Michaela Murgia died on the night of falling stars. Aged 51, living as if he were ten years old, he said in a long and highly anticipated interview with Aldo Cazzulo in”Corriere della Sera”. Strange families, political conflicts, always and everywhere. Words, civil rights, tradition, a past with thousands of jobs, defiant Catholicism, freedom, feminism, family beyond blood, the futuristic avant-garde that made it unique. Nowadays everything has been written about him. Here we want to remember him with some of his greatest books, highly political books, in order to bring closer to his thoughts those who did not know them.
“Education to be a Fascist”
The first is perhaps the most political in a true sense. It is titled “Education to be a fascist” (Einaudi, 2018). An outrageous, provocative, uncomfortable read, as she has always been. An agile manual on how to stop being democratic, because, as we know, “being democratic is a colossal effort”: “It means dealing with complexity, with as many people as possible having to decode and interpret the present Providing the tools, spaces and methods to guarantee participation for anyone who wants to use them to improve living together” he writes.
Besides, not everyone is interested in being democratic. “To be honest – Murgia continues in his argument – if we look at Italy today, it seems that nobody cares anymore, let alone politics.” So why keep wasting time with democracy when we can take faster and safer shortcuts? “Isn’t fascism a proven system that guarantees better, cheaper, faster and more efficient state management?” Michela Murgia asks in the most paradoxical way. An invitation to never let your guard down, keep your eyes focused on history, but also on the darkest sides of yourself.
“Shut Up: And Nine Other Phrases We Don’t Want to Hear Again”
Words, what a destructive act. Even more so if a woman is speaking. A far cry from the tedious, sterile and ideological feminism that often pervades Italian cultural debates, “Sti Zitta: and other nine phrases we don’t want to hear anymore” (Einaudi, 2021) hen makes us widen our eyes does incessant mortification, a civil death without mercy: of women, of all women, through language.
“If you are a woman, in Italy you also die by the language. It is a civilian death, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. It is with words that banish us from public spaces, from businesses, from debates, and from the news, but we also die from unjust words in daily life, where the prejudice that permeates language is the sole object of being ourselves. destroys our possibility” writes. “For whatever difference in rights women suffer due to male dominance, there is a verbal system that supports and justifies it. This happens every time They refuse to call you lawyer, mayor or architect because otherwise ‘we should also say pharmacist’. This happens when you do a good job, but they ask you first if you are a mother. When you are alone whose surname is never pronounced, except when it is preceded by a definite article. When they begin to explain something to you that you already know very well, when they ask you to calm down, laugh, express your opinion asks people to stop intimidating, smile, and most of all, shut up.
“The world needs to know. The Tragi-Comedy Novel of a Precocious Telephonist”
The first book, published in 2006, is a sad diary of a month’s work in a call center by Michela Murgia, also famous for being the inspiration for Paolo Virzo’s film “All Life Ahead”. Originally posted as a blog when he worked in a call center for the American multinational Kirby Company, “The world needs to know. The tragic-comic novel of a precocious telephone operator” (Einaudi 2006) is a cross-section of work in an age of unfettered liberalism.
From unscrupulous sales techniques to placing a 3,000-euro Kirby to wild crowds, Murgia juxtaposes witty irony, manipulative attempts, persuasive methods, corporate puns with earnest notes: absurd, grotesque yet utterly hyper-realistic. A theater of, an act of denunciation against the uncertainty to which the absence of the State has condemned us all.
“God save Vichitra. Feminist Theology”
How to Live Catholic if You’re a Feminist How to reconcile the patriarchal ideology and the rejection of the Catholic faith? Can abortion, assisted fertilization, euthanasia “be there” within being Catholic? In “God Save the Queer”. The Feminist Catechism” (Einaudi 2022) Michela Murgia wonders if it is possible to be feminist and Catholic at the same time. She is convinced yes.
A pamphlet in which Hen helps us to heal some of these bitter contradictions is The Practice of Chivalry, an example, he says, of Christian practice. Surround yourself with people who choose each other regardless of blood ties. Cross-Border. “Accepting it as such means recognizing that the boundary does not surround us, but transcends us, and that what we see as a paradox is actually a fertile ground whose vital potential we do not yet understand.” have found”.