California Italian Studies

Today the term "control" is ubiquitous, appearing ever more frequently in public discourse and in newspaper headlines. The term, which originated in medieval Latin within accounting practice, has been applied over time to various fields. Yet "control" is articulated in many ways, and the same goes for its opposite. On the one hand, control and non-control are indeed united in an unbreakable relationship: it would make no sense to exercise some form of control over the world, over oneself, and over others if these areas did not also present something vitally uncontrollable – namely, something contingent, unpredictable, unknown, incalculable. An enhancing interplay between control and non-control is an essential element of any living and vibrant society. However, this relationship seems to be fraying today, and the two poles that constitute it tend to exclude one another, generating phenomena of obsessive control ("the society of control," "surveillance capitalism," etc.) or of (self-)destructive uncontrollability. This essay looks in particular at contemporary Italian society and the right-wing Meloni government's efforts to manage the relationship between these two poles of experience.