Mater of transformation. Poiesis and autopoiesis in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', Benvenuto Cellini's 'Vita' and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Petrolio'

In this project, I develop a comparative reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses (c.8 CE), Benvenuto Cellini's Vita (c.1558) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Petrolio (1975). These literary works belong to three eras in which Western culture faced crucial processes of geopolitical expansion, and they are all deeply concerned with the problem of transformation. On a thematic level, these narratives depict the transmutation of three precious substances (respectively: earth, gold and oil) into living products. On a structural level, these texts appear to embody continuous transformation because they defer their points of beginning, they present themselves as never-ending achievements, and they draw their readers into recursive signification loops that constantly renegotiate the boundaries between the textual 'inside' and 'outside.' Adopting a number of theoretical frameworks that range from Goux's analysis of economic value to Agamben's philosophical thought, and from Serres's reconsideration of physics to Irigaray's philosophy of fluids, I argue that these three literary works do more than challenge the conventional binary opposition between materiality and transcendence. In my view, in fact, these narratives subvert the structural isomorphism that links the functioning of truth, financial value, and the phallus as Western culture's main master signifiers.Scrutinizing the transformative dynamics that the Metamorphoses , the Vita and Petrolio engage, I also argue that these texts function as autopoietic organisms. In Maturana and Varela's frame, autopoiesis is the fundamental feature that distinguishes all living systems, and it corresponds to the capacity a system has to produce its new components while retaining its topological unity. In my views, the three literary works perform autopoiesis because, while they maintain an invariant structural unity through their written bodies, they capture in their narratives the mechanisms of signification that are produced by their readers. This suggests that, once it is considered to function as an autopoietic producer of signification, any literary text can be conceived of as a living organism.