Events

the judgement that precedes the defense.

“...the psychoanalyst treats everyone except the too smart ones. (J. Lacan called them ‘scoundrels’).”[1]

There is a judgement that comes before defense, even neurotic defense: it is to this judgement indeed that thinking can access when defense proves insufficient, that is, neurotic defense.

Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – August 3, 2026

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Photo by Edelweiss Deiana

[1] Cited by THINK!, Giacomo B. Contri/ sabato 11 – domenica 12 maggio 2013 ‘Nevrosi perversione Cristianesimo’.

even the removal is a defense, so weak indeed.

“It is well known that we have restored to perversion its right of citizenship." [1]

Without even naming it, the very weak defense of neurotic removal is brought into play: perversion laughs at both partner and partnership (and perversion does not exist, by the gods).

Therefore, the defense.

Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – July 25, 2026

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Photo by Edelweiss Deiana

[1] Cited by ‘Jacques Lacan. Il seminario. Libro VII. L’etica della psicoanalisi 1959 – 1960’. Testo stabilito da Jacques-Alain Miller, traduzione di Maria Delia Contri, a cura di Antonio Di Ciaccia/ pg.229

Antigone and Democracy.

In the photo: Ismene addresses her sister Antigone at the beginning of the drama: "Where is your thinking heading?" / screenshot shared from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkrbTNAtC7Q // 'Antigone' by Sophocles[1], directed by Robert Carsen[2] for the 2026 Season at the Greek Theatre of Syracuse / I.N.D.A. Foundation.

‘Antigone’ was Sophocles' first play, achieving an immediate success that still transcends opposing political views today; the vast consensus this tragic character has always gathered[3] is truly incredible. Yet, Antigone maintains the stance of the ‘old world’ - Antigone is the girl who "opposes the generating" - a low human matter that does not concern the gods and their immutable laws. Indeed, we already found her clinging to her affection for a past no longer connected to reality.

"A desire overcomes me... to see the underground home... of our father, alas"[4], Antigone confesses her "desire" to her sister Ismene after their father, Oedipus, following his own will and the favour of the gods, had vanished from this world near Colonus, without leaving ant trace. Antigone had arrived there as an exile from Thebes, supporting her blind father. For a long time, he had proclaimed himself "not responsible" for the crimes he had nevertheless committed, justifying the offense with his "not knowing" what he was doing and against whom; the gods had destined him to all this, and he had obeyed them. Antigone makes herself an affectionate and loyal, yet senseless, ornament to his father Oedipus.

"Where is your thinking heading?" [5] Ismene asks her sister from the very first lines of the drama. Antigone has suggested to Ismene to join her in disobeying the recent law of the sovereign Creon. This law decrees that no one—under penalty of death—shall honour in any way the body of Polyneices. He was the son of Oedipus and brother to Antigone and Ismene, killed in battle by his own brother Eteocles while attempting to seize the throne of Thebes—the throne from which Oedipus had been banished and which is now occupied by Creon, brother of their mother Jocasta. Ismene, "she who knows, she who has a mind," questions Antigone's thoinking.

Antigone, who is escaping reality, is fallen in love with whom no longer are in the world: not even the Chorus can do better than Ismene, and we listen them mourning Antigone until the very end.

It is in fact the contrast by Ismene—who prefers to obey Creon, the representative of Government and Law—that amplifies the aim of Antigone's naive heroism, with a tragic emphasis on the—yet possible—detachment between an obscure affection, an infatuation that becomes superhuman, and the law, which recognizes reality as the source of life that the gods despise.

This contrast is the true protagonist that takes the stage, yet it remains unknowable, subdued, even sly, managed by Sophocles to enchant the audience. "It is my nature to share love, not hate"[6],  Antigone proclaims to the tyrant Creon: a love frozen in the infatuation that precedes tragedies. And here, Sophocles' words uses the counterposition of two verbs that in ancient Greek indicated neither love nor hate, but an unrelated and fluid feeling capable of sweeping the listener away.

