When I think of the boys I’ve met at the Beccaria over the years, I can’t help but acknowledge that they all lacked an “emotional syntax.” They were affected by the “emotional illiteracy” Umberto Galimberti talks about in his book “The Disturbing Guest. Nihilism and young people.” This condition seems to be affecting the age we live in, a period where love gets mixed up with pornography, material possessions are used to assess our value, and the virtual world overlaps with the real one. Juvenile detention centres are full of young people who are not able to “spell their emotions,” and this “emotional aphasia” is often mistaken for cognitive and/or behavioural deficiencies. Every young man is defined by a long list of shortcomings, such as “devoid of something,” or “lacking in something else.” If we do not allow these young people to make up for their deficiencies, if we do not provide them with the tools, they need to find a way of dealing with their emotions, thoughts and actions, when they come
out of prison, they will be no different than when they were sentenced.
Words are not enough. Words, as Galimberti highlights, are empty. It is time to act together.
This also means that we need to find meaning to inform our actions and take responsibility for our failures. We need to turn our words into something concrete, and Shakespeare is perfect for this. He can tell us how to understand and use what we have inside because, as the American critic Harold Bloom writes, “Shakespeare will continue to explain who we are, in part because he invented us.” He invented our emotions, or at least he named them.
(Giuseppe Scutellà)
