Le distopiche geometrie di Utopia

«Fuga» di Daniele Del Giudice

Abstract

The paper is inspired by a story taken from Mania (1997) by Daniele del Giudice, Fuga; at the center of which is one of the most remarkable constructions of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, the ‘Cemetery of the 366 pits’, designed by the architect Ferdinando Fuga. The story is read as a philosophical apologue, that must be interpreted in the light of some central themes of Daniele del Giudice’s reflection (treated above all in the novel Atlante occidentale). The modern myth of ‘Utopia’ is the background to this reflection, recalled in one of its most macroscopic original emblems: the geometric design of the city space as an expression of a rational order. The modern myth of the map and the atlas (perfect symbolic translation of scientist planning) finds in Fuga, in the form of the allegorical tale, a sort of parodic reversal, suggesting to the reader an aporia that is at the root of Western Modernity: the awareness that «utopia is necessary », but in its unlimited design potential, is contained «its opposite, its failure».