CONTRIBUTI / 3 / Donatella Nigro /
In this essay, the author examines the last, unfinished book by Ernesto De Martino, published in 1977 by Clara Gallini: The end of the world. Contribution to the analysis of cultural Apocalypses. Aim of this work was to investigate once again a problem who’s been crucial in the whole reflection of De Martino: the XX Century decadence of western culture, that is the crisis of Rationalism and Historismus, now originally interpretated as a form of Apocalypse, as the end of a cultural world. Through the analysis of an impressive number of philosophical, litterary, psychological, anthropological documents, De Martino tries to demonstrate that contemporary Apocalypse is very similar to so called psychopatological Apocalypse. Differently from other kinds of cultural representations of the end of the world, it appears in fact to be totally hopeless, being not followed by the creation of a new world.
