Le condizioni culturali della resilienza: tempo, corpo e spazio

The word ‘resilience’ is successfully embraced in the public debate because it incorporates meanings suitable to describe an existential condition and a suggestion on how to face the future in the era of structural uncertainty. What is it about the metaphorical apparatus of resilience that seduces the contemporary imaginary? What socio-cultural elements compose such valuable meanings that the European Union, for example, is willing to fund a ‘resilience device’? To find out, the essay proposes the breakdown of the construct along the lines of three of the ‘conditions’ that the sociology of culture identifies as defining a social environment: time, space and body. The social-theoretical investigation thus makes it possible to identify in the awareness of vulnerability and in the positive value of adaptation the pivotal elements of a keyword poised between neoliberal self-activation and the point of refoundation of the social bond