20th-century criticism and theory have acquainted us with the ability of fictional narratives to build or strengthen the identity of nations and classes, often at the expense of other communities. Investigations of the ideological significance of fiction as a tool for social cohesion have insistently stressed its tendency to exclude, debase or misrepresent other groups. A question that has been posed less often is, however, how narrative works manage to build inclusive communities. In recent years, moreover, given the ethical and political issues raised by transnational migrations and globalization, the power of fiction as a tool to question or broaden community boundaries has become more and more significant. And it is likely that it will become all the more so in light of recent social and political developments, such as the resurgence of nationalism in the shape of ¿sovereignism¿ and protectionist policies, and the crisis of Europe, both as an idea and as a system of institutions
The aim of this project is to explore narrative as a tool for the creation of inclusive communities in European and American culture, with a focus on a broad range of media (literature, both fictional and non-fictional, including translated literature, films, TV series, graphic novels, videogames), from classical antiquity to the present day
Until now research on inclusive communities has mostly attracted the interest of researchers working in the field of sociology, anthropology, politics, ethics, religion and pedagogy (to name just a few), as witnessed by the works of David Studdert, Zygmunt Bauman and by Hinnov, Harris and Rosenblum (Communal Modernisms. Teaching Twentieth-Century Literature in the Twenty-First-Century Classroom, 2013). Anthropological and sociological works over the past decades how rituals, practices and discourses work on emotion to shape cultural structures and how early writers draw on the cultural and religious traditions to create new types of communities. Compared to what has been done in these areas and despite large debates on the creation of inclusive communities, commonality and communal identities from an interdisciplinary standpoint, the analysis of the role of literature in the creation of inclusive communities and in understanding what community means is still marginal, often little theorized and less understood.
Part of the research, therefore, will be devoted to exploring the potential for a rigorous and fruitful engagement of literature in community building, bearing constantly in mind those areas where the debate is deeply rooted. Engaging foundational theories of textual community and intellectual community, this research will look at communal negotiations of distance (linguistic, cultural, religious, literary) as the territories where community-building activities are negotiated in literature. The project will be devoted at reassessing literature and its role in antiquity, the middle ages and modernity as it explores the variety of its contributions to foster new and inclusive spaces where multi-cultural and multi-racial identity are developed and to raise the issues that are most relevant to the social and cultural context in which a community lives. Part of the analysis concerns how modern writers draw on ancient and medieval literature to define new types of communities, form communal identities, thus establishing a territory where the ¿conversation of cultures¿ occurs. This research will bring into focus the relationships between literature, consciousness and community and how these relationships have mattered in the past and still matter for the present, emphasizing the links among literature, politics and religion in order to illustrate the sociopolitical significance of the literary tradition. Furthermore, the scope of the discussion will be opened up to address the role played by the intersection of literature and religion (with a special concern for nationalism and fundamentalism) when we look at commonality as a space constructed by some form of conscious or unconscious agreement and mutual recognition. In this regard, the members of the research group will demonstrate that by interacting with its cultural and socio-political world, literature is one of the privileged fields of inquiry for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the margins of society and that literature in its broadest sense can be a valuable tool to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society and communal identities.