The Resurrection of the Body

“One of the great merits of this book is its sustained and intellectually valid investigation of the question of homosexuality in Pasolini’s writing and cinema. It is an investigation that is long overdue, both in Italy and in North America. Focusing on literary and cinematic work from the period immediately preceding Pasolini’s assassination—including texts that have received exceedingly little scholarly attention—Maggi offers a very original understanding of Pasolini’s artistic response to the ‘apocalypse’ of consumer capitalism. Maggi’s close analyses of Pasolini’s late works—all of which are marked by strong religious preoccupations—benefit not only from the author’s expertise in early modern religious thought but also from his excellent knowledge of the history and culture of modern Italy. Refreshingly, Maggi takes many intellectual risks and he often asks his readers to step outside disciplinary comfort zones. In the process, he offers confirmation of Pasolini’s central importance in modern European intellectual history.”

“The Resurrection of the Body offers a sophisticated and astute reading of the poetics informing the last phase of Pasolini’s career. Maggi makes a determined case for considering the ways in which Sodom came to dominate Pasolini’s imagination at a time when he represented the ultimate ‘ambassador from this original land of total destruction.’ The Resurrection of the Body exposes the transformation in Pasolini’s late work of a sexual and mythical topos into an obsession with the apocalypse in modernity and of modernity. The book traces a new genealogy for Pasolini’s ultimate, politically radical reflections in which sexuality and the sacred figure prominently at the expense of what might be regarded as the more obviously identifiable sources of the artist’s Marxist views. Maggi offers an original reading of the logic of Pasolini’s works and, in so doing, delivers a needed contribution to the discussion of the most crucial yet least understood of Pasolini’s artistic productions.”