Revolution as a Quest for an Authentic Life: the Sixties and the Seventies in Italy

This chapter analyzes the quest for an “authentic subjectivity” in the extreme left and right in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies. It places this quest into long-term perspective – that is, the cultural critique of the so-called bourgeois modernity - and into the context of the transformation of the capitalistic system in those decades. In fact, the latter seemed characterised by now, not only by the capacity to absorb every form of antagonism through the mythology of well-being, the expansion of consumption and the increase of salaries, but, above all, to deprive life of any emotional content.