Centre, habitat and the consumer fascism: an andresenian reading of The Cave, by José Saramago, in the light of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s corsair crit

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the consumer society, in the light of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s corsaircritique, as it is portrayed in the novel The Cave (2000), written by José Saramago. Starting from the notion of habitat, present in “Arte Poética I”, by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, we seek to examine the problematic relationship between the subject and the historical time after Carnation Revolution, whose  developments  subvert  the  expectation  of  democratic  reconstruction  and  contrast  with  the  Andresenian project of wholeness. The three intellectuals mobilized in this work identify with each other when they note the existence of a new form of power underway in (post-)modernity, whose Pasolinian examination in the 1970s highlights how this new power is not supported, as classical fascism, in the institutions of the Homeland, Family and Church, but it is an order that is more ferocious because, under the mask of tolerance, it imposes “hedonism” and “joie de vivre” (PASOLINI, 2020), just as is evident in Saramago’s end-of-century novel.