Silvia Pierosara

The aim of this contribution is to critically engage with the ricoeurian reading of the topic of recognition in the Homeric poem Odyssey. The hypothesis presented here is that the ricoeurian reading shows only one side of the coin, since it is almost solely focused on the recognition received by Ulysses when he comes back to Ithaca incognito. Ricoeur stresses the unilaterality of recognition, which is only directed to re‑establish Ulysses’ power as king. Being recognized as the king of Ithaca does not imply, so Ricoeur’s argument goes, to recognize those who are subjected to him, and is a mere way of exhibiting power. But there is another possible reading of the scenes of recognition in the Odyssey, even if Ricoeur does not take them into account. Indeed, another moment of the recognition story can be found in the Isle of the Phaeacians, and it cannot be traced back to the “will to power”, but, rather, to Ulysses’s fragility. When Demodocus, the poet at the court of the king Alcinoos, starts singing the story of the famous hero Ulysses, who is there incognito, Ulysses cannot hold back his tears, and in the end he discloses his own identity. Here, Ulysses does not look for recognition, instead recognition is granted to him in an unexpected way. This act of recognition reveals all the fragility of the hero, who discovers himself in the words of others, and understands that he depends upon them to be, to exist, and, in the end, to come back home. This sort of “recognition by fragility” is possible due to a narrative dimension where Ulysses is hosted, and whose configurative and refigurative power makes the hero able to name his feeling as a feeling of “nostalgia”.

This article tries to shed light on the difference between human autonomy and AI-driven machine autonomy. The breadth of the studies concerning this topic is constantly increasing, and for this reason, this discussion is very narrow and limited in its extent. Indeed, its hypothesis is that it is possible to distinguish two kinds of autonomy by analysing the way humans and robots narrate stories and the types of stories that, respectively, result from their capability of narrating stories on their own. To approach the question of autonomy and its different interpretations in robots and humans, using narratives and stories as a lens, I proceed through four steps. First, I provide a brief summary concerning the state of the art with regard to issues concerning autonomy and AI. Second, I focus on specific issues concerning AI that are applied to storytelling. Third, I progressively approach narrative autonomy through what could seem a useless digression by addressing the problem of human creativity in relation to machine creativity. Fourth, I hypothesize a radical difference between narrative autonomy—which is proper to humans—and storytelling capability, which can be observed in both humans and machines.

This contribution explores a case study of a marginalized suburb in Italy called ‘Hotel House’ from three angles. First, I look at the historical and physical features of this particular building, which functions as a vertical multicultural neighbourhood. Second, I examine the paradoxical nature of this building type, which is exceedingly rare in Italy and Europe, in relation to visibility and the lack of social and public relationships. Third, the focus shifts to the social relationships that have emerged within the building over the years, together with their ethical and normative import and implications. The discussion in this final section is facilitated by two concepts: ‘forms of life’ and immanent critique.

This paper demonstrates an implicit connection between narrativity and recognition in the work of Paul Ricœur. This view is developed in three steps. First, it shows that the subject who calls for recognition demands that his or her own narrative be recognized. In order to be recognized, a story must be measured with history , particularly that of the victims. Second, from this perspective, the role of collective narratives is fundamental, because they represent the possibility to connect the intrinsic teleology of every human being to the collective attribution of significance. Finally, with the help of a little known essay by Ricœur, the metaphorical power of narrativity to configure meaning will be compared to the power of architecture to construct and to organize space. Both these fields give stories visibility and an ability to be recognized. &nbsp