Italian School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures The Moore Institute :The aesthetics of post-secular “iconoclash”: the “scandal” of religion in Castellucci and Sorrentino

By Monica Jansen, Utrecht University

With the concepts of “scandal” (Pasolini) and “iconoclash” (Latour) this lecture investigates the tensions between religion and aesthetics created by a post-secular work of art when it enters in collision with the public sphere. For this purpose it compares the iconoclast reactions of the public to Romeo Castellucci’s performance Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio in 2011 with the “contradiction” embodied by pope Pius XIII in Paolo Sorrentino’s succesfull TV-series The Young Pope (2017).

Monica Jansen is Assistant Professor in Italian Literature at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication (TLC) – Italian language and culture, at Utrecht University. Her research interests include modernism and postmodernism studies, and more specifically new forms of cultural engagement. She investigates cultural representations of socially relevant topics such as religion, precarity, youth and migration, from an interdisciplinary, transmedial and transnational perspective.