This essay analyzes a peculiar case of “storied matter”: Naples’ bodies. Examining the material-discursive entanglements of my “porous city” (as Walter Benjamin defined it), I discuss two examples of “narratives of matter”: the plaster casts created by archaeologists while excavating the ruins of the ancient Pompeii, and the way the “war on Naples’ bodies” is represented by Curzio Malaparte in his controversial novel The Skin (1945). The essay describes the place’s mind as the “emergent interplay” of narrative agencies, both natural and cultural. Considering the way the diffractive dynamics of nature and memory are embodied in Naples’ reality, the essay shows how a material-ecocritical interpretation can participate in in a differential becoming.
Bodies of Naples: Stories, Matter, and the Landscapes of Porosity
IOVINO, Serenella
2014-01-01
Abstract
This essay analyzes a peculiar case of “storied matter”: Naples’ bodies. Examining the material-discursive entanglements of my “porous city” (as Walter Benjamin defined it), I discuss two examples of “narratives of matter”: the plaster casts created by archaeologists while excavating the ruins of the ancient Pompeii, and the way the “war on Naples’ bodies” is represented by Curzio Malaparte in his controversial novel The Skin (1945). The essay describes the place’s mind as the “emergent interplay” of narrative agencies, both natural and cultural. Considering the way the diffractive dynamics of nature and memory are embodied in Naples’ reality, the essay shows how a material-ecocritical interpretation can participate in in a differential becoming.
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