The Calabrian academic passed away on May 30 at the age of 85: with his studies he restored cultural dignity to laborers and migrants. Dedicated memorable pages to Pulcinella
Sharp, cultured, eclectic. He has inspired generations of anthropologists. Luigi Maria Lombardi Satriani left on tiptoe at the age of 85. A master of free thought and social observation attentive to the popular classes and changes in the beautiful country. They called him the red baron, for his noble birth and for his political orientation, which led him to be elected to the Senate on the Democratic Party lists.
He was born in San Costantino di Briatico in the province of Vibo Valentia, on 10 December 1936 from the family of the Barons of Porto Salvo. It was Uncle Raffaele, a famous scholar of popular traditions, who initiated him into that intangible and changing science that the study of man. Then came his university studies in political science in Naples and a long and prestigious academic career began very soon. First the University of Messina, then the Federico II of Naples, the University of Calabria and finally La Sapienza of Rome where his chair of ethnology became an important school of thought.
Tireless and volcanic, he also taught legal anthropology and travel anthropology at the same time at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples. He was zipping up his travel abroad agenda as a visiting professor. In Sao Paulo, Austin and Montreal. To which he added a very intense presence in the national media, primarily Corriere della Sera and Rai. His lessons were a flood of references to great literature, history, to the arts.
He often and willingly broke disciplinary fences which he considered a necessary evil, but still an evil. So much so that when the name of the disciplinary grouping of anthropology had to be decided in the ministry of the university, he strongly supported the broader and more inclusive. And consequently the longest, almost a tongue twister: demo-ethno-anthropological disciplines. Because thefor him, the humus from which good ideas and the best interpretations of collective life are born was a plurality of theories. It was indeed very far from the dividing and censoring walls of the politically correct that today monopolizes the human sciences.
His method was the respect for all diversity as a universal rule. On the other hand, his first contribution of ideas dates back to 1968, when he elaborated the concept of folklore as a form of contestation. Which, in fact, brings peasant civilization with its beliefs, fears and values out of the dark corner of history, and re-proposes it as a culture of the present, not as a simple survival or a folkloric relict. In this way, in the eyes of public opinion, it restores a cultural dignity to laborers and seers, tarantolate and peasant, migrant and proletarian poets. Carrying on the best of the legacy of Ernesto de Martino, founder of Italian ethnology.
In 1982 he published with Mariano Meligrana The bridge of San Giacomo (Rizzoli, Premio Viareggio), an analysis of the beliefs and rituals of death in the South centered on the poetic metaphor of that bridge as thin as a hair that leads souls to the other world. But his passion for research and writing pushes him to continually try his hand at new themes. Like the contrast between hegemonic law and popular law, that is, between the law of the State and local customs. He has dedicated memorable pages to the mask of Pulcinella, the symbolic value of blood and the tragedy of AIDS. To Carlo Levi’s painful love for life, to Marian devotion and to the controversial case of the Calabrian seer Natuzza Evolo. Until a few weeks ago she was working on a book about travel. In short, her freedom of thought is her true great inheritance.
May 30, 2022 (change May 30, 2022 | 21:25)
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