The power of oil

The plots of the power

Who says power, says plots. But even those who say the novel tells plots.

Italy from this point of view should be heaven for novelists: bombs, attacks, murders, fake suicides, disappearances, fake accidents: Mattei, De Mauro, Feltrinelli, Dalla Chiesa, Falcone, Borsellino, Calvi (I am listing them without a criterion, such as come to mind), Rostagno, Ilaria Alpi, D'Antona, Biagi, Michele Landi (for those who do not remember, is the computer expert who had worked with D'Antona, found suicide in his house, next to a computer devastated). And then all the witnesses of Ustica ... An impressive list.

From each of these names you might begin an intricate novel.

Sure, things like that happen everywhere. But in Italy more, incredibly more. Indicator of an underground structure of power that puts chills. A power structure that escapes not only the courts but also in public discourse.

There are chapters in the history of Italy in several decades away have not yet been clarified (because, as he writes Carlo Palermo in the fourth level, to disappear is not the only judge who can do legal action, but also the one who information that would allow us to reconstruct the truth. each death a dossier destroyed, tampered with a computer, a memorial disappeared ...).

In the courts of the sixteenth century intrigues were not minors. But what is striking today is that these mysteries exist next to the means of mass communication, television and the Internet. Ganglia subtracted from the visibility, right in the moment when there is the greatest emphasis on information and the television show everything, even the privacy of individuals.

So on one hand the media, on the other lodges, mafias, confraternities, even in their most archaic forms (even the Templars, writes Palermo).

On the one hand the show, the other secret.

Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord introduced a correction with respect to his previous book. In the Society of the spectacle he had only two distinct forms: the spectacular spread (model: the United States) and the concentrated spectacle (Model: totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union). The first form focuses on communication media, the second on the secret. Now he adds a third: the spectacular integrated. It is a mixed form, and more sophisticated, combining the spectacular spread with a secret. Model: Italy.

In Oil also speaks of this power. Let's call it "the power of the plots." We talk about bombs at the station in Torino (Carlo is involved, the instrument of a plot). It speaks of the death of Enrico Mattei. We speak of course of Eni, which Pasolini considers not only a company but also "a topos of power" (p. 90).

He could miss the rest of this ingredient in a book called Oil. The black gold, for which wars are being waged. ("No blood for oil!"). Theme is so current at the time of writing Petroleum is today. Oil is the new golden fleece, for which you are traveling in the East, as they once did Jason and the Argonauts. How did he Mattei. How did it a few days ago, Cardinal Etchegaray, sent by the Vatican - strange journey, too.

The protagonist of Petroleum ago then a trip to the Orient, touching even the places of today's conflict in Iraq. This motivates the inclusion of the story of the Argonauts, the voyage of Jason and his companions, according to the story that made ​​it Apollonius of Rhodes. Pasolini recreates the journey of Charles. The journey of Charles in the East is a mythical journey. With that Pasolini mean: journey whose scheme returns, by Jason Mattei, Charles ... A story that comes back is indeed legendary. The narrative of the journey of Charles East in establishing "a pattern of travel" (Exactly 3c), which has, therefore, "the foundations of the dream" (Exactly 36e).

The diagram summarizes these chapters ("The Argonauts", Notes 36-40) says:

Journey 'mythical' in the East, reconstruction of Apollonius of Rhodes.
Angle not mappizzato (where it appears the figure of the hero that preceded).
Series of 'visions' remade on the Myth of the trip as an initiation etc.. mixed with realistic visions of Real Journeys (no names or details, as in dreams, etc..) (p. 139).

Traces of past heroes in earlier centuries for the first mappizzazione the world (p. 140).

By this, you can see the strange turn that takes into Oil's novel of the plots. A little romance, and very mythical.
To better measure of how unusual and peculiar the way Pasolini is this power, we take an opposite example. In the name of Ishmael, by Giuseppe Genna, published in 2002 by Mondadori, is a splendid example of the appearance of the fictional plots of power. An exciting book, a political thriller that begins with the death of Mattei, and from there it goes up to today, crossing murders and mysteries, all warps by a kind of sect that comes from outside (from the USA), whose structure and the purpose of which remain mysterious. This is just a fictional rendering of the plots, which amplifies romanzescamente conspiratorial vision of power. Since it is precisely Pasolini thousand miles away.

It 's true that Pasolini in 1975, shortly before his death, he wrote in "Corriere della sera" an article entitled The novel of the massacres. What began:

I know. But I have no evidence. I know the names of those who planted the bombs and their principals [...].

It was called Romance of the massacres but it was not a novel. Its title was acting rather antithesis. In other words: is the power that builds novels, so my answer to the power can not be fictional.

So also in Oil - developed for the rest of "notes", that is built right on the refusal to tell a story, the refusal to be the narrator, to assume the guise of a conventional narrator. Even in front of the face more "tramesca" of power, Pasolini runs away from his fictional rendering. Despite this matter, which you would lend itself quite naturally, it makes no concession to the idea complottistica of power, which usually feed on the novels on power. And to tell the hunt for oil rather deflects toward the Argonauts. Deviates from the legendary romance.

Pasolini is obviously looking for other forms of representation and analysis of power.

To focus on the power we usually use filtered lenses. Glasses that highlight some aspects, leaving out others so that we remain invisible. For example, with glasses Marxists see the economic aspects of power. With those dietrologici, the machinations and conspiracies. Frankfurters with glasses will see the company under administration, or persuasion. With others the society of the spectacle.

I believe that oil is an attempt to make visible all the power. And to make it visible through Visions.

