Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale, vol 53, Numero Monografico "Progetti per l’Umanità. Rivoluzioni, Utopie e Ingegneria Sociale"

Progetti per l’Umanità. Rivoluzioni, Utopie e Ingegneria Sociale (Projects for Humankind. Revolutions, Utopias and Social Engineering) explores a variety of plans and attempts to transform human beings into something different and better. In particular, it engages with utopian thinking and its ineludible counterpart, dystopia; with moments of political, cultural or philosophical revolution aimed at triggering profound shifts in human life; and with different projects of social engineering to be accomplished through a variety of means such as education, propaganda or alterations to the human body or mind. The case studies included in this volume range from the 18th century to the present day, and involve disciplines such as literary and film studies, philosophy, political science and cultural history. In particular, the volume features essays on the following topics: mythology in German Romanticism; Martin Heidegger’s eschatology; Francesco Saverio Salfi’s essay on the 1783 earthquake in Calabria; the scapigliati writers Carlo Dossi and Giovanni Faldella; the utopian production of positivist anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza; the Proletkul’t movement; early Soviet children’s magazines; the political implications of Russian linguaculturology (lingvokul’turologija); Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’s Dianetics; Zulu intellectual and writer Herbert Dhlomo’s speculative fiction; “self-management” (autogestione) and the Italian Socialist Party in the 1970s; the current debate on surrogate motherhood; and Terry Gilliam’s dystopian film trilogy. Through these multiple perspectives, the volume argues that human projectuality is an anthropological constant throughout history that is both necessary for human existence and simultaneously fraught with dangers; and that it is therefore a crucial category to analyse reality and fiction alike.