A Dream, please! L’antropologia performativa del ventennio berlusconiano (1994-2014)

Abstract

The complex political, social and cultural effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall have shaped the modern public arena. Neoliberalism, the resulting economic crisis of 2008 and the simultaneous digital revolution saw the State succumbing to individualism and the emergence of a generation of highly ‘performative’ politicians, who embody the fall of boundaries between private and public personae. Rational politics melts into spectacular media. ‘State craft’ becomes ‘Stage craft’. The statesman turns into performer. In the dialectic between sacred and profane, everything old must die to resurrect into its opposite, as the public requests radical change. The article discusses the role played by popular culture (Carnival, Lent, Easter) and comic performance in the show (commedification) of Italian politics of the last quarter of century. It focuses on Berlusconi’s victory thanks to his personification of the new culture of popular individualism, leading to Renzi, king of social media, doomed to fail unless capable of transforming the Stage back into State.