Mario Perniola (20 May 1941 – 9 January 2018) was an Italian philosopher, professor of aesthetics and author. Many of his works have been published in English.
Biography Mario Perniola was born in Asti, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin where he graduated in 1965. While he was reading philosophy in Turin, he met Gianni Vattimo and Umberto Eco, who all became prominent scholars of Pareyson's school. From 1966 to 1969 he was connected to the avant-garde Situationist International movement founded by Guy Debord with whom he kept on friendly terms for several years. He became a full professor of aesthetics at the University of Salerno in 1976 and then he moved to the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he has been teaching since 1983. He was visiting professor invited to universities and research centres, such as Stanford University (United States), l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), University of Alberta (Canada), University of Kyoto (Japan), University of São Paulo (Brazil), University of Sydney, University of Melbourne (Australia), and the National University of Singapore. Perniola wrote many books which have been translated into English and other languages. He also directed the journals Agaragar (1971–73), Clinamen (1988–92), Estetica News (1988–95). In 2000 he founded Agalma. Rivista di Studi Culturali e di Estetica, a journal of cultural studies and aesthetics, which is published twice a year. The breadth, insight and many-faced contributions of Perniola's thought has earned him the reputation of being one of the most impressive figures on the contemporary philosophical scene.Hugh J. Silverman, “Foreword”, Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 10. This volume containing Hugh Silverman's “Foreword” (pages: 9-14) and Massimo Verdicchio's essay “Reading Perniola Reading“ (pages: 15-41) is the most useful and starting-point for the study of Perniola's thought available in English. His book Miracoli e traumi della comunicazione (2009) (Miracles and Traumas of Communication) gained many awards amongst which the prestigious Premio De Sanctis. His wide-ranging activities involved formulating innovative philosophical theories, writing books, teaching aesthetics, and lecturing worldwide. He dedicated the rest of his time to his kindred and numerous friends, passing between his apartment-studio in Rome and his vacation home in a quaint town in the Alban Hills, southeast of Rome, where he died.
Philosophy of literature The initial period of Perniola's career focuses on the philosophy of the novel and the theory of literature.Massimo Verdicchio, “Reading Perniola Reading. An Introduction”. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 16. In his first main work, Il metaromanzo (The Metanovel 1966), which is his doctoral dissertation, Perniola argues that the modern novel from Henry James to Samuel Beckett has a self-referential character. Furthermore, he claims that the novel is only about itself. Perniola's aim was to demonstrate the philosophical dignity of these literary works and try to recover a serious cultural expression. The Italian Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Eugenio Montale, praised Perniola for this original critique of novels.Eugenio Montale, “Entra in scena il metaromanzo”. Il Corriere della Sera, October 9, 1966.
Counter-culture Perniola, however, does not only have an academic soul but also an anti-academic one.Massimo Verdicchio, “Reading Perniola Reading. An Introduction”. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 15. The latter is epitomized by his attention to alternative and transgressive cultural expressions. His first major work belonging to this anti-academic side is L'alienazione artistica (Artistic Alienation 1971), in which he draws on Marxist thought that inspired him at that time. Perniola argues that alienation is not a failure of art, but rather a condition of the very existence of art as a distinctive category of human activity.Hugh Bredin, "L'alienazione artistica" by Mario Perniola, in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Winter 1972. His second book I situazionisti (The situationists 1972; republished with the same title by Castelvecchi, Rome, 1998) exemplified his interest in the avant-garde and the work of Guy Debord.Massimo Verdicchio, “Reading Perniola Reading. An Introduction”. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 15-16. Perniola gives an account of the Situationist International and post-situationist movement which lasted from 1957 to 1971 and in which he was personally involved from 1966 to 1969. He also highlights the conflicting features which characterized the members of the movement.I situazionisti, Roma, Castelvecchi, 1998, 2005. The journal Agaragar (published between 1971 and 1972) continues the post-situationist critique of capitalist and bourgeoisie society. Perniola then published his book on the French writer George Bataille (George Bataille e il negativo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977; George Bataille and the Negative). The negative here is conceived as the motor of history.
Post-structuralism In the 1980s Perniola offered some of his most insightful contributions to continental philosophy.Hugh Silverman. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, translated by Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 9 In Dopo Heidegger. Filosofia e organizzazione della cultura (After Heidegger. Philosophy and Organization of Culture 1982), drawing on Martin Heidegger and Antonio Gramsci, Perniola includes a theoretical discourse on social organization. He in fact argues the possibility of establishing a novel relationship between culture and society in Western civilization. As the former interrelations between metaphysics and church, dialectics and state, science and profession have been deconstructed, philosophy and culture provide a way to overcome nihilism and populism which characterize today's society. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World (2001) is a composite volume in English containing sections of two works published in Italian in the 1980s, i.e. La società dei simulacri (The Society of Simulacra 1980) and Transiti. Come si va dallo stesso allo stesso (Transits. How to go from the Same to the Same 1985). Perniola's theory of simulacra deals with the logic of seduction which was also pursued by Jean Baudrillard. Although seduction is empty, it is nevertheless rooted in a concrete historical context. Simulation, however, provides images which are valued as such regardless of what they actually represent or refer to. "Images are simulations in that they seduce and yet out of their emptiness, they have effects".Hugh Silverman. Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, translated by Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 12 Perniola then illustrates the role of such images in a wide range of cultural, aesthetic and social contexts. The notion of transit seems to be more suitable to capture the cultural aspects of technology which have altered today's society. Transit – i.e. going from the same to the same – avoids falling into the opposition of dialectics "that would precipitate thinking in the mystification of metaphysics".Verdicchio in, Ritual Thinking. Sexuality, Death, World. With a foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, translated by Massimo Verdicchio, New York: Humanity Books, 2001: 18On the influence of the notion of simulacra see Robert R. Burch. “The Simulacrum of Death: Perniola beyond Heidegger and Metaphysics?”. Feeling the Difference, Extreme Beauty. Aesthetics, Politics, Death. James Swearingen & Johanne Cutting-Gray, Ed. New York-London: Continuum, 2002: 180-193; Robert Lumley. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London-New York:Verso, 1994.For further interpretations of the notion of transit see Hayden White, "The Italian Difference and the Politics of Culture", in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, New School for Social Research, New York, 1984, 1: 117-122; Giovanna Borradori. Recoding Metaphysics. The New Italian Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988: 15-19.
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