Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ITALIAN STUDIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA, cilt.34, sa.1, ss.170-195, 2021 (Hakemli Dergi)
This paper aims to explore the relation between space and individuals in
Alessandra Montrucchio’s E poi la sete (2010) by analysing the representation
of the urban network in connection to the people who mold it and by which they
are inevitably influenced. The post-apocalyptic city of 2088, after the ‘Caduta’
(the Fall), survives and so do the two protagonists, who can be considered a
clear anthropomorphic transposition of the urban grid presented by the writer.
With its iconographic and architectural repertoire, the dystopian urban structure
mirrors and clarifies the ideological and propagandistic elements of the political
power and of the citizens. As catalyst for phobias and fears, the urban space of
E poi la sete, linked to important ecological issues such as the shortage and
depletion of water and natural resources, proposes the topoi of segregation,
alienation, and social struggle. The scarcity of water, which shapes the urban
network, reverberates on the lexical choices in particular on the essential and
raw descriptions; in turn, the landscape desolation recalls the loss of dignity and
humanity to which the two protagonists and the population are put through. The
space-individual interdependence culminates, on a visual level, in spatial
alterations while, on a sociological-intimistic level, in the transformation of the
human beings. Within this framework, due to the regression of the individual, it
is safe to speak of pre-human rather than post- or new-human.