Pinocchio without ears

• Main Author: Simone di Biasio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2020-12-01
• Series: Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica
• Subjects: pinocchio; childhood; literature; ears; hearing; listening
• Online Access: https://rpd.unibo.it/article/view/11513

Everybody knows that the main feature of Pinocchio is not listening to advice (even less of the “father”), lying, “doing one’s own thing”, following senses and instinct, constantly chasing, like every child, the wonder, which is also the “discovery” of the distraction and, face to face with the same medal, of the lie. But there is one detail of Collodi’s original story that could explain this stubborn tendency of the puppet not to “listen” to adults and their world: Geppetto in Pinocchio did not carve his ears. A non-text that recalls interdisciplinary readings of the story, between art and pedagogy, psychology and anthropology. How can a child listen without ears? Yet Pinocchio hears, he hears loud: then there is a difference between hearing and listening. The article intends to shed light, keeping faith with Collodi’s original text, on the puppet's anatomical-craftsmanlike shortcomings, but above all conceptual, therefore physical and metaphysical, shortcomings that have made this universal history of listening education possible: the ears, but also the "maternal" home and, precisely, the absent motherhood like the ears.