Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the radical contradictions of a human body that is at once the subject and the object of modernization. It argues that Svevo proposes an arrhythmic embodiment by means of which the body adamantly asserts its material presence. The book addresses Carlo Emilio Gadda obsessive return to the porous borders of a gendered body. Though his novels are inhabited by a broad variety of bodies, Gadda suggests three distinct constructions of subjective identity, each grounded in a corresponding configuration of the body. These three embodied identities, namely, a self-consciously permeable male monad, a proliferating and memorably grotesque peasantry, and a bourgeois femininity fixated on maternity, develop in conflict one with the other. Indeed, as he opposes a femininity of carnal passivity intent on accumulation and self-preservation by means of maternity to an ethical masculinity equipped to shape the future, Gadda's gendered categories crumple in on themselves.