Does language degrade? The world shrinks

"Trauma is like a seed, if you bury it, if you put it in the ground, it germinates. It takes root. The hall of the Bishop's Palace in Mantua (where the Festivaletteratura is still going on today) is full: they are almost all women, listening to the words of the writer, actress, singer-songwriter Saba Aglana, cut through the air. With Maaza Mengiste, author of the memorable Il re ombra (Einaudi), a novel about the Ethiopian women who fought against the fascists during the Ethiopian war - and also against the men, even compatriots, who raped them - Aglana talks about the 'past that is not past': 'The colonial memory that has never been resolved, not even in school books. The past that does not pass urges one to write, to reconnoitre what has been'. She has done this in La signora meraviglia (Sellerio), a sort of multigenerational memoir that takes its name from what part of her family, half Italian half Somali-Ethiopian, calls Italian citizenship, which the protagonist tries to obtain for her aunt, who has lived in Italy for most of her life. "We talk about what was in order to seek a pacification in the present," said Aglana. "When pain is transformed into an idea, it loses the power to hurt us," Deborah Levy answered her, from another stage, talking about her Autobiography in Motion (NN publisher), in which she analyses the role of women in contemporary society.

Marilena Umuhoza Delli, author of Lettera di una madre afrodiscendente alla scuola italiana (People), also commented on trauma. Per un'educazione decoloniale, antirazzista e intersezionale (People): 'How does a rationalised child live? He lives in a continuum of microaggressions and aggressions from society, not to mention institutional ones. At school I never saw myself represented, never in books was there anyone like me. The first time I saw myself was when they told us about slavery. All this leads to low self-esteem, low trust in others, depression that can lead to suicide. Young girls also have to suffer the predatory stares of men, who associate her with a prostitute. The effect can also be weight problems, as I had them: I wanted to be invisible, to disappear'.

The homosexual son of the protagonist of Mother (Playground), a novel by Goldie Goldbloom, has probably decided to disappear forever. The author manages to be both a Lgbtqia+ rights activist and an observant member of an American ultra-orthodox community of the Chassidic Jewish faith: 'It is not written anywhere in the sacred texts that you cannot love, that you are forbidden to love. As far as I am concerned, my religion gives me a lot of joy. There is joy in the bond with the community, with my family, in respecting our traditions, in celebrating holidays together. But there is also joy in seeking a better life for the young people'. Goldbloom has eight children and has taken care of the young people in her group: 'we cannot continue to inflict the harm on young people of not being able to express themselves'.

Not being able to express oneself is a detriment, not being able to express oneself is perhaps an even greater detriment: 'We are facing a very serious degradation of language, due to artificial intelligence and technology in general. Language marks the limits of our world, of our possible. And so if our language degrades, our world also shrinks,' said Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time. In search of a common paradise (Il Saggiatore). And, with our world, our democracies also shrink, we add, with George Orwell's 1984 in mind.