“AT THE BORDER OF WRITING, ALWAYS HAVING TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU”
MAURICE BLANCHOT

Ciò che è importante non è il momento della realizzazione dell’invenzione, ma il momento dell’invenzione. Invenzione permanente; lotta continua [1].
Pier Paolo Pasolini

The theoretical point of departure of this dissertation is the notion of critical inheritance, expression that appears in Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx [2],  but it is never completely developed by the French philosopher in a systematic way. One could argue that Specters of Marx is a project in which Derrida performs a thought of critical inheritance as such while never systematically developing a reflection about the dynamics or the specificity of this notion. The thought about critical inheritance is, in Specters of Marx, never expanded or expounded but thoroughly performed by Derrida with his deconstructive reading of Marx and other authors. What is crucial to consider is that the thought of critical inheritance and deconstruction are somehow connected through the question of readability and writing (and iterability): [3]  the different injunctions presented within a specific text and the differential conceptualisation of time that follows it, demands for an attentive questioning on the act of inheriting as such. Some questions come up at this point.
   Who inherits? How does one go about it? Which kind of decisions or actions are taken or unravelled? How much action is involved? How is a discourse about inheritance developed and in which sense it is a discourse about tradition(s) and history? This is just a series of questions that generally informs this dissertation. However, the objective of this research is not to produce or fabricate a theoretical structure in order to systematize and regulate once for all the notion of critical inheritance.
   In the ‘Exordium’ to Specters of Marx, Derrida puts forward somehow the central aspects of his reflection. Derrida begins with an affirmative utterance or ‘strange watchword’, as he puts it: “I would like to learn to live finally” [4].  According to Derrida, ‘to learn to live’ is ethics itself and it is a matter of experience, in the in-betweenness of life and death: my life and death and the life and the death of the other. At this point of conjunction, Derrida makes one step further: the temporal dimension of this middle ground, this in between where the expression ‘to learn to live’ situates itself, speaks about “a time without tutelary present” [5].  Literally speaking, ‘to learn to live’, or perhaps experience itself, dwells in a present that does not act in the role of a guardian (master, teacher, father); this dimension of time speaks about the non-presence of ghosts, to live together with ghosts, in their company, concerned by ghosts.
   This condition of ‘being-with’ ghosts and with spectres “would also be, not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, of generations.” [6] 
   I would like to pinpoint, following the text’s development, the sections and components in which Derrida, even though in a unsystematic way, concentrates his attention on the emergence of the notion of ‘critical inheritance’.
   In the first chapter, just before analyzing Blanchot’s text “Marx’s three voices”, Derrida introduces for the first time in Specters of Marx the notion of critical inheritance in a quite straightforward passage, which I quote at length:

“Let us consider first of all, the radical and necessary heterogeneity of an inheritance, the difference without opposition that has to mark it, a ‘disparate’ and a quasi-juxtaposition without dialectic (the very plural of what we will later call Marx’s spirits).An inheritance is never gathered together, it is never one with itself. Its presumed unity, if there is one, can consist only in the injunction to reaffirm by choosing. ‘One must’ means one must filter, sift, criticize, one must sort out several different possibles that inhabit the same injunction. And inhabit in a contradictory fashion around a secret. If the readability of a legacy were given, natural, transparent, univocal, if it did not call for and at the same time defy interpretation, we would never have anything to inherit from it. We would be affected by it as by a cause - natural or genetic. One always inherits from a secret - which says ‘read me, will you ever be able to do so?’ The critical choice called for by any reaffirmation of the inheritance is also, like memory itself, the condition of finitude. The infinite does not inherit, it does not inherit (from) itself. The injunction itself (it always says ‘choose and decide among what you inherit’) can only be one by dividing itself, tearing itself apart, differing/deferring itself, by speaking at the same time several times – and in several voices” [7]. 

