Recognition and Reception. On Pizzorno, Identity and the Mask

Roberta Sassatelli

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/9754

Authors

Roberta Sassatelli University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4240-9691
Roberta Sassatelli is Professor of Sociology at the University of Milan (Italy). She has previously taught at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) and the University of Bologna (Italy). Her research focuses on the theory of consumer action, the sociology of consumer practices and the politics of contemporary consumer culture as well as sociology of leisure and sport and sexuality and gender. Her last books are Corpo, genere e società, with R. Ghigi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018); Italians and Food (ed.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/9754

Keywords:

identity, Pizzorno, mask, recognition, reception

Abstract

Starting from his early observations on the mask and drawing also on his interview on the subject, this paper considers Alessandro Pizzorno’s theory of identity building as recognition looking in particular at his last works. The metaphor of the mask helps us to understand the mechanisms of identity constitution, the dialectic of hiding and revealing, and with it the ambivalences of modern subjectivity. For Pizzorno, in modern societies, individuals must represent themselves as a function of the expression of a deep identity; they must create their own masks and make them recognizable. The process of reception, and the circles of recognition wherein identities are embedded are the proper object of sociological analysis as it is through them that identities get entrenched.

References

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Recognition and Reception. On Pizzorno, Identity and the Mask

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