Culturalismo vs. lettura sintomatica. Post-ideologia e soggettivazione della storia

Abstract

The article analyses the displacement of Marxist symptomatic reading by contemporary culturalist approaches that prioritize ethical and identity-based critiques. Drawing on experiences in U.S. academia, it argues that Cultural Studies–shaped by the so-called French Theory–have detached cultural critique from its material-economic determinations, replacing structural analysis with the moral evaluation of texts and subjects. This “ethical turn” fosters a privatization of political agency, wherein self-care, identity performance, and micro-politics function as compensatory forms of resistance within an increasingly immutable public sphere. The result is a mode of culturalism that, while presenting itself as emancipatory, reproduces key logics of neoliberalism: individualization, self-commodification, and the dematerialization of ideology. The essay contends that such ethical-cultural politics ultimately mirror rather than challenge the structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism.