Mario Perniola

Mario Perniola (20 May 1941 – 9 January 2018) was an Italian philosopher, professor of aesthetics and author.

Many of his works have been published in English.

Mario Perniola was born in Asti, Piedmont.

Perniola gives an account of the Situationist International and post-situationist movement which lasted from 1957 to 1971 and in which he was personally involved from 1966 to 1969.

He also highlights the conflicting features which characterized the members of the movement.

He studied philosophy under Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin where he graduated in 1965.

While he was reading philosophy in Turin, he met Gianni Vattimo and Umberto Eco, who all became prominent scholars of Pareyson's school.

From 1966 to 1969 he was connected to the avant-garde Situationist International movement founded by Guy Debord with whom he kept on friendly terms for several years.

In his first main work, Il metaromanzo (The Metanovel 1966), which is his doctoral dissertation, Perniola argues that the modern novel from Henry James to Samuel Beckett has a self-referential character.

Furthermore, he claims that the novel is only about itself.

Perniola's aim was to demonstrate the philosophical dignity of these literary works and try to recover a serious cultural expression.

The Italian Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Eugenio Montale, praised Perniola for this original critique of novels.

Perniola, however, does not only have an academic soul but also an anti-academic one.

The latter is epitomized by his attention to alternative and transgressive cultural expressions.

He also directed the journals Agaragar (1971–73), Clinamen (1988–92), Estetica News (1988–95).

His first major work belonging to this anti-academic side is L’alienazione artistica (Artistic Alienation 1971), in which he draws on Marxist thought that inspired him at that time.

Perniola argues that alienation is not a failure of art, but rather a condition of the very existence of art as a distinctive category of human activity.

The journal Agaragar (published between 1971 and 1972) continues the post-situationist critique of capitalist and bourgeoisie society.

His second book I situazionisti (The situationists 1972; republished with the same title by Castelvecchi, Rome, 1998) exemplified his interest in the avant-garde and the work of Guy Debord.

He became a full professor of aesthetics at the University of Salerno in 1976 and then he moved to the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he has been teaching since 1983.

He was visiting professor invited to universities and research centres, such as the University of Stanford (United States), l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), University of Alberta (Canada), University of Kyoto (Japan), University of São Paulo (Brazil), University of Sydney, University of Melbourne (Australia), and the National University of Singapore.

Perniola wrote many books which have been translated into English and other languages.

Perniola then published his book on the French writer George Bataille (George Bataille e il negativo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977; George Bataille and the Negative).

The negative here is conceived as the motor of history.

In the 1980s Perniola offered some of his most insightful contributions to continental philosophy.

In ''Dopo Heidegger.

Filosofia e organizzazione della cultura (After Heidegger. Philosophy and Organization of Culture'' 1982), drawing on Martin Heidegger and Antonio Gramsci, Perniola includes a theoretical discourse on social organization.

He in fact argues the possibility of establishing a novel relationship between culture and society in Western civilization.

As the former interrelations between metaphysics and church, dialectics and state, science and profession have been deconstructed, philosophy and culture provide a way to overcome nihilism and populism which characterize today's society.

''Ritual Thinking.

Come si va dallo stesso allo stesso (Transits. How to go from the Same to the Same'' 1985).

Perniola's theory of simulacra deals with the logic of seduction which was also pursued by Jean Baudrillard.

Although seduction is empty, it is nevertheless rooted in a concrete historical context.

In 2000 he founded Agalma. Rivista di Studi Culturali e di Estetica, a journal of cultural studies and aesthetics, which is published twice a year.

The breadth, insight and many-faced contributions of Perniola's thought has earned him the reputation of being one of the most impressive figures on the contemporary philosophical scene.

Sexuality, Death, World (2001) is a composite volume in English containing sections of two works published in Italian in the 1980s, i.e. La società dei simulacri (The Society of Simulacra 1980) and Transiti.

His book Miracoli e traumi della comunicazione (2009) (Miracles and Traumas of Communication) gained many awards amongst which the prestigious Premio De Sanctis.

His wide-ranging activities involved formulating innovative philosophical theories, writing books, teaching aesthetics, and lecturing worldwide.

He dedicated the rest of his time to his kindred and numerous friends, passing between his apartment-studio in Rome and his vacation home in a quaint town in the Alban Hills, southeast of Rome, where he died.

The initial period of Perniola's career focuses on the philosophy of the novel and the theory of literature.