The Pinocchio Effect

“This is a brilliant work from beginning to end, and it will take up a previously empty place on our bookshelves as a strikingly original diagnosis of Italian modernity. Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg uncovers a wealth of fin-de-siècle obsessions with the ways that bodies were measured and disciplined, attached to apparatuses, and made to move autonomously. The result is a fresh contribution to both the field of Italian studies and a psychoanalytically informed theory of ideology and its workings.”

“An extraordinary book, The Pinocchio Effect is eclectic and stimulating at every turn. I found the reading of Pinocchio in relation to the paternal and the liberal subject to be captivating. I know of no other work that narrates and describes the nineteenth century in Italy with such nuance and force.”

“Allowing textual materials and theories—historical, literary, cinematic, photographic, operatic, educational, psychological—to speak to each other in an exciting interdisciplinary dialogue, firmly rooted in a strong sense of historical context, this book ambitiously attempts to redefine Italian modernity. Pinocchio, that canonical boy/man/puppet, becomes emblematic of the Italian national character, and even beyond that of the subject of modernity in general: a puppet who moves at the will of others, but also an autonomous being—with no strings attached. Using this figure as a ‘hinge,’ Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg insightfully opens up areas that range from a paternal authoritarianism to the psychology of the masses, always basing her finely tuned analysis in the extended criticism and frequently allegorized readings of Pinocchio in Italian culture. After all, Pinocchio is also self-reflexively fictional: he lies, and we can see the results of his stories on his body.”