Giustizia e ‘territorio’. I ‘fondamenti prepolitici’ dei sistemi giuridici dal romanzo popolare ottocentesco all’epoca ‘multiculturale´

[Autom. eng. transl.] One of the essential elements for deeming a state to exist, at least in traditional legal settings, is the territory, a geographical space within which sovereignty is exercised. Entry into a territory brings each individual into contact not only with a specific legal order, but also with specific values, which form the basis of a culture and allow the formation of personal identity. The latter can be considered as the result, the 'inner implication' in the individual of the continuous relationship with his own cultural environment. However, in the contemporary European context, on the one hand, there is an increasingly strong cultural inhomogeneity dependent, according to some, on the lack of 'common roots' or of the value systems of legal systems. On the other hand, European national cultures have to deal with immigrant cultures. This apparent fluidity of the boundaries seems to ensure that in both cases there is no 'territory', to be understood as an expression of a specific cultural and value heritage, in this European case. Paradoxically, it is clear that, in the era in which the need for confrontation between diversity is felt most, some social groups are unable to express a precise set of values, with the effect of hindering every multicultural policy, if it is true that only starting from the conflictual relationship between cultures can lead to identifying common points and creating value sharing. The contribution aims to identify, thanks to some hints given by nineteenth-century popular literature, what may be the pre-political foundations of contemporary European democratic systems that are confronted every day with multiculturalism.