"Polimorfi e poligami e un po’ anche polipi."

Representations of Ambiguous Masculinity in Late 1970s Bologna

Abstract

Cultural studies are underlining ambiguity and fluidity concepts to grasp how gender narratives have been changing since the upheaval of 1968. Scholars have acknowledged that traditional masculinity has been challenged and remolded as a result of second-wave feminism. However, representations of masculinity have yet to be examined in one of the key moments of postwar Italian culture: the sociopolitical turmoil of the late 1970s. Bologna was the center of the Italian Movement of 1977. Its subcultural scene flourished thanks to the confluence of young creatives at the DAMS University of Bologna, where Umberto Eco taught. The symbolic productions of this scene provide brilliant portrayals of the reshaping of gender becoming ambiguous and fluid. This article examines the literary representations of masculinity in exemplary works by the three most notable authors tied to subcultural Bologna: Andrea Pazienza, Enrico Palandri, and Pier Vittorio Tondelli. My argument is that their narrative constructions of masculinity reveal three remarkably different reactions to second-wave feminism and to the challenging and remolding of gender in the late 1970s. These reactions are a tendency towards resentful and sarcastic rejection of pro-feminist discomfort, an aestheticizing acceptance of melancholic and ambiguous masculinities, and a postmodern turn towards the conception of gender fluidity. Furthermore, displacement, ambiguity and fluidity can be observed in the mixed language and experimental syntax. In doing so, this paper sheds new light on the transition toward postmodern and backlash gender narratives in the subsequent decade.