Objects in Italian Life and Culture

"Bartoloni's book is an inventive and far-reaching exploration of the place of objects in Italian life, culture, and thought. It engages with a fascinating range of both fictional and actual things, both as irreducible material presences and in the multiple modalities of their symbolic uses. A compelling interdisciplinary object in itself, this book makes strong intellectual claims for the contribution of the Italian perspective to the cultural and theoretical study of things." (Laura Rascaroli, Professor of Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, Ireland) "This book is a tour de force reading of modern and contemporary Italian artworks, artifacts, and social practices, as well as a brilliantly original and fascinating contribution to the literature on object-oriented ontology. Combining phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, Bartoloni reorients our perception of the world around us, exhorting us to give objects their due. A must-read for anyone interested in the cultural life of objects." (Robert Doran, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Rochester, USA)

This book makes visible the hidden relations between things and individuals through a discussion of creative processes and cultural practices.

This book makes visible the hidden relations between things and individuals through a discussion of creative processes and cultural practices. Italian life and culture are filled with objects that cross, accompany, facilitate or disrupt experience, desires, and dreams. Yet in spite of their ubiquity, theoretical engagement in the Italian context is still underdeveloped. Paolo Bartoloni investigates four typologies—the fictional, migrant, multicultural/transnational, and the artificial—to hypothesize that the ability to treat things as partners of emotional and creative expression creates a sense of identity predicated on inclusivity, openness, care, and attention.