Call for papers | B@belonline

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Primo Levi: Ethics and Matter”
Edited by Tamara Tagliacozzo and Martina Marinacci

«Too much a chemist and a chemist for too long to consider myself a real man of letters; yet too distracted by the vari-coloured, tragic or strange landscape to feel a chemist in every fibre»: These are the words of Primo Levi from Other people’s trades, which bear witness to the dual nature of the chemist-writer-witness, capable of embodying two distinct identities and multiple intersections: chemistry and writing, ethics and matter. This issue of “B@belonline” invites scholars to reflect on this plurality of interests and on the shared and convergent dispositions of the chemist that flow into the writer’s mindset, and vice versa. Primo Levi possessed a genuine vocation: the construction of bridges between different disciplines, the ability to unite scientific and humanistic culture, and to bridge the “chasm” that has long divided — and continues to divide — them. Overcoming the incompatibility between the two cultures constituted the central aim of the Turin-born writer, giving rise to an ethical reflection in which the materiality of experience becomes the source of a true “philosophical anthropology” (O. Ombrosi, L’antropologia filosofica di Primo Levi in Giacobbe e l’angelo. Figure ebraiche della modernità, 2012).
Primo Levi’s experience is deeply connected to the practicality and concreteness of matter, yet what forms does such concreteness assume? In what ways can philosophy investigate the relationship between ethics and matter? Despite the fracture that gives rise to the figure of the “centaur,” for Levi the act of writing remains profoundly linked to the chemical concept of “transformation”:
«Writing is a way of ‘producing’, indeed a process of transformation: the writer transforms his experiences into a form that is accessible and attractive to the ‘customer’ who will be the reader. The experiences (in the broad sense: life experiences) are therefore raw material: the writer who lacks tem works in a void, he thinks he’s writing but his pages are empty. Now, the things I have seen, experienced, and done during my preceding incarnation are today for me as a writer a precious source of raw materials, of events to narrate, and not only events: also of those fundamental emotions which are one’s way of measuring oneself against mattter (an impartial, imperturbable, but extremely harsh judge: if one makes a mistake, one is pitilessly punished) and thus of winning and losing.» (Primo Levi, Other people’s trades, Penguin Group, London, 1989, pp. 174-175).

The present call for papers is intended to investigate the many dimensions of such transformation, probing its possible meanings and exploring the modes and forms through which the “fundamental emotion” of confronting matter leads human beings to engage with their own nature. In his works, Primo Levi, like a “craftsman of time,” transcribes experiential facts and events, translating them into an ethics of resistance (M. Giuliani, Per un’etica della resistenza. Rileggere Primo Levi, 2015).
The theme of materiality is also reflected in other “fantabiological” works that today may be associated with the genre of science fiction, such as the short-story collections Flaw of Form and Natural Histories in which the relationship between the human, the non-human, and the inhuman can be explored.

We invite contributors, given the breadth of possible approaches, to respond to this call by engaging with one of the following thematic areas, which are not to be considered binding or exhaustive:

Matter as a narrative and philosophical category in Primo Levi’s work
Primo Levi between philosophy of technology and an ethics of responsibility in relation to chemistry and the empirical sciences
The relationship between matter and memory, Judaism, Jewish ethics, racism in Primo Levi
Ecology, anthropology, environment, and materiality in Primo Levi’s thought
Primo Levi as anthropologist and ethologist; Primo Levi and Charles Darwin
Primo Levi and Franz Kafka; mythological figures and the rewriting of myth

General information – Timeline:

By 15 September 2026, authors are requested to submit an abstract of up to 1,500 characters. Abstracts should be sent by email to: tamara.tagliacozzo@uniroma3.it; martina.marinacci@uniroma3.it
By 30 September 2026, notification of acceptance/rejection of abstracts will be sent via email
By 30 January 2027, full papers must be submitted via email; manuscripts should not exceed 30,000 characters (including spaces). Contributions must follow the journal’s editorial guidelines (ITA/ENG) and will be subject to double-blind peer review
The publication of the issue is scheduled for November 2027

Manuscripts must be submitted in Word format and include the author’s first name, surname, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and email address.