L’altra dialettica: Fortini, lo spettro cinese e la Rivoluzione Culturale

Abstract

The essay examines Fortini’s political and cultural relationship with the Chinese revolutionary tradition through three key moments: his reading of Lu Xun’s writings, his reflections on Maoism, and his interpretation of the Cultural Revolution as a process of class struggle. It highlights both the collaborative dialogue with Edoarda Masi and the “spectral” nature assumed by these references, as a symptom of the contradictory nature of the relationship between intellectuals and revolution at certain moments in twentieth-century history, as well as of the dynamics of destruction and preservation that revolutionary moments in China have triggered, in relation to tradition on the one hand and to the working classes on the other. Based on these problematic issues, a possible point of affinity is identified between Fortini’s interpretations and those of thinkers of the Chinese New Left.