But we follow a little 'Oil Eni on the subject and the death of Mattei. This part is called "Lightning on Eni." He would have to be formed by about ten notes (Notes 20-30 [see page of the book and autograph]), but all missing except the 21 Perhaps Pasolini has not had time to write them. Maybe you are lost. It remains one summary table, a page that informs us about how they should have been the missing notes. It is titled "History of Oil and background." This page also contains a mirror [mirror to see print and autograph]. Let us read a passage:

In this historical moment (I BLOCK POL) Troya is going to be made ​​chairman of Eni: and this implies the suppression of its predecessor (caso Mattei, chronologically moved forward).

So Pasolini explains the crime Mattei in a very different way from that which for so long has been the most reliable (and which is also found in the novel by Genna): one that calls into question the interests of American and international, the seven sisters, the 'OAS, the foreign intelligence services and so on. None of this. For Pasolini Mattei was killed to make way for Troya, ie Cefis (where it should read "physically Fanfani," as it is written above the diagram). So an internal intrigue.

On 2 January 2001 the "Print" published some articles on the death of Matthew in light of new investigations conducted by the prosecutor in Pavia, where the judge Vincenzo Calia had reopened the investigation. With a long work, carried out for years, and now deposited for storage, Calia had rebuilt this scenario: Mattei was made out of an obscure political director institutional entire internal Italy: Cefis etc.. So he came to the same conclusion in 2001 that already had come Pasolini in 1975 and who probably had already arrived even De Mauro, the journalist who had carried out a survey about the last days of Mattei on behalf of the director Francesco Rosi, and that was done away with in 1970.

The article in the "Print" also spoke of Pasolini and that is why it caught my attention. Among the submissions made by the court in its investigation Calia there were in fact some pages of Petroleum, among which we are reading this. This is not surprising. Calia could not interest the last book of Pasolini, as enunciated, with 25 years in advance, conclusions similar to those of his long and lonely investigation.

According to the latest statements of Pasolini, oil would have to be much longer than what we have now. Thus, the lack of these notes has created a mystery in mystery. Circulates suspect that the 10 missing notes have been taken away by someone. Moreover, those who argue that it was not only the Pelosi killed Pasolini, of course, speculate that it was a premeditated murder. Dario Bellezza wrote that Pasolini, shortly before his death, told him that he had received incriminating documents on a prominent Democrat, who could have ordered the murder.

But I will not now move the discourse on the death of Pasolini (which, if the hypothesis were true, would be to lengthen the list of the mysteries of Italy). Let us return instead to Oil. The attention of the magistrate went to this diagram, hand-drawn by Pasolini. It is a tree with many branches, illustrating the empire of Troya (ie Cefis) and the Monti. Pasolini says he did everything as a game ("Outline of a puzzle elementary, and his playful joy," p. 113). Fill this mirror was how to transform your text on the page of a crossword puzzle (p. 115).

21 The fact, that 'survivor', describes the empire of Troya, vice president of ENI (therefore Eugenio Cefis), following minutely in all its ramifications. To illustrate it goes on for several pages. But it is really like a child's play: multiplication of companies and nominees. Once the "matrix", it is repeated, it doubles, you reapply recursively to itself. The power structure is in fact a simple, reproducible.

So these events, which in itself could lead to a novel textures, a fictional reconstruction of the plot political and institutional, are being reported from one side to the myth (the mythic journey in the East), the other to the mechanical nature of a game of puzzles, pure repetitive mechanism, which has nothing of romance.

This does not mean that this power is not deadly. But Pasolini approached him in another way. Moreover, the image of romance-conspiratorial power is, ultimately, an idea also comforting. It not only tells us that there are conspiracies. It also tells us that the world can be dominated by a drawing, by an order. It assumes that history can be directed by a mind and that reality can enter inside the box. Therefore, it is comforting. And for this same reason, it can also be castrating, as is the so-called Realpolitik. For example, it may encourage attitudes like this: "Needless to demonstrate against the war, so you know that there are powerful lobbies that want it, for oil or otherwise. The same Vatican diplomacy, who knows what will cover! Other interests, other conspiracies ... ". And all this is certainly true.

But the plots, in order to work, they need to maneuver individuals and bodies, and to integrate into the schemes purely mental reality, getting your hands dirty with really big, which is not saying go according to plan. Indeed it could go in a completely different way. The reality contains a lot more of what the abstract formulas of power can predict or control. Therefore, the power realistic, Machiavellian, according to Pasolini, stupid (p. 462). In fact it does not use the vision, that does not see the reality (which also contains precisely the unpredictable).

The power is always, as they say in Italy, Machiavellian: that is realistic. It excludes from its practice everything that can be 'known' through Visions (p. 461)

The same could be said of other descriptions of power, for example the one that underlies the "society of the spectacle." It is, like the one that explains the world through the intrigues and conspiracies, is likely to be comforting and together blocker. It supposes that the power to get rid of the conflict, that can gobble up the reality, with all its unpredictability, with all its "givenness excruciating."

No mystery then in oil. (The 'mystery' is there, but is of a different nature). Nothing fascination dietrologica. Only a chart, easy to follow, "how to get down and then up two flights of stairs adjacent to have the last step in common." This step is common to both trees, which Pasolini has shown in the diagram, are the cultural activities of Mrs. F, financed, "for reasons of friendship and kinship," both from Cefis that Monti. And it is here that Pasolini wants to end.

This lady holds a lounge, a living room that is left-wing intellectual. And it is in this living room that Charles Catholic left, will be recruited from power, even from what plots. But here the power, even that mysterious textures, is revealed to us in its banality.


Source : http://www.pasolini.net/narrativa_petrolio_benedetti01.htm