Milli mála - 26.04.2009, Page 268

mo bil ity”,42 both Pasolini and Lasch looked at the grassroots
level of the society, the former with a pessimistic sense of
irreparable loss of the rural world (with which he tried to keep a
relationship by staying as long as possible in the so-called devel-
oping countries), the latter, on the contrary, relying on popular
culture with the hope of bringing up again the question of the
public debate. I have already mentioned Pasolini’s words about
his personal in volvement in the rural and sub-proletarian
world.43 He acknowledges that he still misses
the unlimited pre-national and pre-industrial rural world, which
survived until a few years ago […] The people of this universe did
not live in a golden age […] They lived […] in the bread age. This
means that they were consumers of extremely necessary goods, and
it was perhaps this fact which made their poor and precarious lives
extremely necessary, while it is clear that superfluous goods makes
life superfluous.44
This world view, undoubtedly unusual for a Marxist intellectual,
pertains to Pasolini’s private sphere, as he maintains:
whether I miss or not this rural universe, in any case, it is my
own business. A business which does not prevent me at all from
exerting my criticism on the present world as it is, and the more
I am detached and I accept to live in it just in a stoic way, the
more lucid my criticism will be.45
On the other hand, Lasch’s vision is perhaps less pessimistic than
Pasolini’s even though he is well aware that “optimism about our
prospects would be foolish – even more foolish in 1993 than it
was in 1963”.46 By quoting Philip Rieff’s Fellow Teacher, Lasch
mentions with certain positivity the fact that
INTELLECTUALS BETWEEN DISSOCIATION AND DISSENTING
268
42 Ibid, p. 52.
43 See the quotation referred to by note 4 above.
44 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari, p. 53.
45 Ibid, p. 53.
46 Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, p. 223.
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