Controversy arose at the ‘Più Libri Più Liberi’ Book Fair due to the Invited Philosopher

The controversy surrounding the small and medium-sized publishing fair Più Libri Più Liberi does not end with the invitation of the philosopher Leonardo Caffo, who is on trial for ill-treatment and injury to his former partner. After several days of consideration, Zerocalcare announced today that it has canceled the editorial meeting with program curator Chiara Valerio scheduled for December 6th. The cartoonist will continue to be at the fair, which will be held at Nuvola dell between December 4-8. ‘Eur is in Rome for the highly anticipated book signing, which has now become a tradition. “To leave nothing unsaid: It seemed clearly inappropriate to invite a man accused of violence against his partner (I must admit, I didn’t even know who he was) to a fair dedicated to Giulia Cecchettin,” Zerocalcare says in a long story on its Instagram profile. Philosopher Leonardo Caffo, who was on trial for mistreatment, withdrew from ‘Più Libri Più Liberi’ following controversy over his involvement. Announcement made on Instagram: Bao Publishing, his publisher, which is in line with the cartoonist, also canceled all events but canceled his presence with his stand. In a post on IG, the publishing house explains: ‘We will be at Più Libri Più Liberi to fulfill a promise we made with our readers, our writers, but we have decided to cancel our participation in any internal events at the fair.’ ‘While respecting the choices of others, it is very important for us to signal detachment and detachment from a programming and communication style that is not our own,’ Bao adds. Leonardo Caffo’s withdrawal from the fair became a lawsuit, and they even apologized to the organizers and Chiara Valerio, who made some rooms available ‘for anti-violence centres, associations, groups and individuals who wish to contribute’. Arguing against gender-based violence has done no good. Più libri più liberi returns to Nuvola from December 4 to 8: more than six hundred events and authors from all over the world. Following the withdrawal of authors such as Fumettibrutti, the stage name of Chiara Valerio Josephine Yole Signorelli, and the journalist and writer Giulia Siviero, came Marco Rech, also known as Zerocalcare, who declared that his meeting with Chiara Valerio was “objectively impossible to realize”. ‘ ‘It’s not that I think he’s a pariah, or that you can’t talk to him even if I think he’s wrong; Because it seems impossible to ignore this issue and talk about publishing as if nothing had happened; and it also seems strange to think that a man should have a meeting explaining to a woman how to behave in terms of feminism.’ In his long reflection, the cartoonist says that invoking ‘guarantee’ seems wrong and that ‘literally everything was wrong, at least until the final apology message’. Zerocalcare also credits the program curator: ‘Knowing Chiara Valerio, I believe that she is impressed not by anything else but by her fidelity to a principle; But when what we do becomes so susceptible to instrumentalization, when we become useful to the articles of La Verità, when our enemies take us as symbols, it is time to stop and think, even if we mean well,’ he says. There are also references to his previous choices not to participate in the Turin Book Fair and Lucca Comics. According to Zerocalcare, giving up a fair is ‘a means of pressure to achieve a goal; It is a bet that is sometimes won (allowing me to withdraw from the Casapound Book Fair and return) and sometimes lost (Israeli sponsorship remaining in Lucca). comics that left me out),’ he explains, bringing us back to these final seasons of Salons, Fairs and Book Fairs, inevitably accompanied by controversy. While Chiara Valerio remains silent for now, writer Paolo Di Paolo does not hesitate to describe the treatment of the program curator as a ‘lynching’ in his Facebook post and wonders: ‘Even if the person wants to oppose a wrong choice or approve a communication, it is a procedural error, it is more effective to be present than to leave the field wouldn’t it be? In the absence of the wrong guest, why not do this in the case of gender-based violence, patriarchy, distortion of public discourse, when we can use all the spaces to discuss what is going on?’