L'eros onnipotente: Omoerotismo, letteratura e impegno nell'opera di Pier Paolo Pasolini e Jean Genet

Both Pasolini and Genet published their first literary works in 1942--Pasolini's collection of poems Poesie a Casarsa and Genet's poem Le condamne a mort from then on, their lives and literary careers followed similar paths passing from poetry to prose on to works for the theater and cinema. Their works and their lives unveiled the contradictions which lie at the base of modern society. They were both homosexual, politically dissident, and intellectually nonconformist, all aspects which challenged the boundaries of bourgeois society.Pasolini and Genet both chose to represent marginalized and oppressed people as the main characters of their stories, and, on a formal level, this has profound consequences on their writing style. They disregard the ideological concepts of the traditional novel--character, plot and location--in favour of alternative narrative strategies which portray a bidimensional character devoid of conscience and social collocation.Of all the possible analogies that can be drawn between Pasolini and Genet, that which is emphasized is the way in which they share a common vision of Otherness, represented as an erotic object of desire, the means by which to acknowledge the physical, historical and social differences that Otherness implies. Starting from a representation of homoeroticism as a sterile and radically antisocial stance, Pasolini and Genet sought to transform its negativity into a powerful means of social change. In some of their works Eros is depicted as a pedagogical tool which subverts the moral order, leading to a criticism of modern society. As an irrational source of energy, Eros also constitutes an effective tool towards political engagement and social transformation.