Italian Reactionary Thought and Critical Theory

"This book is a critical intervention in the recent turn to life of contemporary critical theory that investigates the centrality of the concept of origin in twentieth-century Italian culture from a feminist perspective. It discusses how, in the wake of the crisis of Western culture, Italian Reaction elaborated a savage vitalism that incorporated the archaic as it expropriated the feminine dimension of origin. Carlo Levi's reflection on the crisis of the patriarchal order instead represents an attempt to critique the ways in which power recuperates and inscribes life into its mechanisms of control"--