The Italian Cultural Institute, within the framework of the Italian Days conceived with the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQàM) and in collaboration with the Institut d’études internationales de Montréal (UQàM), with the UNESCO Chair d’étude des fondements philosophiques de la justice et de la société démocratique (UQàM), the Fondation Aubin, the Gramsci Foundation of Rome and the Alberto Cardosi Cultural Association, is pleased to present the International Conference on the theme “Le Rayonnemet de la pensée italienne / The spread of Italian thought “.
Friday November 2nd 2018, 9am–5pm
The Italian Cultural Institute
1200 Avenue du Docteur-Penfield
Montréal (QC), QC H3A 1A9
The International Conference traces the spread of the Italian philosophical tradition since the Renaissance period, focusing in particular on the philosophical and political thought of Antonio Gramsci. Thanks to the Italian Cultural Institute, Italian scholars Rino Caputo (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), Gian Mario Cazzaniga (University of Pisa) and Francesco Giasi (Gramsci Foundation of Rome) contribute to the Conference sessions and in particular:
Lazzaro Rino Caputo, Gramsci’s work in the relationship between literary criticism and popular literature (L’ouvrage de Gramsci dans la relation entre critique littéraire et littérature populaire). Through the precise reconstruction of Gramsci’s theoretical considerations on literary activity, it is possible to define with greater precision the influence of Gramsci’s work on critical-literary work, with particular reference to the late twentieth century and to today’s cultural reality. In this direction the historical-critical richness of the Gramscian notion of “national and popular” emerges, applied in particular to some literary results of definitive value such as Alessandro Manzoni, Luigi Pirandello and “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
Gian Mario Cazzaniga People and political organization according to Gramsci. The Cardosi essay on Gramsci’s reading people highlights the concept of moving reality, where education and cultural battle tools are needed to change the people, who is the protagonist of the historical process. The writings describe the people as a whole made up of different social stratifications. Even the bourgeoisie is understood, although Gramsci denounced poverty in spirit. However, with the occupation of the factories in 1919, reading people focuses on the importance of the working people, stressing the importance of the alliance of workers and peasants during the Bolshevik Revolution. The party, as a political organization, is presented as a necessary tool to win the culture war and to establish a new intellectual figure to guide and represent the social classes.
Francesco Giasi, Popular classes and parties in the Italian Risorgimento. Starting from the notes contained in the First notebook, inaugurated in February 1929, Gramsci discusses some moments and aspects of the political struggle that took place in Italy during the period of formation of the unitary state. The conference is spread over the meaning of some of the historical and political categories used by Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks: hegemony, passive revolution, Southern question, Jacobinism, national-popular.
Lazzaro Rino Caputo is “Docens Turris Virgatae” and full professor in Italian Litterature. Nowadays Prof. Caputo chairs the Italian Litterature Course at the Corso di Studi Magistrale di Letteratura, Filologia e Linguistica (Department “Studi Letterari, Filosofici e di Storia dell’Arte” at the “Tor Vergata” University of Rome). Rino Caputo published some essays and volumes about Dante, Petrarca, Giannone, Manzoni and Italian Romanticism, Pirandello and the Italian and Northern American contemporary Litterature Critics. Professor Caputo is a member of Arcadia, of the Dante Society of America and of the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani. He taught Litterary Narrative at the Scuola Nazionale del Cinema di Roma-Cinecittà, Italian Linguistics at the Scuola Superiore di Giornalismo of the “Tor Vergata” University of Rome and Italian Litterature Education at courses for high school teachers. From November 2007 to July 2012 he was President of the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia of the “tor Vergata” University of Rome and since October 2010 he has headed the conferenza Nazionale dei Rettori delle Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia delle Università Italiane. From November 2013 to November 2017 he was Prorector of Culture at the “Tor Vergata” University of Rome. Furthermore, since July 2012 Rino Caputo has headed the Centro Studi Ars Nova Italiana di Letteratura e Musica del Trecento di Certaldo . In 2018 he has received the International Pirandello Prize thanks to his long and brilliant scientific activity and to his contribution in spreading Pirandello’s works (winner of a Nobel Prize in 1934) worldwide.
Gian Mario Cazzaniga was born in Turin on the 20th april 1942. First, he attended the grammar school Massimo D’Azeglio in Turin and then he attended the Humanistic Studies University and the Normale di Pisa. Professor Cazzaniga (now retired), chaired the course named Corsod i Filosofia Morale at the University of Pisa. Furthermore, he is the creator of twelve international conferences, from which he published Les Actes, and the founder of two conventions between the University of Pisa and the University of Quebec in Montreal, promoted by the Canadian Josiane Boulad-Ayoub. She is the President of the UNESCO Chair at the UQAM’s Department of Philosophy and at the University of La Habana. Prof. Cazzaniga is writer of 160 scientific publications and visiting professor in twenty Universities in both Europe and america. His recent publications are: Cazzaniga G.M.-Zarka Ch.Y. eds., Penser la souveraineté à l’époque moderne et contemporaine (Pisa-Paris, 2001); Boulad-Ayoub J.-Cazzaniga G.M., Traces de l’autre. Mythes de l’antiquité et Peuples du Livre dans la construction des nations méditerranéennes (Pisa-Paris, 2004); Cazzaniga G.M. ed., Storia d’Italia Einaudi, Annali 21: Massoneria (2006), Annali 25: Esoterismo (2010); Cazzaniga G.M., La catena d’unione. Contributi per una storia della massoneria (Pisa, 2016).
Francesco Giasi is the director of the Fondazione Gramsci and a member of the Comitato Scientifico dell’Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. He has consacreted to Gramsci plenty of studies that have been inserted into journals and volumes.
For the entire program of the Round Table click here: https://iicmontreal.esteri.it/iic_montreal/resource/doc/2018/10/il_diffondersi_del_pensiero_italiano_2_novembre_2018.pdf