This work has had a long gestation period, going back to my first efforts in 2011 to get a grip on Levi’s uses of metaphors of infantile relationship to maternal presence in his science fiction stories. Those efforts eventually resulted in a piece published under the title, “The Evil Wet Nurse: Preoedipal Development and Primo Levi’s Science Fiction,” in the Sherry Gin and Michael G. Cornelius co-edited volume, The Sex Is Out of This World (2012). That piece, significantly augmented with new material, became chapter three of this book. My thanks to McFarland & Company, Inc, for permission to re-use this chapter. Thanks are also due to Sage Publishing and the editors of Forum Italicum for allowing me to use my article, “Wartime Resistance and Republican Political Agency in Primo Levi’s Partisan Novel,” as the basis for a greatly expanded analysis of the republican dimensions of Levi’s writings in chapter four of this work.
Translations of all direct quotations from four of the Primo Levi texts used in this book—Se non ora, quando? (published in English under the title, If Not Now, When?), Se questo è un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz), Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table), and L’altrui mestiere (Other People’s Trades)—are my own. For that reason, the parenthetical citations that follow quotations of these works will refer to the Italian editions. All other quotations of Levi are taken from US editions of his works, whose titles are used in the relevant parenthetical citations. For the convenience of American readers, when I discuss any of Levi’s major works, I refer to them by their US edition titles. Because US editions of his short science fiction pieces mash together somewhat haphazardly stories that were originally published in Storie naturali (1966) and Vizio di forma (1971), I refer to the Italian editions in my argument while utilizing quotations from the US editions in the parenthetical references.
In spring 2017, I had the benefit of an educational leave from my teaching responsibilities in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Georgia Southern University to complete my book manuscript. I thank my department chair, Dr. Barry Balleck, and his administrative superiors up the ladder for approving my application. I am also grateful to my department colleagues for taking up the teaching slack during the period of time I was on leave. Particular thanks are due to my political theory colleague of many years, Dr. Steve Engel, who agreed to cover the department’s political theory offering that semester while ably continuing his directorship of Georgia Southern University’s Honors Program. My thoughts on Levi’s concerns with agency were sharpened and deepened as a result of the discussions of Levi, Machiavelli, and Lina Wertmüller that took place with Georgia Southern political science majors around the table over the years in my senior seminar course on Italian thought and film.
In the course of the search for a university press willing to publish my Levi book manuscript, I benefitted from the helpful advice of Dr. Martin Johnson, award-winning Lincoln scholar and, formerly, the editor who acquired my book on Hannah Arendt and the politics of tragedy for Northern Illinois University Press. I am also grateful to Dr. Anthony Tamburri, editor of the Italian Studies series at Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, for seeing merit in my manuscript, and to Dr. Harry Keyishian, Director of Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, for ushering the manuscript through the approval process. Zachary Nycum provided necessary guidance as to the ins and outs of publishing with Rowman & Littlefield, for which I am also grateful.
During the time that I have engaged seriously with Levi’s work, both of my Italian-born parents passed away, Filomena, in 2011, and Costantino, in 2015. I remember with great fondness and gratitude the efforts they made during my childhood to foster in me and my brothers a sense of connection to their extended families in Abruzzo and in Calabria, respectively. As a result of periodic trips to their hometowns and interactions with the many extended family members who migrated back and forth between the United States and Italy as economic opportunity ebbed and flowed, as well as exposure to my mother’s abiding love of Italian opera and my father’s lifelong passion for Italian soccer, I came to feel Italian culture as a vital presence in my life. With the passing of my parents and with the ongoing losses among the older generations of relatives in Italy, that presence has become increasingly attenuated. While this book project originated and developed in response to academic interests and theoretical concerns, its significance to me is personal as well as intellectual. I hope that, in addition to being of scholarly value in the fields of Italian studies and political theory, it also contributes in some small way to the culture that helped form me.