The detestable, hateable Creon clearly understands Antigone's affection, but at the same time expresses the impossibility of pleasing her wish, at risk of the Government's credibility and its very existence: "Whomever the city has entrusted with power, they must one obey in matters large and small, just or unjust... There is no evil greater than anarchy, which ruins cities, disrupts families, breaks ranks, and causes flight in the midst of battle." [7]

It is certainly a despotic society in which Ismene and Antigone move but, what if it were a democracy?

Behold, democracy itself makes ‘Antigone’ a significant test of the consensus for rebellion: a consensus that is even social, given that ‘Antigone’ has availed herself of it over the centuries, and from opposing factions. Antigone pleases the gods, and the gods despise reality.

Yet even today, the impassive, unsettling Sophocles asks us, and precisely through Ismene, the sister who knows and yet remains on the sidelines: why discard reality—and therefore the 'real'—which indeed derives from reality the principle of generating, the principle of pleasure ?

Otherwise, there is nothing but Imago.

Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – June 28th, 2026

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[1] Sophocles (Colonus 496 b.C. – Athens 406 b.C.) was one of the three most highly applauded authors of ancient Greece, along with Aeschylus and Euripides. In Tragedy, he introduced the third actor and increased the composition of the Chorus, which became more spectacular. His protagonist is a well-rounded dramatic one, with a more pronounced humanity. He brought to the Theater as his first work ‘Antigone’ (442 b.C.), then we note ‘Oedipus the King’ (425 b.C.), ‘Electra’ (410 b.C.), and ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ (401 b.C., performed after Sophocles death). He was a friend of Pericles and politically engaged, and received important political positions.

[2] Robert Carsen was born in Toronto (Canada) in 1954 and since he was a child he demonstrated a great passion for theatre: so he began studying acting, but at 20 years old he moved to England to continue his studies in directing, getting his first job as an assistant director at the Festival of Spoleto (Italy) and in the same time at the Royal Opera House of London, which allowed him to collaborate for a long time with the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival Opera; already engaged as an assistant director for the Canadian Opera Company, he stood out as a set designer in 1987 with the National Ballet Canada at the Grand Théâtre de Genève; among his best works we remember: ‘The Nibelung’s Ring’ at Cologne, ‘Eugene Onegin’ at the Metropolitan Opera, ‘La Traviata’ at the Theatre ‘La Fenice’ of Venice, ‘Mephistopheles’ at the San Francisco Opera, ‘Rusalka’ at the Opéra Bastille of Paris, ‘The Knight of the Rose’ at Salzburg Festival; in Germany he directed many works by G. Puccini and G. Verdi until he began a collaboration with the Teatro alla Scala of Milan which still continues; in 2001 he directed the musical ‘Sunset Boulevard’; at the Greek Theatre of Siracusa (Italy) he directed ‘Oedipus Rex’ (2022) and ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ (2025) by Sophocles; he received many awards and was honoured with the Order of the Legion of Honour (France, 1996) and with the Order of Canada (2006).

[3] ‘Jacques Lacan - Il seminario. Libro VII. L’etica della psicoanalisi. 1959 1960’, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi (2008) A cura di Jacques  Alain Miller, Antonio Di Ciaccia.

[4] Cited from ‘Edipo a Colono’, Sofocle (401 a.C.) BUR Fabbri Editori in ‘Antigone, Edipo Re, Edipo a Colono’ (2000) Translat. by Franco Ferrari - pp. 399-401.

[5] Cited from ‘Antigone’, Sofocle (442 a.C.) BUR Fabbri Editori in ‘Antigone, Edipo Re, Edipo a Colono’ (2000) Translat. by Franco Ferrari - p. 63.

[6] Cited from ‘Antigone’, Sofocle (442 a.C.) BUR Fabbri Editori in ‘Antigone, Edipo Re, Edipo a Colono’ (2000) Translated by Franco Ferrari - p.97.

[7] Cited from ‘Antigone’, Sofocle (442 a.C.) BUR Fabbri Editori in ‘Antigone, Edipo Re, Edipo a Colono’ (2000) Translated by Franco Ferrari – pp. 107-109.

