Il trono è ancora vuoto. Retoriche della violenza e strategie della gerarchia tra potere mediatico, politico e accademico

The Throne Is Still Empty. Rhetorics of Violence and Strategies of Hierarchy Between Media, Political and Academic Power This article discusses to what extent personal conflict should be politically interpreted against the background of general principles (civic conscience, civilisation, constitutional principles) even when in fact it is motivated by reasons of a very small interpersonal scale. The hypothesis put forward is that the ‘structural’ level of principles is in fact not only necessary to justify local conflict, but comes to life in its essence precisely from the smallness of local conflicts, which would otherwise have no moral reason to exist. On the basis of an autobiographical experience, the author sheds light on the fact that the media power of a journalist, the political power of a senator of the Republic and the academic power of a full professor can only legitimise themselves as Power in their ability to transvalue the local into the general, i.e. the quarrel between human beings (in this case, and not by chance, all men) in a struggle around some structural principles held sacred. The effective power of communication, politics and academia thus becomes largely the capacity to be publicly acknowledged as such even when it proves to be in fact powerless, that is, it falls short from pursuing the sacred principles by which it would be motivated.