ABSTRACT
At the time of writing, I questioned the appropriateness of an academic publication to weave the story of a strange, unsettling experience for Italy and Europe as a whole. In conducting this past-present ethnography, what have I accomplished? A way to (momentarily) avoid being plagued by this kind of uncomfortable question is to turn, as many have done, to things themselves – to the elements of our ecological selves. This book began as a result of my encounters with things that belong to nature, discourse and society – in other words, I have sought to trace a poetics of conflict experience through narrated things, remembered things, loved things and mourned things. Withy’s quote (above) reveals the ultimate uncanniness of the
worlds we inhabit: the people and things in them have the power to confound and to become intruders. Things populate our mutual sphere of experience whether we like them (or understand them) or not. In reviewing the memories and impressions that shape this current work, it seems to me as if ‘things’, material and immaterial, do have a way to influence and filter out the realities we live and remember.