The painter Giovanni Fattori and his own 'macchia'.

In the photo: detail of a preparatory drawing for the four large paintings of the Risorgimento battles, which Giovanni Fattori submitted to the competition announced for the provisional government of Tuscany, and which the artist won in 1862 with ‘Il campo italiano dopo la battaglia di Magenta'/ Taken from the exhibition ’Giovanni Fattori. Il ‘genio’ dei Macchiaioli’, Piacenza/ Museo XNL March 29 – June 29, 2025.

A special graphic ability is in Giovanni Fattori[1]: and painting to which he later applied himself cannot dilute it, or reduce. Called to live in a time when people were fighting for an “unborn Nation”[2], he soon became close to the nascent ‘Macchiaioli’[3] who met at the ‘Caffè Michelangiolo’ in Florence, quickly making himself one of the most unique and successful interpreters.

The ‘macchia’ began to take shape for the artist with the arrival in 1859 in Florence of the French troops and their camp, which Fattori, at that time newlywed of Settimia Vannucci, would stop for whole days to observe from the ‘Pratone delle Cascine’, and the real battles that were being prepared, the waiting, the death, the suffering: his special scratching on the paper found meaning and passion right here to depict the brutal scenes of the completely real movie that was in front of him: and to depict his own thinking too that on their pain could bend and say and describe, with the sharp lines of which he was a master.

Giovanni Fattori was also a master of colour which his paintings still offer to us, easing and making suffering and loneliness acceptable, as he witnessed even with contrition, a refined pain to which he knew how to address his rare ability to make it sublime, elect.

His own ‘macchia’ – unique among his colleagues ‘Macchiaioli’ – is indifferently man, woman, animal, without expressions, up to ‘the people’ which finds with Giovanni Fattori a true significance because the ‘who the other is’ gives up. Women, including his wife and a common friend, make  landscape in ‘La Rotonda dei bagni Palmieri’ (1866) : as well as ‘I bovi al carro’ (1868) are protagonists full of light. A ‘gayeté’ in the ‘tristesse’ that made him fascinating to the public, and consumable: Fattori had many loves.

His most, maybe incomprehensible and secret works are the portraits, some of which followed him during his moves; excellent caricatures and ‘macchia’ of the human: not very resembling but truly romantic and realistic in the subtle affection they are able to arouse.

It's strange however that only in his self-portraits Fattori does not make himself ‘macchia’.

Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – November 6, 2025

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[1] Giovanni Fattori (Livorno 1825 – Firenze 1908) was an Italian painter and engraver: lively and lazy student at the ‘Accademia di Belle Arti’ in Florence, as he himself admitted he approached the painting technique of the ‘macchia’ but he didn’t appreciated Impressionism. He won many awards between 1870 and 1890, and his ‘Il Quadrato di Villafranca’, appreciated by the king Umberto I, was purchased by the ‘Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna’ of Rome. In 1880 he was appointed Honorary Professor at the ‘Accademia di Belle Arti’ of Florence, and he was invited to participate in prestigious exhibitions throughout Europe. His paintings are present at the Civic Museum ‘Giovanni Fattori’ in Livorno, at the ‘Galleria d’Arte Moderna’ of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and at the ‘Galleria nazionale d’Arte Moderna’ in Rome.

[2] Taken from the presentation of the exhibition in Piacenza ‘Giovanni Fattori. Il ‘genio’ dei Macchiaioli’, XNL Museum/ March 29 – June 29, 2025.

[3] Macchiaioli were in Florence a group of painters, critical of the Accademia teachings: first and foremost Diego Martelli ed Adriano Cecioni, who already in 1855 – well before the French Impressionists – had developed a theory and a technique where light creates ‘patches’ of colour. It was on the occasion of their first exhibition of 1862, that ‘la Gazzetta del Popolo’ named them for the first time and in a slightly irreverent way ‘Macchiaioli’, although some of them were actually soldiers in those dark years. Among the best interpreters still remain Odoardo Borrani, Silvestro Lega, Telemaco Signorini.