[…] One must assume the inheritance of Marxism, assume its most ‘living’ part, which is to say, paradoxically, that which continues to put back on the drawing board the question of life, spirit, or the spectral, of life-death beyond the opposition between life and death. This inheritance must be reaffirmed by transforming it as radically as will be necessary. Such a reaffirmation would be both faithful to something that resonates in Marx’s appeal - let us say once again in the spirit of his injunction - and in conformity with the concept of inheritance in general. Inheritance is never a given, it is always a task. […] To be, this word in which we earlier saw the word of spirit, means, for the same reason, to inherit. All the questions on the subject of being or of what is to be  (or not to be) are questions of inheritance. […] Reaction, reactionary, or reactive are but interpretations of the structure of inheritance. That we are heirs does not mean that we have or that we receive this or that, some inheritance that enriches us one day with this or that, but that the being of what we are is first of all inheritance, whether we like it or know it or not. And that, as Holderlin said so well, we can only bear witness to it. To bear witness would be to bear witness to what we are insofar as we inherit, and that - here is the circle, here is the chance, or the finitude – we inherit the very thing that allows us to bear witness to it” [11]. 

In this research project, the work of Pasolini assumes a fundamental because it acts much like a screen on which many competing claims and paradoxes can be put into play.
   The starting point of my work emerges from a basic premise: to re-read the work of the Italian poet and director alongside the work of contemporary French thinkers and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, trying to contextualize Pasolini’s diverse artistic production within certain thematic explorations.
   I will argue, throughout the dissertation, that Pasolini, in a very scattered and a-systematic way, puts forwards and introduces a certain philosophical thought about time and temporality: his constant reflection and obsession with History and histories, with the overlapping between past, present, future, with the passage from one generation to the other and with the problem of the historicity of the revolution, to name just a few, are paradigmatic aspects of his attention about the problem of tradition and the question of time. The two main objectives of this research project are, on the one hand, to produce and generate a reflection about tradition and inheritance in contemporary thought and, on the other hand, to re-activate (or inherit) the thought of Pasolini (not only his visionary creativity or prophetic polemical engagement) about time and temporality as a topos in the Friulan poet artistic production, examining certain thematic propositions that will be presented throughout the dissertation. To inherit ‘the Pasolinian monument’ seems a contradiction in terms, for two main reasons. First, his huge and diverse artistic and literary production does not permit any coherent and total categorization of his thought. Secondly, at least in Italy, Pasolini is still conceived as a ‘sacred monster’, a heavy and difficult still non-identified object of Italian culture of the 20th Century. One of the main concerns of this dissertation is to go back to the texts (poems and films) and read them again. To read or re-read again Pasolini and trying to be faithful to his own thought. To inherit Pasolini then would signify to allow a certain act of readability (between iterability and alterity) to take place.
   In the context of the works of Pasolini, a discourse about inheritance and inheriting entails also the condition of measuring and pondering how the question of tradition could be posed. The term ‘tradition’ already testifies, in its etymological configuration, a very well-known concatenation of significations that are nonetheless important to repeat and to re-state here right from the beginning. Tradition derives from the Latin noun ‘traditio’, deriving from the verb ‘tradére’ (to give, to hand over). Especially in Italian language, from the Latin verb ‘tradére’ derives both the term ‘tradizione’ (that is, tradition, literally ‘delivery’) and another term that shares the same root ‘trad-‘: ‘tradire’ (to betray) or ‘tradimento’ (betrayal). Therefore, the term tradition brings forward two meanings not strictly in opposition between them. One the one hand, tradition is concerned with the act of giving, transmitting, handing over and, on the other hand, this giving, transmitting and handing over refers to an act of betrayal.
   This research project posits itself and its different ramifications of thought, between these two meanings embedded in the notion of tradition. Critical inheritance is therefore affected by this double meaning of tradition: an already but not yet betrayed and betraying form of transmission.
   Tradition is then, by definition, concerned with transmission but at the same time it also defines itself as a betrayal, as a handing over something or even uncover a secret. From this general explanation, it follows that to think tradition, as something that must be guarded or kept, is a contradiction in terms: tradition transmits and is transmitted at every moment as its own betrayal, betraying  even  the  possibility  of  transmission  itself. When  Derrida  remarks  that ‘one always inherits from a secret’ [12],  isn’t  he  expounding  the  essential  movement  of  any  inheritance  as  such, that  is  of  every act that confronts itself with a specific transaction or tradition (delivery)? In other words, every inheritance or tradition transmits its secret betraying or uncovering its very essence. Especially right here at beginning in an introduction to a study about inheritance and tradition, one should think that to inherit implies therefore a betrayal, as it were. This straightforward equation is self-evident to the extent that one admits that every transmission occurs as a transformation and, as a consequence, a betrayal is always and already at stake, it knows no rest. Even the potentiality brought forward by an inheritance must be considered through this filter called betrayal. The potentiality embedded in an inheritance to become an innovative and productive manifestation is first of all framed by its irremediable condition of ‘being already there’, at disposition, more or less evident or discernible. This ‘being already there’ of an inheritance claims for the possibility of a recognition and uncovering that would become, in a second moment, critical acceptance.
   We saw how the act of inheriting confronts itself with a particular void or empty space. If an inheritance is always and already there, even though one cannot think of an inheritance as a thing, therefore through a sort of unity, what is the structure of the act of inheriting as such? Which is the condition or the cause that effectively triggers one’s own coming to terms with an inheritance? And more importantly: if tradition must be thought as transmission and betrayal how is one to understand this double meaning in relation to critical inheritance? It is not possible in this introduction to answer quickly to this question. To fail answering and responding to this question will be surely one of the critical points of this dissertation. The articulation of inheritance does not rest or stop: it animates the process of thinking as a constant re-appearance and return within the framework of the elusive character of the present.
   Another question anyway is crucial: in which sense betrayal belongs to every act of transmission? In my opinion, in the works of Pasolini, the question of betrayal (and tradition) is strictly connected with an obligation to dissent. Cultural transmission is based on a certain performative instance of betrayal to the extent that it puts forward the logic of dissent. In this way, I would argue, the infamous verse of Pasolini, recited also by Orson Welles in the short film La ricotta (1963), should be understood: “I am a force of the Past. My love is only in tradition” [13].  The work of tradition as betrayal could be configured as a form of dissent toward the present situation. Contradiction in Pasolini is not simply an intellectual condition. One does not directly betray tradition. One confronts tradition and a certain way of reading tradition. This act of reading, this possibility given directly to readability also speaks about a way of reading something that by definition is not present anymore.
   The same short-film La ricotta puts forward this interlacing condition between tradition, betrayal and readability. As Pasolini remarks regarding La ricotta: "Nothing ever dies in a lifetime. Everything survives. We, at the same time, live and survive. So also every culture has become interwoven with survivals. Considering now La ricotta, what is surviving there are the famous two thousand years of "imitatio Christi”, that religious irrationalism. They have no sense anymore, they belong to another world, a world denied, rejected, passed and yet they survive. Historically they are dead elements but humanly they are still alive and they represent us. I think it would be naive, superficial and biased to deny or ignore their existence. I am anticlerical (I am not afraid to tell you so), but I know that in me there are two thousand years of Christianity: my ancestors and I have built the Romanesque churches, and then the Gothic churches, and then the Baroque churches. They are my assets, in content and style. I would be mad if I negated this powerful force: if I would let the monopoly of the Good to the priests.” [14] 
   La ricotta is, within Pasolini’s cinematic production, the best example that could summarize and show how, investigating the notion of tradition, transmission and betrayal belong to the same level of articulation. La ricotta tells the story of the Passion of Christ from the point of view of one of the thieves (Stracci). A Marxist director (impersonated by Orson Welles, dubbed by Giorgio Bassani) is shooting a film about the Passion of Christ. During the shooting, Stracci is starving but he is not able to eat (because of different and casual contingencies). Near the end, after having sold the dog of the ‘Diva’ (Laura Betti) and bought ‘ricotta’ (fresh soft cheese), he starts eating furiously even the food remaining from the shooting of the Last Dinner. When everything is ready for the last scene of the crucifixion, at the moment when Stracci is supposed to say his only line, nothing happens. Stracci is dead because of indigestion. And the director says: “Poor Stracci, dead… That was the only way to tell us he was alive…”
   Pasolini’s short-film is not just a provocation. It certainly provokes and criticise the institution and authority of the Church, those famous two thousand years, historically dead. Christianity for him, even being anticlerical, cannot be avoided: it must be confronted and challenged. This inheritance demands, being dead, to be inherited: and the readability of this tradition passes, for Pasolini, through a certain kind of betrayal. A way of reading that betrays the priests, the institution and its organization.
