“It's not at all true that I don't believe in Progress. I believe in Progress. I don't believe in Development. And specifically in this Development. And it's this Development that gives my cheerful nature a tremendously sad, almost tragic twist.”
In an age in which individualism is the defining trait of every social atom, it is more necessary than ever to underline the function that the individual dimension can achieve if aimed at emerging from the contradictions of social reality and the social system as a whole.
Pasolini's perspective
To this end, Pasolini's work offers an interesting perspective from which to observe the dynamics of the individual.
It is in Pasolini that the word and action of the individual in relation to the community are realized.
The Italian intellectual's literary production, in fact, offers a vantage point from which to scrutinize the phenomena that are triggered when the individual portrait relates to the collective.
The descriptions and stories that Pasolini offers us refer to a concrete reality made up of inequalities, poverty, forgotten suburbs, exploitation.
The categories of sociological analysis are the necessary means that allow us to analyze these unchanged dynamics.
The characters and the individual
Each character in Pasolini's work is described as pervaded by an eternal solitude, which is prevented from finding its own dimension and way out within the framework of a rapidly advancing industrial society.
It is precisely this society that deserves attention. It is the social system of consumption, of appearance, which advances and expects its members to do the same.
Durkheim , in his essays on the division of labor , states that social order is made possible by the work of each individual who internalizes his role within society and by virtue of this faculty allows for a balance that is more necessary than ever to maintain the balance of other individuals.
But the company we are talking about does not appear to have any interest in ensuring that all of its segments comply with this requirement.
Unless it's its top brass.
And indeed, it is consistent with what has been said so far if we maintain that, paradoxically, it is the responsibility of the most disadvantaged social classes not to respect this balance.
As evidence of what has been said so far, Pasolini's characters—violent, proletarian, and marginal—fail to fulfill this role. They demonstrate hostility toward a social order hostile to them.
“[…] Therefore, solitude is even greater if an entire crowd awaits its turn: in fact, the number of disappearances grows – leaving is fleeing – and the next one looms over the present like a duty, a sacrifice to be made to the desire for death .” (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Verses from the Testament. Solitude).
Individual alienation
It is in Pasolini's individual that another very relevant phenomenon takes shape: alienation.
A phenomenon that, from a Marxist perspective, describes the degree of separation from reality that afflicts the victims of every advanced industrial society.
The result of internal dynamics in the balance of power within society, alienation leads to a level of disorientation from reality that causes the individual to alienate himself from every dynamic close to him.
These characteristics, in fact, are embodied by every protagonist that Pasolini produces in his imagination.
We are thus provided with stories inhabited by characters who, in the small suburbs they inhabit, observe society from an outsider's perspective, looking with contempt at its behavior, its relationships and its development.
Looking at these dynamics from a Frankfurt perspective, we will notice how alienation is produced in the precise interest of the dominant classes, who ensure that they obtain a “reserve army ” (as indicated by Marx) for the purpose of maintaining the pre-established social order.
The religion
Another element that stands out in sociological terms is religion. According to Pasolini, it is the reason why the dissolution of society has not yet occurred.
Religion, together with the institution of the family , represents the barrier to the maintenance and protection of the individual entity in the face of a community that intends to homologate the entire order by virtue of the individual figure.
It is no coincidence that Durkheim reminds us that it is precisely religion that represents the main instrument of defense against the danger of anomie that threatens modern societies.
“For the first time in these last few months I have somehow conceived an idea, albeit an immanent and scientific one, of God. […] reality is a language! We need to do the semiology of reality, not that of cinema! But if reality speaks, who is it that speaks and with whom? Reality speaks to itself: it is a system of signs through which reality speaks to reality .” (Pier Paolo Pasolini, in “Gente”).
The question that Pasolini's analysis raises is to examine society, starting from the individual as a magnifying glass of the dynamics and conflicts that cross it.
The importance that Pasolini places on power, as the apparatus that coordinates the relationships and balances present in a society, represents the starting point from which to proceed for a comprehensive analysis of Western societies.
In this regard, it is useful for the purposes of a comprehensive sociological analysis to observe how contemporary dynamics are described in the works of Pasolini, who more than any other highlighted the importance and protagonism of the least privileged, the poor and the oppressed.
Born in Naples in 98, I currently live in Florence. I study Political Science at the University of Florence. I aspire to observe contemporary dynamics, social conflict, and inequality, adopting the " sociological mindset as a tool for liberation ."
