ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the dynamics of Carlo Emilio Gadda misogynistic ethics. It considers the author's macaronic or baroque writing as a fluctuating stylistics that strives to voice a human singularity that, beyond the rationalization of modernity, is incarnated in the material body of woman. The monumental management of bodies that defines the project of social and technological modernity lies at the heart of Gadda's ethically informed meditations on embodiment, an issue that he addresses from the perspective of the borders of the body. Gadda paints a portrait of a femininity that, even when engaging in acts of apparently altruistic philanthropy, seeks only to accumulate possessions and safeguard its carnal self and its social class by means of the project of maternity. The Weiningerian femininity of self-preservative carnality is explicitly contrasted with a masculine ethical impulse intent on shaping the future in the interests of the common good.