Pasolini and Exclusion

Abstract

This article combines a reading of Pasolini's first feature film, Accattone (1961), with an investigation into what the theory of subjectivity of Zizek and Agamben might mean for a critique of today's liberal-democratic, late-capitalist hegemony. More precisely, my article claims that Pasolini's scandalous over-identification with the Roman sub-proletariat quaexcluded social class, in the context of Italy's modernization, should be read in conjunction with both Zizek's and Agamben's defence of the `abject subjects' of today's global order. Arguing against the de-politicizing trends of contemporary cultural studies, I suggest that it is only through the identification of (a politically rehabilitated notion of) universality with the point of exclusion of today's late-capitalist experience, that our cultural discourse can radically disturb the socio-symbolic field.