Napoli tra essenza e processo: il caso di Antonella Cilento

In this chapter, I use Rosi Braidotti’s notion of ‘nomadic subject’, integrated by Gayatry Spivak’s ‘strategic essentialism’ and Irigaray’s ‘mimesis’, to develop an approach and a critical practice to narratives that attempt to explain Naples. I first establish the overlaps between female nomadism and Naples as a female city/Other, and then propose that mobilizing Neapolitan difference-essence is useful both to make visible the culturally and historically codified images and signifieds in which the city is trapped and to erode them.
I test my methodology and theoretical tools on Antonella Cilento (born 1970), an author with a profound and varied commitment to Naples. I focus on two texts, Non è il paradiso (2003) and Neronapoletano (2004), which, while being critical of Neapolitan ‘immobilismo’, propose stories and characters which combat it in the name of change and movement. My analysis brings to the fore the transformative potential present in Cilento’s engagement with Naples’s historical and cultural heritage, including its associations with the feminine. I thus measure whether her strategic deployment of Neapolitan essence/difference moves into the mimetic mode that dislodges/destroys old patterns and stereotypes.
In the conclusion I pose a number of questions on the representation of Naples and gender in relation to characters and their authors.
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