   Highlighting the question of betrayal as a problem of tradition does not mean to anticipate a way of reading Pasolini (and Derrida, Bataille and Blanchot) taking for granted the fact that his thought will be betrayed. This would be a very simplistic way of dealing with this problem. I will argue that to inherit (or to be faithful to the event, or to give oneself to action, or to promise) is to betray at least one of the voices of inheritance. As we have seen with Derrida, to critically inherit means to sift, to criticize, to displace and to re-invents. The moment of invention that belongs to critical inheritance is always a kind of betrayal. As Pasolini remarks: “What is important is not the moment of the realization of the invention, but the instant of invention. Permanent invention; endless struggle”. Endless betrayal.

Derrida aptly introduces the question of inheritance in the following reflection: “An inheritance is never gathered together, it is never one with itself. Its presumed unity, if there is one, can consist only in the injunction to reaffirm by choosing.” [15]  Derrida observes that the multiplicity at work in an inheritance speaks about the difficulty of talking about a proper unity of every inheritance; this is why every inheritance demands from the start a critical approach that is able to separate and sift the different injunctions at work. The profile of an inheritance is always define and maintain by contradictions and aporias, inheritance’s main aspect is its being self-contradictory.
   This dissertation contains at least three levels of analysis and its structure must be conceived more as a concentric spiral in which specific themes return and come back than a linear process of investigation with a conclusive and definite closure at the end. Moreover, the structure of this dissertation is configured in order to create the setting in which a hypothetical dialogue could be initiated between Pasolini and the other authors discussed.
   The first level is concerned with the attempt of delineating and articulating a thought of critical inheritance according to three general criteria of investigation (decision, action and promise). These three criteria have been identified in relation to Derrida’s own thought about inheritance and they will be developed in this context along with the thought of other authors.
   The second level deals with the emergence, within Pasolini’s works, of a thought about critical inheritance, tradition and temporality and it will focus on the different aspects of Pasolini’s activity (poetry and film) and his engagement with his constant act of inheriting. The dimension of time is therefore crucial in order to understand Pasolini’s political, cinematographic and poetic works. It is a dimension that is not theorized by the poet but it is exposed, revealed and constantly re-discovered by Pasolini himself.
   The third level of analysis enters the specificity of Pasolini’s work and intellectual figure in post-war Italy and propose a reading about a selection of his works offering a possible way of inheriting Pasolini and at the same time the impossibility embedded in this act of inheriting. Within the theoretical framework of the dissertation, I will argue that to re-activate and trigger Pasolini’s work today would mean to refer explicitly to the critical reflection about temporality he dealt with. A fundamental part of Pasolini’s massive artistic production is related to the thought of inheritance, to what does it mean to inherit and how does this act of inheriting is influenced by the thought of history, tradition and memory.
   Critical inheritance will emerge therefore as a way of reading and writing at the same time; it is a movement in which these two activities melt together and question the condition of their own temporality. What does critical inheritance mean? What does ‘critically inheriting’ mean? How one is supposed to cope with the heterogeneity and incoherence of an inheritance? Starting from Derrida, my endeavour is to think the political and poetic dimension of Pasolini’s work according to the theoretical horizon set up by this expression, moving sideways throughout his oeuvre. 

