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while Lasch’s book includes a vibrant controversy against a group
of influential and respected university professors.25 Pasolini and
Lasch do not directly accuse their colleagues of being part of those
groups of specialists (the elites) which hold the new and real power.
Nevertheless, both Scritti corsari and The Revolt of the Elites clearly
develop the concept that, due to the complexity of today’s world
even the most aware progressive intellectuals can be (more or less
unconsciously) caught by reactionary or, more precisely, elitist
ideas.
According to Lasch, who tries to categorize and define their
social coordinates, the new elites are allergic to all the boundaries
and reject those values (including laws and the national identity
itself) which are not directly related to the further acquisition of
power and money. These elites consolidate their power by creating
false public debates. False because they are induced by the same
elites, who decide what the debate must concern.26 Paradoxically,
with the great amount of information sources, we lose the focus on
function and quality of the information itself. An obvious example
is the management of the Italian television system. But also qual -
ity newspapers comply with the functions required by the elite of
power. One example is the amount of advertisement in daily news-
papers. Moreover, about forty percent of the news comes from a few
specialized agencies and public relations experts. Such news is
reported by the newspapers without meaningful editorial vari -
INTELLECTUALS BETWEEN DISSOCIATION AND DISSENTING
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immensitá del mondo contadino” (“July 8, 1974. Limitations of History and Immensity of the
Rural World”), pp. 51–55; for the one against Alberto Moravia and his sexual prejudices applied
to Pasolini’s ideological view of history, see the beginning of the brief essay entitled “11 luglio
1974. Ampliamento del ‘bozzetto’ sulla rivoluzione antropologica in Italia” (“July 11, 1974.
Expansion of the ‘Sketch’ on the Anthropological Revolution in Italy”), pp. 56–64 and the brief
essay entitled “30 gennaio 1975. ‘Sacer’” (“January 30, 1975. ‘Sacer’”), pp. 105–109.
25 Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites. See the controversy against the 1989 report entitled
“Speaking for the Humanities”, pp. 181–187. The whole report is accessible at http://archives.
acls.org/op/7_Speaking_for_Humanities.htm (accessed May 11, 2009). Lasch blames the authors
of the report – George Levine, Peter Brooks, Jonathan Culler, Marjorie Garber, E. Ann Kaplan
and Catharine R. Stimpson – for sustaining an unjustified optimism about the academic situa-
tion in the U.S. Particularly, Lasch points out the fact that the report does not mention one of
the crucial problems of this situation, that is the profound ignorance of the students who gradu -
ate from college. According to Lasch, this seems not to have occurred to the authors of the re -
port, nor to trouble them.
26 Significantly, on this matter, the ninth chapter of Lasch‘s The Revolt of the Elites is entitled The
Lost Art of Argument.
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