Al di là del comune sentimento del pudore. Il lessico dell'osceno tra aischrón e obscenum

On the basis of a historically fluid definition, this paper focuses on terms, forms, rituals and poetics of the obscene, an incoercible dimension of the human, which entails a continuous, non-conformist solicitation of the ‘common sense of decency’. In this way, historical connections and entanglements emerge between the obscene ritual, its dramatisation on the stage of Old Comedy, and the desecrating and cathartic function of laughter. In short, dealing with the obscene to represent its complex functions – anthropological, aesthetic, social, and above all political – that have traditionally found expression in the biting and denigrating tones of invective and obscene language, of public ridicule of the powerful and the supreme authority. From the archaic iambic poets and Aristophanes, via Dante, de Sade, Belli, Bataille, Bianciardi and many others, to the new frontiers of the obscene: the word has now been replaced by the image, the verbal by the digital, the obscene by the pornographically voyeuristic, the ancient rhapsody by the contemporary rap, in a tourbillon of true and false poets competing in overcoming the limit of what, on stage and above all off it, is sayable and representable.