In the first chapter of my research, I consider how the notion of critical inheritance emerges and it can be reworked starting from the writings of Jacques Derrida. In particular, I will point out the twofold disposition of the act of inheriting itself, to be intended not as passive acceptance of something that is given, but as coming to terms with an actual situation in a critical way. In order to do that I will focus on the notions of decision (Derrida) and fidelity (Badiou).
   In the first part, I will follow the Derridean reflection about ‘passive decision’ that one can find spread in different writings (Politics of Friendships, A Taste for the Secret). In order to develop further the notion of critical inheritance, I will then move on to investigate, in the second section, Alain Badiou’s notion of fidelity. There are, at first sight, some affinities between fidelity and critical inheritance even though they belong to two different systems of thought. Alain Badiou’s notion of fidelity will help me to partially integrate the reflection about passive decision, readability of an inheritance and the subject’s position into the situation.
   At this point I will try also to converge Derrida’s and Badiou’s reflections on the problem of decision, between critical inheritance and fidelity.
   In the last section I will turn my attention to the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Working through Pasolini’s poems and cinematic work will give me the possibility to re-instate the relation between critical inheritance, fidelity, event and subjectivity in his own effort to cope with the Italian socio-political situation in the Fifties and Sixties and in particular with two ‘institutionalized systems’: the Catholic Church and the Italian Communist Party. The relationship between Pasolini and the Catholic Church will be investigated through a close reading of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel according to St. Matthew) and the notion of heretical anachronism. The relationship with the Italian Communist Party will be addressed through a close reading of two poems collected in Le ceneri di Gramsci (Ashes of Gramsci): the poem who gives the title to the same collection, Le ceneri di Gramsci (1954) and Polemica in versi (Polemic in verses) (1956). These two poems present the main concepts of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetic production in the Fifties and its effort to cope with the Italian socio-political situation.
The main objective of this chapter is to consider and analyze how the notion of decision and the problem of institutionalisation partially characterize the conceptual framework in which one should posit the problem of critical inheritance.
   In relation to the problems considered with the passivity of decision, in the second chapter I will focus on the notions of action and commitment.
In the first part of this chapter I will turn my attention to the relationship between guilt and action. The aim of this section is to show that one can only succumb to (endless) questioning as a form of non-productive expenditure in order to prevent action to overcome thought completely. Bataille’s notions of expenditure and guilt will be examined along with Pasolini’s short film La sequenza del fiore di carta. The aim of this section is to configure the possibility of thinking how questioning belongs to the category of non-productive expenditure in the context of critical inheritance. Focusing mainly on Bataille’s text Guilt and Pasolini’s short film La sequenza del fiore di carta, I will attempt here to consider, starting from these two starting points, how the figure of the one who inherits deals with a dimension of guilt that is caught up between action and questioning. One critical point that will be discussed is the following: how does one maintain endless questioning (i.e. expenditure) without (economic) questioning, and therefore without falling into institutionalisation? I will argue that endless questioning provokes action, it works alongside action; on the contrary, economic questioning would reduce action’s consequence as a teleological enterprise. Moreover, guilt will not be considered as something inherited and not even as an originary condition. How does one then become guilty? Following Bataille’s and Pasolini’s reflections, I will argue that one becomes guilty when action is not shaped by an endless questioning: guilty of innocence.
   In the second part I will investigate the question of action and the problem of its completion. How is possible to fully determine the end and purpose of an action? The main gist of this section is to open up a reflection on the possibility of finding an un-institutionalised form of action that remains at the level of Bataille’s questioning. The main question would be the following: how do then keep this action revolutionary? How to think a common action?
   In order to answer to these questions, I will turn my attention to Pasolini’s reflections about action (and cinema) proposing a reading of his film-poem La rabbia (1963) and the idea of revolution or how to think about revolution (common action, revolutionary action). I will consider Pasolini’s theoretical reflection about reality and the language of action and its cinematic insights about death and action. Within this framework and in relation to the notion of critical inheritance, two important Pasolini’s critical expressions will be investigated: ‘rendering the present past’ and ‘only the revolution saves the past’.
