An Other Heading

“Because this is precisely what it is ultimately about,
in life, as in thought and politics:
being able to perceive the signs of what is approaching,
of what is no longer time as such,
but by now only occasion,
perception of an urgency and imminence
that demands a decided gesture or an action.“
Giorgio Agamben

After the shipwreck, the ruins, the book and motherhood, the metaphorical core around which the fifth edition of the Cima Norma Art Festival – which was to take place from 13 July to 1 September –  was centred on the main and most important part of a body, namely the head (in Italian capo, from the Latin caput).  Unfortunately, following the death at the beginning of June of Giovanni Casella, president of the Fondazione La Fabbrica del cioccolato, and the decisions taken by those who replaced him, we were forced to close the festival experience for good. For the 2024 edition, whose programme had already been finalised and was ready to be presented to the public, it was only possible to produce the booklet that, as every year, would have accompanied the exhibition at the centre of the Festival. On this occasion, in order to document what has been done over the years, we also decided to realise a volume containing the English versions of all the booklets published during the Festival.

Both publications can be ordered by sending an e-mail to info@cnaf.ch

The 32-page booklet in Italian for the 2024 edition costs CHF 5 (including postage), while the 160-page booklet in English containing all the booklets produced between 2020 and 2024 costs CHF 15 (including postage).

As the seat of the brain and thought and, through the face, the primary expression of individual identity, the head has always been identified with the part of the body that commands and coordinates all the others, sometimes alone, sometimes in close dialectic with other organs, especially the heart. In the Middle Ages, these two organs were often used metaphorically to indicate the two main powers contending for control of society: the political power embodied by the emperor and the spiritual power represented by the pope.

In today’s Italian, the word capo (head) is more often used to refer to the leader (chief) of a group of people, more or less large, than to the head of the body (being a rather sought-after and obsolete word with this meaning). When we use the word “head” to refer to a person at the top of a hierarchy, we are actually using a metaphor. One of those metaphors that have been part of our language for so long that we no longer recognise them as such.

The “logic of the heading”, and thus the idea of a hierarchical articulation of the world, has dominated much of human history, not only in the political sphere, but also in the social sphere (think of the head of the family, a role traditionally attributed to the male) and in the economic sphere (capitalism has at its centre the capital, a term also derived from the Latin caput, i.e. the nucleus from which wealth can be produced).

But the history of modernity is also the history of emancipation from this “logic of the heading”, beginning with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which led, not only metaphorically, to the “decapitation” of those who embodied power in the Ancien Régime. A process that then continued with the birth of parliamentary democracies, with the struggles against slavery, with the social struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the emergence of anarchist thought, and after the Second World War with feminist struggles, with the protest of 1968 and with decolonial thought.

However, the “logic of the heading” has never died and continues to resurface, just think of the totalitarianisms of the first half of the 20th century, or the more recent rise of sovereignism, or the authoritarian twists to which even established democratic systems are increasingly subject. The “logic of the heading” also survives in the great economic potentates of late capitalism, which are the highest expression of power on a global scale.

The Italian title of this edition, Punto e a capo [new paragraph /a fresh start] is intended to sum up the contradiction that dominates the spirit of our time, suspended between hope and discouragement. On the one hand, it points to the need for a radical change in our way of life if we are to avoid the dramatic future that this beginning of the 21st century seems to herald. It is a call to action, an action that can no longer be postponed, as Agamben reminds us in the quote in the exergue, and which fortunately is felt by many, especially the youngest. On the other hand, the Italian expression Punto e a capo also means “to be back at square one” referring to the immutability of a situation, to the fact of always returning to the starting point. A feeling that is also widespread in view of the complexity and vastness of the problem. At an individual level, there is a growing sense of helplessness and the idea that we may not be able “to figure this out” [venirne a capo]. Also because the challenge is complex, to overcome the “logic of the heading”, to find another of the heading that is not another heading or a beheading, perhaps the only possible way is in fact that of a proliferation of heads, to arrive at that multi-headed society which, as Bataille wrote, is the only truly free society.