Una politica delle macerie: Alessandro Leogrande tra inchiesta sociale e militanza meridionalistica

This article examines Alessandro Leogrande’s positions on the industrialisation and environmental exploitation of Taranto and broadens the picture to his militant production, aspiring to grasp its most significant aspects. Much of the attention in this essay is devoted to writings in which the political perspective is linked to the tradition of critical meridionalism, of which Leogrande represents the last real voice. The aim of this reflection is to show, on a stylistic and political level, the originality of Leogrande’s proposal, probably one of the last capable of reactivating the analytical tools of twentieth-century modernity for an interpretation of the social conflict in Southern Italy. The ecologist trait is, in fact, never separated from a more general consideration of historical-material aspects, primarily economic. What emerges is Leogrande’s militant posture and his particular physiognomy as an intellectual, in some ways very different from that of the classic meridionalism of the early 20th century, and in others akin to a trajectory that, from Salvemini, arrives via Gramsci up to the 1960s.