Crisi della cultura di massa, postmodernismo e necessità della menzogna

Abstract. The collapse of public ethics in Italy does not depend on one single individual and his Bonapartist power, but is rather linked to a more serious crisis of national culture identity and to changes in society and in forms of consciousness that have been taking place over a quite a few decades. The postmodernist cultural turn which has been gaining strength in our country too since 1980s has completely changed not only our way of treating and perceiving history, but also our way of reflecting on general concepts, with the result that the relationship of “post-modern” man with reality itself has changed at his roots, conditioning even those who would still like to transform this reality. Postmodernism challenges the modern project of conscious and organised (and therefore political) universal emancipation of mankind and substitutes it with a multiplicity of liberation routes that exclusively concern the individual and his personal preferences. But the extolling of desire and of immediate freedom risks materializing solely in the arenas of the market and of the access, real or imaginary, to consumption. And it therefore risks putting the real freedom of men and women, in the sense of the capacity to actively modify reality, even more at risk. It is therefore necessary to investigate the relation that exist between postmodernism and the neo-liberal political tendency that has developed alongside it. But before this, it is necessary to investigate its relation with the ideas that emerged on the great wave of social conflict from 1968-1977, to see if – over and above superficial contrasts – there isn’t a more hidden affinity between these phenomena.