Extra moenia: Does inquietudine Offer Solidarity or frantumaglia?

Tabucchi defines inquietudine (disquiet) in terms of ontological nostalgia. His novels illustrate how marginalized groups escape “the boundaries.” Similarly, Ferrante shows how a subject experiencing frantumaglia (fragmentation) forms a new subjectivity through La smarginatura. There is sympathy between Tabucchi’s inquietudineand Ferrante’s La smarginatura. Both authors show the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of the subject through literature, suggesting the possibility of forming a new subject. These literary discussions are congruent with Italian philosophers’ discussions of resistant subject formation and social transformation through the concept of sinisteritas—those excluded from the existing order—similar to the marginalized groups in Tabucchi and Ferrante’s works. Through the subjectification of sinisteritas, Italian philosophers resist the existing order and seek new political subjectivities. This corresponds to the possibility of La smarginaturaand new subject formation in literary works.