It is a few months now that I teach at the Architecture Faculty of La Sapienza University, in Rome, the ”fabulous” Valle Giulia. And so far, you may well object, there is nothing really special about it. Except that I teach “Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes”, namely something that is not strictly related to architecture: indeed, it isn’t that difficult to explain how buildings “talk”, are part of a communication code, directly recall a certain world-view, etc. But in fact, not being an architect, having approximately 500 students, most of whom first-year freshers under twenty, starting out with a shred of radio and television renown… all this soon led me to talk to them in a different manner compared to what I could have possibly expected. I gradually got rid of any pseudo-educational tinsel, I didn’t “act” the professor, but, in line with the very fine semantic and existential distinction that Anglo-Saxons literally make, I “have been” and “am” the professor. I reckon it works, because the lecture hall is always full, even though attendance is not compulsory, and despite the initial difficulties that these young people also have, being used to having to “play” the students and expecting the opposite party to “play” the role of the professor. To cut a long story short: nobody play-acts all that much, communication flows freely, method is granted by a course on Communication Theory, animation is achieved through impromptu associations of ideas. It requires more effort, but even though unconventionally, it awakens their awareness. The course was promptly renamed “Self-Defence”… from media corruption, first of all, and the students are learning to protect themselves and decode messages. I’ll provide an example, amongst the many cases of mechanism deconstruction. During the week of the judgment of first instance for the Novi Ligure massacre committed by the two minors, Erika and Omar, there had been a lot of television fuss which had squeezed the story of the alleged new boyfriend of Erika, a certain Mario, dry. He, who had made the rounds of the media as a Big Brother hero, TV networks that contended for him by paying through the nose for him. All this on the judicial tracks of a tragedy which had, from the very beginning, gone through various stages of horror: that of the crime news, that of the accusations (“it was the Albanians”), that of the sigh of relief by the fellow townsmen (“thank God, it wasn’t the Albanians, it was only the daughter and her boyfriend”)… But come on, you know what we are talking about. A lot of arguments because state television (please refer to the canon) had invited this Mario first to “Domenica in”, where he was interviewed by Mara Venier, and then to “Porta a Porta”, interviewed by Bruno Vespa. My “self-defence” lecture consisted in getting the students to listen, mind you, to “listen” (only audio, no video), to the two interviews, one after the other. The students gradually started to rationalize: quite true, except for negligible differences, they seemed exactly the same thing; the words, even the tones where alike. So why had they seemed different, extracted from their specific ‘radio’ essence, so to speak, that of words, and assimilated within the context of two programmes that are apparently so different? Precisely because the premise, the feeling, the halo, the prejudice granted Mara Venier a housewife’s aura, and Bruno Vespa that of an authoritative journalist. But in substance the similarities, that is the search for audience within the usual market, were much stronger than the differences. And anyway, the whole thing was in both cases wrapped up in the same television medium. The students listened, made comments, discussed and agreed. So you see how, from a simple course, meant to keep students’ mind alert, even though ignorant in a technical sense (nobody ever seems to know anything), but lively and open, thank God, as any other student generation of the past, despite the many differences, what can materialise, in “self-defence”…

(trad. Interpres sas - Giussano)