“University Wits”: Alienazione e lavoro intellettuale in quattro romanzi contemporanei

Abstract

This article examines four contemporary Italian novels, published between 2010 and 2021, devoted to the representation of intellectual alienation. Its aim is to investigate the conditions of both material and symbolic precarity that characterize intellectual careers, with particular attention to the gap between the expectations associated with a humanistic education and the actual opportunities for professional recognition and fulfillment. The novels under consideration are Scompenso (2010) by Andrea Sartori, Perciò veniamo bene nelle fotografie (2012) by Francesco Targhetta, Il pieno di felicità (2019) by Cecilia Ghidotti, and La vita adulta (2021) by Andrea Inglese. After outlining the challenges of cultural labor in contemporary Italy, drawing on Lucio Argano’s study of Italy’s cultural sector, the article adopts Melvin Seeman’s theoretical framework of alienation, centered on the subjective perspective of social actors and first proposed in his seminal article On the Meaning of Alienation (1959). It then analyzes the four novels by combining literary analysis with a sociologically informed interpretive approach, examining how the different forms of alienation identified by Seeman are reflected in the characters› trajectories and representations.