The Unending Process of Subjectivity: Gendering Otherness As Openness in Pasolini's Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini) (Critical Essay‪)‬

In a recent assessment of Pasolini criticism of the last two decades, Robert Gordon distinguishes between "the semi-hagiographical critical initiatives" that followed Pasolini's death in 1975, and other, "more rigorous, more traditionally based" academic analyses of his work after 1980. Both critical camps share, however, in the critic's estimation, an ingenuous approach to Pasolini's opus as either "a coherent entity to be decoded" or a vessel of some "unified meaning of Pasolini." For Gordon, both sides have failed to acknowledge "the extent to which he [Pasolini] refuses to serve as a receptacle of 'innocent' or 'authentic' sets of meanings" and in particular, the extent to which Pasolini's "discursive practices emanate a complex, centripetal force of gravity which draws in and distorts dependent discourses [...]" (41-42). These discourses contribute to the ongoing construction of meaning in Pasolini's written and visual works. Gordon's characterization of Pasolini's self-construction as a dynamic process is crucial in this context because it presents an open-ended rather than closed, "coherent," or "unified" structure of subjectivity. Moreover, his observation of the "absolute importance assigned in Pasolini's value system to selfhood, and to the potentially overwhelming expressivity of the self and its desires," (42) suggests that one ought to examine the numerous subject figures in Pasolini's works to understand the relational network between selfhood and desire. While his construction of self generally centers on the otherness embodied and projected by marginalized male subjects, many female figures in Pasolini's poetry, prose, theater, and cinema factor into his concept of alterity. And because these women often personify origins or a potential source of renewal, they perform a vital function within a value system that is both cyclical and regenerative. (1)