Case, Text, and Contexts: Construction and Deconstruction in Carlo Ginzburg's Machiavelli

Abstract

Starting from the discussion between Gabriele Pedullà and Carlo Ginzburg that followed the publication of Ginzburg’s Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal (2018), the article proposes a re-reading of Machiavelli, the rule and the exception (2003), the essay that sparked the research later merged into the volume and now constituting its first chapter. The analysis brings out a contradiction between, on the one hand, the theoretical-methodological underpinnings that Ginzburg has always defended against the so-called postmodern skepticism and, on the other hand, a way of proceeding that on the contrary takes implicitly advantage of principles one finds in texts by authors whose work Ginzburg has often criticized, such as, for instance, Jacques Derrida. The article focuses especially on the notions of ‘context’ and ‘specific context’, notions which Ginzburg used to reply to Pedullà’s objections, but that are both deconstructed – with procedures that are surprisingly similar to those indicated by Derrida himself in Signature Event Context (1972) – precisely in his own essay.