Introduzione

In the 21st century, humanity is facing new, unexpected challenges. The nature / culture gap is exacerbated by the wounds inflicted by people living in megacities, where the most advanced technology dominates and the social Unthought floats as dematerialised waste and undigested debris adrift in the WWW. If it is legitimate to speak of “technocene”, what role does culture play in an era in which the divide between the humanities and the sciences is supposed to be bridged by a superior, all-embracing notion of complexity? Is it possible to face the process of globalisation without succumbing to the logic of a market that is increasingly wildly liberistic and careless of the living, if not considered as consumer and surrogate? What role do literature and the poetic word play in the contemporary globalised landscape from a European perspective? In the era of 4ECognition are the humanities still able to concern themselves with human beings?