Reconfiguring Shame: Poverty, Eroticism, and the Sacred in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s "Ragazzi di vita" and "Teorema"

This article examines the role of shame in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Ragazzi di vita (1955) and Teorema (1968), focusing on its intersections with poverty, eroticism, and the sacred. Drawing from theoretical perspectives by Ewa Kosowska, Giorgio Agamben, and Guy Hocquenghem, the study positions shame as both a tool of societal control and a catalyst for resistance. In Ragazzi di vita, the marginalized borgatari experience shame through economic deprivation and social exclusion, yet they also reclaim it as an act of defiance. In Teorema, an enigmatic visitor disrupts bourgeois stability, exposing repressed desires and existential crises, leading to the characters’ psychological disintegration. Pasolini’s narratives reveal shame as both oppressive and transformative, dismantling dominant cultural structures and redefining subjectivity. By linking shame to class struggle, queer identity, and spiritual rupture, this article argues that Pasolini reconfigures shame as a paradoxical force—both destructive and redemptive—in a critique of modern consumerist society.