Emilio Zuccarini’s culturological, epistemological and aesthetic hypotheses

Abstract

Emilio Zuccarini (Lucera, Foggia 1859-Buenos Aires 1934) was a prominent Italian
journalist in Buenos Aires. A man of great erudition and polemic spirit, he wrote essays on
various topics of Italian culture, classical and contemporary literature and history. He is
considered a marginal author despite having engaged in important polemics and his ideas
remain largely unexplored. We postulate that his essays can be read as fragments of an
?hypothetical? larger research project aimed at understanding the particular situation of the
Italian diaspora and its historical context, as well as its artistic and scientific strength. The aim
of this paper is to study three of Zuccarini's contributions in order to highlight his hypothesis
about Argentine culture, the history of science and Italian literature respectively, and to find
common theoretical elements that allow us to sustain an interpretation of his ideas and ethical
positions. In order to do this, we propose a metalinguistic translation of some of the problems
raised into the terminology of the semiotics of culture and Gramscian theory of the
organisation of culture. We conclude that Zuccarini’s thoughts are characterised by a strong
ethical-political commitment, a defense of positivist ideas, an agonistic conception of culture
and an alternative position to integrist and catholic nationalism.