Decadent Genealogies

Abstract

no bloody uprisings: "But all these talks about sunrise, the dawn, the new land, etc. , are only the twaddle of degenerates incapable of thought.The idea that tomorrow at half past seven o'clock a monstrous, unsuspected event will suddenly take place; that on Thursday next a complete revolution will be accomplished at a single blow, that a revelation, a redemption, the advent of a new age is imminent-this is frequently observed among the insane, it is a mystic delirium" (Nordau, 544).Nordau often outdid his master; indeed, Lombroso found it necessary, in the sixth edition of Genio e degenerazione, to chastise him severely for overzealous interpretations and applications of the master's theories.But on this point there is no dissent.In Gli anarchici, Lombroso discredits the aims of the Paris Commune by pointing out, "Se, fatta qualche rara eccezione, alcuno si sollevo, fu rono gli spostati, i criminali, i pazzi, gli alcoolisti" (69) ("If anyone rose up, with rare exceptions they were the misfits, criminals, madmen, and alcoholics"}.In his studies of genius , of criminals and anarchists, Lombroso employs of anarchism draws freely from other revolutionary discourses.The distinguish ing feature of anarchism, for Lombroso, is its "prematurity": "E qui appare la distinzione fra le rivoluzioni propriamente dette che sono un effetto lento, preparato, necessario, tutt'al piu precipitato da qualche genio nevrotico o da qualche accidence storico, e le rivolte o sedizioni, frutti di un'incubazione artificiale a temperatura esagerata, di embrioni predestinati a morire.La rivo luzione e l'espressione storica dell'evoluzione, calma, ma estesa e sicura .... Questa non e dunque una malattia, ma una fase necessaria dello sviluppo della specie.Le sedizioni invece sono opera di pochi, corrispondono a cause poco importanti, sovente locali o personali, frequenti presso i popoli poco civili, come a San Domingo. ... i delinquenti e i pazzi vi partecipano in maggior copia spintivi dalla loro morbosita a pensare, a sentire diversamente dagli onesti e sani" {"And here emerges the distinction between what are properly called revolutions, which are a slow, prepared, and necessary effect, at the most precipitated by some neurotic genius or by historical accident, and revolts or seditions, which are the fruit of an artificial incubation at an exaggerated temperature and of embryos predestined to die.Revolution is the historical expression of evolution, calm but wide-ranging and sure .... This, then, is not a sickness but a necessary phase in the development of the species.Seditions instead are the work of a fe w, they correspond to causes of little importance, often of a local or personal nature, frequent in uncivilized peoples, as in San Domingo .... criminals and madmen participate in them in greater numbers , urged on by their sickliness to think and feel differently from the healthy and honest"}.Cesare Lombroso, Gli anarchici ( 1894; rpt .

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