LA SCRITTURA, IL CERVELLO, E L’ERA DIGITALE

What are the effects of electronic technology on writing, literature, educational practices and on the development of the nervous system? This book deals with these and other issues from multiple points of view, based on philosophy, the orientations of literary criticism, neuroscience, and the ties between the school system and the social values produced by the logic of economics and the materialistic culture. Current anthropological changes are examined taking into consideration the interiorisation of new technologies and the marginalization of the alphabet and its humanistic culture to peripheral areas. As far as education is concerned, the book underscores the importance of cognitive weakening, the decline of analytical skills, and the deterioration of conceptual and performative competences. In light of the increasing cultural impoverishment, this book promotes an engaged literature, aiming at inviting the new generation to resist and to develop critical thinking about technologies and social constructions of individual and collective identities.

About John Picchione
John Picchione is an associate professor of Modern and Contemporary Italian Culture and Literature at York University (Toronto, Canada). His research interests include 20th-century poetry and narrative, avant-garde movements, and literary theory. His many works include The new avant-garde in ltaly: theoretical debate and poetic practices, which won the Award of the American Association of Italian Studies in 2004, and the recent Edoardo Sanguineti: literature, ideology and the avant-garde (in collaboration). In the EUM catalogue you can also find another of his books: Dal modernismo al postmodernismo: riflessioni teoriche e pratiche della scrittura (2012).