Caccia Selvaggia: Myth, Rites, and the Right in Carlo Ginzburg’s Storia Notturna

Carlo Ginzburg (b. 1939) is widely considered one of Europe’s leading historians. His masterpiece Storia notturna (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), widely praised for its extraordinary erudition and creativity, is now over three decades old but it continues to inspire controversy both for its method (fusing morphology with history) and for its engagement with the work of scholars of the political right. In this lengthy essay, we situate what we call Ginzburg’s “ethical turn” in the period when he was writing this book and grappling with the history of Eurasian myth. We argue that the central questions of Ginzburg’s work—dealing with the relationship of myth and history, and of popular and elite culture—may be fruitfully explored and better understood by reimagining a Storia notturna that never was, an historiographical road not taken, and comparing it to the Storia notturna that was published. Ultimately we suggest that, in this period, Ginzburg formulated a profound rejection of political correctness and a dismissal of moribund political labels and categories, committing himself instead to a profoundly ethical willingness to investigate anew historical questions deemed off-limits by the doctrinaire left and to reclaim these questions from the right. This humane and courageous method is increasingly a necessity today.