Il concetto di sinistra. Un dibattito di inizio anni Ottanta

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, in the ebb of Italy’s long ‘68 (1968-1977) and its revolutionary aspirations and in the dawning of a new political phase, the Italian intelligentsia questioned the meaning of the concept of the left. A similar debate had taken place in France at the end of World War II, also in this case on the eve of a stabilization phase. Both Dionys Mascolo in France and, later, in Italy, Mario Tronti, Massimo Cacciari and Gianni Vattimo, take their starting points from the «malediction» that hangs over the idea of the left: being the weak, clumsy, wrong side compared to the right, the straight, just side that dictates the line and the norm. Positions are divided on the malediction of a left that wants to aspire to government: whether it must now be freed from it or whether it rather represents an original fact to be drawn on to renew its mission. Vattimo inclines toward the latter position, even though it may be a strong trait of weak thought.