Edition: 2025
Pages: 96
Series: IR/L
ISBN: 9788858159668
Pages: 96
Series: IR/L
ISBN: 9788858159668
The Steel Porcupine. The West's Final Act
RIGHTS SOLD TO:
Payrossa Verlag (German)
With his trademark cutting style, Luciano Canfora dismantles the rhetoric of values and exposes the reality of an armed system of power. A sharp, incisive indictment of the myths of the West and its self-congratulatory illusions.
From NATO’s birth to today, Canfora exposes the West as a civilization built on power, propaganda, and military might. To maintain unity and dominance, it has always needed enemies, from revolutionary France to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and today’s shifting adversaries, while masking its actions behind ideals like “freedom” and “democracy.” The West is not monolithic: at least two “Wests” exist in persistent tension, between European powers and North America. Historical narratives, from classical Greece’s construction of “barbarians” to the overlooked Byzantine millennium, have reinforced the illusion of supremacy, while military interventions and economic exploitation, from Congo to Korea, have shown the true face of its power. In this short, dense, and razor-sharp work, Canfora presents the West like a “steel porcupine,” bracing itself against a world that is no longer willing to submit.
The author
Luciano Canfora
Luciano Canfora, historian of the ancient world and a philologist, is one of Italy’s foremost living intellectuals. Professor emeritus of Greek and Latin philology at the University of Bari, he is a member of the “Institute for the classical tradition” in Boston, of the “Fondazione Istituto Gramsci” in Rome, and directs the journal Quaderni di storia. His numerous studies, translated worldwide, are characterized by a multidisciplinary approach and a broad field of research. Among his most recent publications: Fermare l’odio; La metamorfosi; Il tesoro degli Ebrei. Roma e Gerusalemme; La democrazia dei signori; Catilina. Una rivoluzione mancata; La grande Guerra del Peloponneso.
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