Ivo Stefano Germano | Università del Molise | Italy
ivostefano.germano@unimol.it
September 16th 2022 | 10.00 – 11.30
Panel #6 | “Contaminations”
Room G.126 | Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milan, Largo Gemelli 1
The Retrotopia Science Fiction
In recent years, in the fieldwork of science fiction storytelling and public representation, the past seems matters much more the the future. Among suggestions, mix-up, impressions, in science fiction itself dystopia is embedded, across the illusion of the self-fulfilling utopians languages in twenty century also the heterotopies that, on the items of biopolitics, try to decline the presente alone by proposing no alternative (without the possibility of any affirmation) relate to neoliberalism. Science fiction now is no progress, plain, barren, deeply in crisis, which can no longer held back, dicotomically, in social happy-ending, but neither can it be an “aesthetic contemplation” of the catastrophe. We could define this cultural trend, according to Zygmunt Bauman’s category, as «retrotopia science fiction». In this paper we intend to define the aspects and connotations of this narrative (and ideological) subject to be understood as a mirror of the fears (individual and collective, economic and political ones) of renewed, contemporary age of anxiety. The paper focuses on two main research directions: 1. the general analysis of film remakes by director Denis Villeneuve (firstly Blade Runner 2049 and Dune); 2. the thematization of the environmental crisis and the decomposition of urban space (understood as the sphere of politics and civil society) proposed by these movies (and which can also be interpreted through the cultural trend of «collapsology»). Ultimately, retrotopia science fiction poses, therefore, a desperate question of the future; and it is opposed – without the «principle of hope» typical of the Age of the Extremes – to dystopia.
Ivo Stefano Germano is an Associate Professor of Sociology of Digital Media, University of Molise, SUSef department. Topics of research concerns: Sociology of culture, Sociology of Digital Media, Sociology of journalism and sports. Main Pubblications are: Tribuna Stampa: storia critica del giornalismo sportivo da Pindaro a Internet (with I. Cucci, 2003); La società sportiva: significati e pratiche della sociologia dello sport (2012); Il calcio in fuorigioco? Indagine sulla disaffezione del pubblico italiano nei confronti del sistema calcio. (with P. Aroldi and G. Gili, 2017). Essays and articles: Dall’uomo pre-letterato all’uomo tecnologico (1997); Memoria (2006); A che ora è la fine del calcio? (2007); Dono o rapina? Oikos ed Ethos fra senso e reciprocità sociale (2008); Il corpo sportivo tra trasparenza ed eccentricità (2008); L’Euro-Palio calcistico fra identità e appartenenza culturale (2010); I mondiali di calcio da cerimonia sportiva a global entertainment (with S. Martelli and G.Russo, 2015); Corpi sportivi, moda, pubblicità (with G.Russo, 2016); Foucault, Goffman and the poisoned gifts in new media studies (with G. Porcelli, 2018); L’ibrido giornalistico: per una nuova axiologia della notizia dentro le logiche di piattaforma (2021).
