L’interdipendenza tra spazio urbano e pre-umano in E poi la sete di Alessandra Montrucchio

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relation between space and individuals in Alessandra Montrucchio’s E poi la sete (2010) by analysing the representation of the urban network in connection to the people who mold it and by which they are inevitably influenced. The post-apocalyptic city of 2088, after the ‘Caduta’ (the Fall), survives and so do the two protagonists, who can be considered a clear anthropomorphic transposition of the urban grid presented by the writer. With its iconographic and architectural repertoire, the dystopian urban structure mirrors and clarifies the ideological and propagandistic elements of the political power and of the citizens. As catalyst for phobias and fears, the urban space of E poi la sete, linked to important ecological issues such as the shortage and depletion of water and natural resources, proposes the topoi of segregation, alienation, and social struggle. The scarcity of water, which shapes the urban network, reverberates on the lexical choices in particular on the essential and raw descriptions; in turn, the landscape desolation recalls the loss of dignity and humanity to which the two protagonists and the population are put through. The space-individual interdependence culminates, on a visual level, in spatial alterations while, on a sociological-intimistic level, in the transformation of the human beings. Within this framework, due to the regression of the individual, it is safe to speak of pre-human rather than post- or new-human.

Keywords: City, dystopia, space-individual, pre-human, apocalyptic environmentalism