, a 1979 essay, written by Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo Ginzburg and recently republished by Officina Libraria. It investigates the genesis of the essay and addresses the fruitful dialogue between the social history of art promoted by Castelnuovo and the experience of Italian micro-history. According to Ginzburg’s suggestions in the new Preface, Centro e periferia is discussed in relation to the historical studies’ current panorama. The focus is therefore on the analysis of a concrete cases’ sample and their composition in a model for the study of relations between centres and peripheries on whose potential — in the context of the challenge the globalized world posed to the humanities — the question is still open. It is a challenge taken up and relaunched by World history and Global history that makes once again the problems of comparison and self-reflexivity posed by the micro-history’s experiments urgent.