'Futurism and the Body: Transcendence Aborted'. Referee for Body & Society, Sage, London.

Manuscript ID: B-11-055-BOD The text is good and original and clear enough. It succeeds in highlighting the Futurist project of creating a new art, without aiming at a new culture of knowledge. It also explains why Futurism is a form of art with evident political if not aesthetic limits and well focuses on the pre-imagination of what had to become the core elements of the cinema. Good points on the artificial optimism and aestheticized or sublimated treatment of violence, with the strategic scope of spectacularization. The portrait of an indestructible body, immune of emotions and with a mechanical and military destiny, is well treated even if could deserve an overview more sociologically in depth. The idea of soft fascism and incapacity to force the futurist ideology towards a revolutionary engagement made Futurism (fortunately) a semi-official avant-garde, that lets us think of (at least first) Futurism as of a remarkable even if contradictory season of the twentieth century avant-garde art.