Our ancestors, by Italo Calvino, as allegory of modern subject

Abstract

Italo Calvino, in his book Our ancestors, invites us to a critical reflection about contemporary society, which he does not understand as postmodernity, but as an episode of what is defined as modernity. This contemporaneity is located in a context of violence, of destruction of nature in the name of progress, of exacerbated consumerism to sustain the economy, of social relations mediated and defined by commodities - and the subjective ideals it imposes are that of the denial of human in favor of assertion of market logic and a reason called instrumental by the Frankfurt School. The aim of our study is to reflect on the main characters of Calvino's book as allegorical figurations of the modern subject: of ourselves, contemporary women and men, as inheritors of the project of modernity initiated by our ancestors and which we experience until these days. In parallel, we will proceed to a discussion of the concepts of modernity and modern subject, always in the light of Calvino's work.