Il Club del Libro (The Book Club) pulsing heart of the European body, linguistic expression, to feel, to flow amongst words, senses and perceptions, is now stretched to embrace an ‘other body’: from Italy it makes pulsate nodes, reflections and ratio breathing on life, death and choices around bodies of all of us.
In January 1992 Eluana Englaro, at the age of 21, remained victim of an accident in the street and for seventeen years she has lived in a vegetative state. On February 9th 2009, she died in Udine consequently to the decision of suspending her artificial and assisted nutriment. Her body has been object of a battle that from the meat has reached other contexts, swallowing consciences, public opinion, weak legislation and stratified humanity.
This body, silent, immovable, hidden to looks and caresses has naked that thiny border, weak, between life, death and freedom of choice.
From italy to Europe, through hands, eyes, voices and connections, voices and connections, this project ‘on Eluana Englaro’s body’ has been welcomed by Il Club del Libro because from words, meanings and symbols, it is possible to recover what bodies are, what they represent and what that particular body has left, whispered to everyone amongst us.
‘On Eluana Englaro’s body’
At the beginning of this project, it is urgent the need to contrast a forgetful habit in Italy in order to recover something back in our hands
This project goes round ‘on Eluana Englaro’s body’. A body which has been transformed into epicentre of facts, reasoning’s, national and local debates, private and mediated ones, legislative intervention of different nature, declarations, crashes.
Many amongst political, religious authorities, mass media, have been participating. Marco Rovelli wrote on the “Unità” of 14/02/2009:
“And from that body, then, it is necessary to restart, if there is space enough, here and now, to reconstruct a community of people and not that one of owners.”
Demetrio Paolin wrote on ‘the body and the rite’. Notes on Eluana Englaro (On ‘Corpo morto e corpo vivo’ di Giulio Mozzi -Transeuropa, 4/11/2009)
“Eluana body laid forgot and its silence would have continued to grown until the total and final one of the last months.
This project recovers events, threads of a recent past, events apparently concluded with a death, but that remain up to now, suspended, laboriously tied up to events with no direct impact on life of a single family, of a single body. Events that became words, images, thesis, instruments and symbols.
Because Eluana Englaro’s body – perhaps – has not still gone.
Barbara Gozzi
October, 2009
1.1. Chronology of main phases (around the Eluana body Englaro).
Advisers: Teresa de Cesare (doctor), Federica Sgaggio (journalist); collaborator: Piero Bocchiaro (research fellow at Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam); thanks to Giulio Mozzi, Demetrio Paolin, Claudia Boscolo.