The Seventh Function of Language

Once more, against all expectations, it is the young woman who wins by defending the idea that the players are proletarians like other workers and that the club bosses are stealing their hard work.

Bianca explains to Simon that the national team’s young striker, Paolo Rossi, was suspended for three years following the match-fixing scandal, meaning that he will not be able to play in the World Cup in Spain. Tough shit for him, says Bianca, he refused a transfer to Napoli. Simon asks why. Bianca sighs. Napoli is too poor; it can’t compete with the biggest clubs. No great player will ever go to Napoli.

Strange country, thinks Simon.

The night wears on, and the time is come for the digital duel. The silence of the statues—Gallienus, Hippocrates, the Italian anatomists, the flayed men, and the woman on the tray—contrasts with the agitation of the living. People smoke, drink, chat, eat picnics.

Bifo summons the duelists. A dialectician is challenging a peripatetician.

A man takes his place next to the dissecting table. It’s Antonioni. Simon observes Monica Vitti, wrapped up in a delicately patterned gauze scarf, as she stares lovingly at the great director.

And facing him, stiff-backed and severe with her immaculate bun, Luciano’s mother walks down the steps to the dissecting table.

Simon and Bayard look at each other. They look at Enzo and Bianca: they also seem surprised.

Bifo draws the subject: “Gli intellettuali e il potere.” Intellectuals and power.

It is the prerogative of the lower-ranked player to begin—the dialectician.

In order for the subject to be discussed, it is up to the first duelist to problematize it. In this case, that’s easy to work out: Are intellectuals the enemies or the allies of those in power? It’s simply a question of choosing. For or against? Antonioni decides to criticize the caste to which he belongs, the caste that fills the amphitheater. Intellectuals as accomplices with those in power. Così sia.

Intellectuals: functionaries of the superstructures that participate in the construction of the hegemony. So, Gramsci again: all men are intellectuals, true, but not all men serve the function of intellectuals in society, which consists in working for the spontaneous consent of the masses. Whether “organic” or “traditional,” the intellectual always belongs to an “economic-corporative” logic. Organic or traditional, he is always in the service of those in power, present, past, or future.

The salvation of the intellectual, according to Gramsci? Becoming one with the Party. Antonioni laughs sardonically. But the Communist Party itself is so corrupt! How could it provide redemption for anyone these days? Compromesso storico, sto cazzo! Compromise leads to compromised principles.

The subversive intellectual? Ma fammi il piacere! He recites a phrase from another man’s film: “Think about what Suetonius did for the Caesars! You start with the ambition to denounce something and you end up an accomplice.”

Theatrical bow.

Prolonged applause.

It’s the old lady’s turn to speak.

“Io so.”

She, too, begins with a quotation, but she chooses Pasolini. His now-legendary “J’accuse,” published in the Corriere della Sera in 1974.

“I know the names of those responsible for the massacre of Milan in 1969. I know the names of those responsible for the massacres of Brescia and Bologna in 1974. I know the names of important people who, with the aid of the CIA, Greek colonels, and the Mafia, launched an anti-Communist crusade, then tried to pretend they were anti-fascists. I know the names of those who, between two Masses, gave instructions and assured the protection of old generals, young neo-fascists, and ordinary criminals. I know the names of the serious and important people behind comic characters or behind drab characters. I know the names of serious and important people behind the tragic young people who have offered themselves as hired killers. I know all these names and I know all the crimes—the attacks on institutions and massacres—of which they are guilty.”

The old woman growls and her trembling voice rings out in the Archiginnasio.

“I know. But I have no proof. Not even any clues. I know because I am an intellectual, a writer, who strives to follow everything that happens, to read everything that is written on this subject, to imagine all that is unknown or shrouded in silence; who puts together disparate facts, gathering the fragmentary, disordered pieces of an entire, coherent political situation, who restores logic where randomness, madness, and mystery seem to reign.”

Less than a year after that article, Pasolini was found murdered, beaten to death on a beach in Ostia.