Padre muto e vocazione alla sterilità . Parte prima: Misoginia, femminismo e crisi della paternità

The article considers the sense of the crisis that characterizes the reproductive question in the West, under the symbolic coordinates that link the North and South of Europe. It discusses the change of the generational mandate, that was created by feminism and by sexual difference thought that promotes a new point of view on maternity. Deciphering the chiaroscuro of the literary language, it tracks the role of man and his responsibilities in this impasse, supported by the crisis of fatherhood that has also contaminated feminism. The analysis therefore considers misogyny and vocation to sterility as symptoms of man’s inability (caused by the decline of traditional ethic), to meet the woman in a common project of procreation. The fulcrum, on which the research wheels, concerns the loss of sense of the word father, or the silence of the father. Through an analysis of the misogynist literature produced between Eight-hundred / Nine-hundred, interpreted by doing a pivot of the concept of decline of traditional western thinking, in the prospective of the philosopher Emanuele Severino, the article therefore analyses the crisis of morals. In particular, it considers the continuity before: maintenance of traditionalism, the Southern question and mafia familism. The study is divided into two parts: the first part outlines the theoretical framework that justifies the interpretation of the theatrical and literary texts that are considered in the second part and that are utilized as social indicators of the cultural milieu between the two centuries. The conclusions show the impossibility to consider the return of the traditionalism as a resolution, from which some specific cultural and political implication derive.