   In the third and final section of this chapter, in order to reframe action and critical inheritance, I will turn my attention to the question of commitment, formulating a sort of dialogue between Bataille and Pasolini.
   In this third section, the general idea is the following: one has to give oneself to action, to devote oneself to its consequences. In other words, one has to sacrifice oneself for the purpose of action as such, and not for its valuable end and outcome. To give oneself to action means to erase the possibility of mediation that intervenes between action and life. The question that informs this section will be formulated as follows: is this giving oneself to action, this gift, commitment? I will mainly focused on Bataille’s Letter to René Char on the Incompatibilities of the Writer and on Pasolini’s poems Vittoria (Victory), collected in Poesia in forma di rosa (1964) and Al Sole, collected in La religione del mio tempo (1961). Commitment will be considered as an act that effaces itself, that is as an act that consumes and destroys itself beyond utility. Commitment could be thought as a gift, only to the extent that this giving oneself to action is performed through constant loss. In other words, commitment’s drives must be renewed and relocated constantly.
   The key aim of this chapter is to provide, creating a fictitious dialogue between Georges Bataille and Pier Paolo Pasolini, an understanding of the multi-layered system of thought related to critical inheritance from the point of view of action and commitment.
   In the third chapter, I will mainly focus on the temporal dimension at stake in the notion of critical inheritance through the notions of the irrevocable and the impossible. 
   I will argue how the notion of temporality attached to critical inheritance should be thought in relation to these two dimensions of thought. I will try, borrowing from Derrida’s and Blanchot’s reflections, to re-conceptualize Pasolini’s thought through the impossible and the irrevocable: the latter as the figure of the present, the impossible as the very figure of the real [16].
   In the first section, I will create a dialogue between Pasolini and Blanchot on the question of irrevocability. Blanchot’s reflections about the irrevocable presented in The Step not beyond will frame my critical effort in trying to consider Pasolini’s exploration of the conditions of the present as a temporal dimension. I will start briefly considering Derrida’s critical re-assessment of temporality in his early works; I would like then to propose a reading of Pasolini’s notion of anti-tradition and the relationship between different generations through Blanchot’s notion of irrevocability within the context of writing/critical inheritance.
   My starting point will be the following: try to think the irrevocable as the very figure of the present. The irrevocable would be not merely the weakness of a nostalgic condition about the past but, on the contrary, it would mediate in the present for the creation of a space in which time is abolished, in which time becomes ‘dead time’. 
   I will argue that the irrevocable in Pasolini, operates as a cipher: it is a disguised way of writing, of writing the perpetual death, which the present already but not yet testifies to us. I will look at Pasolini’s short film Che cosa sono le nuvole? (What are the clouds?) released in 1967 as an episode of the collective film titled Capriccio all’italiana (Italian Caprice).
   I will analyze the way in which Pasolini proposes an interesting exploration of cinema and temporality, presenting the potentialities of cinema and at the same time a thought of the irrevocable. I will then move on discussing the question of the present and the irrevocable through Pasolini’s notion of anti-tradition. The problem of tradition has always been an extremely important point of reflection in Pasolini’s oeuvre and it has been investigated in different ways throughout the dissertation. His peculiar notion of anti-tradition resembles the thought of critical inheritance that is the focus of this research. The urgency of filtering tradition with the filter of an anti-tradition that is installed in or emerged from the present will become in Pasolini’s poetic and cinematic activity a crucial and critical proposition.
   The first section will end with a reflection about memory as ‘the memory of the future’ before entering the examination of the notion of promise and the impossible.
