How do things inform our emotional and ethical belonging in the world, making meaningful lives? When do things cease to be at the mercy of humans and become partners of the creative expression of life? Bartoloni’s latest project, Objects in Italian Life and Culture, meets the reader in the magmatic field of making meaning between objects and individuals. It asks us to invert our perspective of the human by looking at the ‘thingness’ of life and its epistemological uniqueness. Whether explored through artefacts, media, or socio-economic performances, the nature of objects reveals a fluctuation between the symbolic and the material, the virtual and the real.

In his introduction, Bartoloni explores the ‘metamorphic changes’ that objects have undergone, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, due to urban transformations, economic changes and cultural paradigm shifts. Invested by the capitalist need for appropriation based on appearance and virtual possession, objects are predicated upon their immateriality rather than material experience. This epistemological turn constitutes the core of Bartoloni’s investigation of significant relations with things within the Italian cultural tradition.

Despite current vigorous interest in the nature of things in Italian studies (Bodei, Forgacs) and philosophy (Esposito), Bartoloni’s text is uniquely framed and original in its genre. It capitalises on object-oriented theory and speculative realism (Harman and Meillassoux), yet through a critical approach that includes also psychoanalysis, phenomenology and cultural studies. Bartoloni’s text focuses ‘not so much on the instrumental appropriations as on creative processes and modalities of life’ (p. 4). As critical frameworks, it also relies on Heidegger’s process of dwelling and on Freud’s notion of the ‘oceanic’ feeling of happiness. Bartoloni blends these notions in order to articulate how humans morph their understanding of the living and the world and reach ‘a feeling of sharing and co-belonging’ that reveals an innate sense of inclusivity and openness (p. 23).

In discussing the essence of meaningful places/lives in Chapter Two, the author gives the most striking image of an ambiguous relation between humans and things. He recalls both Benjamin’s figure of a flâneur, a nomadic and enduring symbol of disinterest that encounters the world in an ecstatic feeling of awe ‘caught by the sudden and unexpected, one could say, epiphanic meeting with things’ (p. 31) and the blasé attitude of indifference explored by Simmel, as the kin expression of the modern individual ‘whose essence consists in the blunting of discrimination’ (p. 32).

Organised in four clusters – the fictional, the migrant, the multicultural/transnational and the artificial – Bartoloni’s book follows paths of re-engagement with the world of objects, while often declaring their disavowal. A first step into the representation of modalities of (dis)association of the individual-object relation is introduced by looking at Svevo’s narrative of ordigni; Bartoloni then addresses Antonioni’s L’eclisse and Blow-Up, which blur the lines between the material and the human. The cluster on migration objects opens with a brief reflection on emigration from Italy to Australia. Here, the author examines the social and individual ‘buildings of meaning’ adopted by migrants to consolidate an intimacy with the past, a memory of their identity in their renegotiation and physical encounters with objects. In contrast to these emotional activities that feature a need of ‘extensive ego-feeling’, Bartoloni posits the failure of the Italian Forum in Sydney, ‘an imitation of the Italian square lifestyle’, to recapture an idealised Italian culture. The idealisation of Italy is also the core of the last chapter. The Sicilia Outlet Village – a re-proposition of a traditional Sicilian village – stands as a fascinating yet perturbing physical representation of a dematerialised bond between the human and the non-human world. Objects are treated as simple props in a hyper-real experience of imaginary landscapes, feelings, sounds, and sensoriality. The need for replicas of real life triggers continuous relational distortions and perversions that fuel the anaesthetisation of reality commanded by economic desires.

Through a well-informed theoretical agenda that shows ample knowledge of current critical debates, Bartoloni invites us to review the individual and social stratifications of values incorporated by objects. At times, the philosophical background may appear dense; nevertheless, it provides the reader with a context for further analysis. Perhaps, particularly in the sphere of migration, the analysis could be developed even further in relation to current migrant fluxes and ‘the making of’ new forms of social identities in urban contexts. Objects in Italian Life and Culture stimulates further analyses of objects and places in Italian critical studies.