Immigration, “Literary Value”, and the Logic of Late Capitalism in Piersandro Pallavicini's Il mostro di Vigevano (1999)

Abstract

According to Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), postmodern culture functions as an expression of the logic of late capitalism, manifesting in stylistic pastiche, the dominance of spectacle, a waning of historical consciousness, and a corresponding erosion of affect. Central to Jameson’s critique is the contention that postmodernism forecloses the possibility of imagining alternatives to capitalism. This article argues that Piersandro Pallavicini’s Il mostro di Vigevano (1999) exemplifies some of these features, and it shows how its description of immigrants to Italy as ingenuous, innocent, and simple-minded insinuates that they come from backward places that are not troubled with modernity. Il mostro di Vigevano seems to reiterate one of the most powerful Eurocentric narratives, namely that different places in the world belong to different temporalities and follow a linear development towards progress. The analysis concludes by questioning the reliance on violent or provocative imagery in Il mostro di Vigevano to shock white middle-class sensibilities—a hallmark of mainstream Italian literature in the late 1990s—to criticize the logic of late capitalism. It also examines the concept of ‘literary value’ and its close entanglement with the logic of late capitalism.