Plasticità e pudore

(Plasticity and Modesty)

Abstract

Before being an attitude, modesty is an emotional state. As all emotions, it is partially undetermined. In its uncertainty, however, modesty is self-confident: it does not know yet which form to take up exactly, yet it is defined by the rejection of the unformed; it knows that the unformed will never be its goal. In the space of eros, that which opposes modesty most coherently and tries to make it appear as moralistic and anachronistic is the drive toward an anonymous eroticism. Conversely, modesty reveals itself as the desire for the name, the pleasure of calling and being called with one’s own name. This is without completely denying the “impersonal” component in eros.