   In the second section I will focus on the notion of the impossible and its relationship with the notion of the promise and the ‘future-to-come’. My analysis will be largely based on Derrida’s reformulation and deconstructive approach to the performative through his a-systemic thinking on the promise. This methodology tries to look from a precise standpoint at all the various indexes in Derrida’s text in which a reflection on the promise is present. There is of course the danger to fall into an inadequate decontextualization of Derrida’s investigations and this same approach will prevent me to do justice to the different implications and theoretical ramifications. In all honesty, I am aware that this is a detached position of investigation that I believe will be justified in the context of my overall research. I will select and reflect on a series of Derrida’s writings during the Nineties that touches upon the re-definition of temporality in metaphysical terms and then, in I will look at the relationship between the notion of the ‘future-to-come’  and promise.
   The core analytical aspect of this section is to unravel a discourse on the impossible in order to delineates Pasolini’s constant preoccupation about writing, temporality and the future. I will start with a brief reference about Blanchot’s understanding of ‘the prophetic word’ [17] in relation to Pasolini to move on then to a reading of two poems collected in the last collection of poetry by Pasolini: Trasumanar e organizzar (1971). With Trasumanar e organizzar we witness the last poetic effort of the poet before his ‘famous’ dissemination of writing in articles, essay drafts, pamphlets in which the writing process as such is disseminated and disintegrated completely and to which Petrolio, his last novel, attests as the final literary experiment and testimony (it was left unfinished because of the death of the poet).
   Verba and Rifacimento will be the two poems I will examine, part of the Second Book of Trasumanar e organizzar, because not only they present in nuce Pasolini’s evocation of a poetic practice that confronts itself with the thought of the impossible; but also because in these two poems he bears witness to the impossibility of seducing the impossible. The consequent withdrawal is not a withdrawal from reality but, on the contrary, it is a withdrawal back into reality; but this withdrawal does not annihilate the promise inherent in the impossible, the promise as impossible future.

I will consequently focus on the experience of the promise in Derrida’s late writings in order to investigate its occurrence as the promise of writing as such. The promise of writing here describes a fundamental aspect that we have been exploring and delineating throughout the overall research: the contraposition between writing and reality, the written language of reality and Pasolini’s ongoing interest in defacing but reflecting at the same time about the condition of presence as such. The promise of writing would be considered, finally, as the ongoing attempt of imposing on the present and on reality an act of seduction towards the impossible.

Finally, a few words should be offered concerning the novelty of the study.  First, this work seeks to engage with the multifaceted figure of Pier Paolo Pasolini, opening and exposing his poetic and cinematic production and reflections to the writings of Contemporary French thinkers such as Derrida, Bataille and Blanchot.
   Secondly different themes in Pasolini will be reworked (decision, heretical anachronism, guilt, revolutionary action, the irrevocable, the impossible etc…), examining the importance of the emergence of a certain philosophical thought about time and temporality. The aim is not only to display what is at stake in Pasolini’s work, but also in contemporary approaches to time. Rethinking Pasolini’s theoretical and artistic efforts within another tradition, that of deconstruction (of time) [18],  perhaps signifies an act of betrayal but, at the same time, the necessity of working through these constitutive dimensions of Pasolini’s thought. To my knowledge so far, prolific secondary material does not exist on this specific topic about Pasolini, and I believe that possible ramifications of this research have potential to be developed further. 
   Thirdly, this research project questions and revisits theoretical topoi such as tradition, memory and history through an interdisciplinary methodological approach, working through the disciplines of critical theory, film studies, visual cultures and literary criticism.

In conclusion, this research project wants to emphasize the fact that inheritance and its consequent act of inheriting is not just the transmission of archives in the present. Critical inheritance asks us a critical engagement that would not simply be a mechanical reproduction of the past for future generations. The act of inheriting, in addition, is always shaped by a certain notion of iterability or, better, it demands a movement of transmission and betrayal. Critical inheritance is the re-invention, within an infinite set of possibilities, of a multiplicity of different filiations; it is the attempt, never defined, of simultaneously reinvents itself in order to mobilize its occurrence in another directions. Permanent invention, endless struggle.

Roberto Cavallini