Cicloni, spazzole e robot. Dallo strumento all’ibrido (appassionato)

Abstract

The world of clean is a composite universe of rules and practices, tools and habits, human and nonhuman actors, through which cultures and communities define and concretize the relationship with the dirty and the impure, with the other and with the toxic, with disease and with health. Like so many other forms of relationship with the world, those that concern the way we deal with and realize what is understood as mundane, decent, orderly, are bearers of broader cultural, social, spiritual meanings. As Douglas (1966) writes, the search for order is a search for purity, dirt is a matter of out-of-place, therefore to clean is to put order, that is, to reflect the symbolic order that underlies each culture. And it is not just a prerogative of primitive cultures, nor is the symbolism of the pure and clean is related only to the religious and spiritual universe, because, as Douglas rightly argues, even in contemporary cultures deeply imbued with scientism the rules of hygiene and the way we put it in practice conceal a deep semantic substratum of an equally effective symbolism.