Laboratoire italien. Politique et société, n°33/2024

This issue is devoted to the cultural, artistic and religious life of the people of Southern Italy from Unity (1861) to the mid-twentieth century, and to the representations that literature, philosophy and the social sciences have associated with it. What do they reveal about the popular cultures of the Mezzogiorno, at a time when the "Southern Question" is asserting the perception of a “backwardness” in the development of the regions of Southern Italy?
The contributions brought together, combining anthropology, history, literary, philosophical, cinematographic and ethnomusicological studies, follow the progress and ambivalence of figures of Southern folklore. From Romantic-inspired demology to the ethnology of the 1950s influenced by the writings of Gramsci, the cultures of the South aroused a great deal of interest: some insisted on the inability of these populations to escape their subaltern condition; others, on the contrary, emphasised the potential for protest and the dynamism of these cultures.
This oscillation emerges throughout the articles, which explore in turn the history and representations of post-Risorgimento Sicily, the ambiguous imaginary surrounding post-war Naples, the views of foreign ethnologists who came to study the Mezzogiorno, and finally the methodological and political innovations of De Martino's investigations.