La "nuda vita". Prolegomena a uno studio su Nietzsche

Plato theorizes in the Phaedrus the “holy fury” as a form of poetry. Primordial impulses as the foundation of art and philosophy are theorized by Nietzsche as well as by Pasolini. After all, Nietzsche and the avant-garde emphasize the “furious”, productive and creative aspect of vitalism. A great number of artists of the beginning of the twentieth century – each one in his own way and with his own poetic strategy – has tried to give a concrete form to this transfiguration of the conflict between “bare life” and work of art seen as an artificial machinery that aims to accentuate their distance. The paradox of the theorists of “bare life” depends on the fact that they start with remarks based on “science” and Darwin to end up with nihilism, as it is impossible not to observe the transience of life. The possibility to interfere with the body – to “pilot” an individual’s life – opens a way to a biopolitical utopia in a sense of racial homogeneity as well as in a sense of biological construction of a “new human being”. Therefore the vitalism, from which Benjamin had started by reading Nietzsche, ends up in the blind alley of “mythological” interpretation of modern times from Aragon’s side. The cul-de-sacs of “holiness” and “myth”, that seem to have come back in fashion in these days, are criticized by Nietzsche and Benjamin without mercy because they were able to determine their theoretical weaknesses and “illusions”.