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The topic of this TEDx event
is "heterotopia",

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although I don’t know how many speakers

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will explicitly talk
about heterotopias today.

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Thus, for the sake of clarity,

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I’ll start with a definition
of heterotopia,

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a personal definition, one that sounds
clear and sensible to me.

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A heterotopia is a subspace

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of the generic space we live in,

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a subspace even in a broader sense:

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for example, a subspace of the Web.

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A subspace where the rules
of the generic space --

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prohibitions, expectations, and so on --

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are overturned, modified,
simplified or mirrored,

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depending on the 
type of heterotopia.

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Now, let’s make an example
of heterotopia: carnival.

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Someone may call it a heterochronia --

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although I think that, after Einstein
time and space are one.

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The carnival is clearly a heterotopia,

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and has a feature
heterotopias typically share:

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it’s a "discharge" moment,

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a space where contradictions,

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instead of exploding
in a full-blown revolution,

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find their place in a contained,
socially accepted revolution,

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with well-defined temporal boundaries.

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This way, society prevents
revolutions and outbursts --

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and this is bad.

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Porn is also a heterotopia:

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when you visit a porn website,
you are warned.

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It’s a place where some rules

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are suspended, or reversed --

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on a porn website, for example,
you can see a girl

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in postures, attitudes, and behaviors

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you can hardly find on common websites;

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they're actually forbidden
everywhere else.

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Carnival also looks
like an upside-down world.

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A child, for example,

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is forbidden to dress up as Batman
and go to school.

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Porn is an upside-down world
as well, isn’t it?

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It embodies the same subversion
of usual relations

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that we can find in heterotopias.

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Alas, much like carnival,

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porn is also an outlet, and that’s bad.

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That’s bad because
it keeps contradictions,

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arising from how sex is treated
in the common space,

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from exploding.

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Therefore, when porn --

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like carnival -- stays
confined, delimited,

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it becomes a negative phenomenon.

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I believe that we should have the freedom
to dress like superheroes --

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I mean, social freedom --

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in any context, even when going to work,

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even if we hold a position of power.

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And yet, porn tends to trespass,
to invade the common space.

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Prominent examples are nudes
on ordinary gossip magazines,

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or sex scenes in art movies.

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Such trespassing of porn into common space

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is strongly opposed,

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for instance in social network’s rules.

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I’ve been told so often:

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“Ok, you work in porn.
Just don’t talk about it, shut up!”.

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I can’t even talk about porn per se.

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Among the opposers of porn's
trespassing into common space,

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there are feminists, catholics, muslims,

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but also intellectuals, atheists too,
progressives and conservatives,

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all united against porn invasion
of common space.

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In my opinion,

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porn's trespassing into public domain

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is a sign of progress,
for a very simple reason:

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it rubs the nose
into people's irrationality.

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An example: why shouldn’t a child
watch an intercourse scene

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projected on a giant screen

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in Piccadilly Circus in London,
or in Piazza del Popolo in Rome?

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What's wrong with that?

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The problem lays not only in the influence

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religions still have on people

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but mostly in current schizophrenias
between practice and reason --

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for example, when a couple
of atheist parents

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decides to baptize their child

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for the sake of tradition,
or just not to disappoint granny.

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Or still, in the USA,

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a parent that decides
to circumcise his own son --

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so we are talking about
a genital mutilation here --

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just because it’s always been like that.

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Someone will bring out
usual objections like,

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“Everybody is free to do
as they want or as they believe."

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But we are not.

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Because it’s actually legal

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to instill religious irrationalities
into children's minds,

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it’s legal to refuse to transfuse a child,

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maybe in the name of Geova,
and cause him the loss of a limb --

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it already happened.

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But it’s illegal to show a 13-year-old

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a PG-14 rated film,

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just because it shows
plenty of all-nude scenes.

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So, where is freedom here?

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The truth is we take freedom
away from rational people,

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to give it to irrational ones.

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Another example:
abortion is legal in Italy,

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yet most of the women
who want to have an abortion

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struggle to do it
in a public health facility

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because most gynecologists
are conscientious objectors,

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in such facilities.

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The truth is, freedom

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is never neutral to rationality --

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there is always a core of shared truths.

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So we must ask ourselves:
which freedom do we want?

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Do we want the freedom
invoked by religious leaders, popes,

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or do we want rational freedom?

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According to that relativist freedom,

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they can have their medieval parades,

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with people self-fustigating
in the streets,

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while I cannot freely walk naked.

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There is no symmetry in this freedom,

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in this acephalous relativism;

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there is only the desire
to protect irrationality,

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not to face our own contradictions.

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Today, two ways of thinking
seem to face each other:

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a strong, religious one;

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and a weak, secular one.

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I believe instead, that a strong,
rationalist approach should prevail,

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one that allows to show
a movie with nude scenes

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to a 13-year-old,

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but forbids to instill him with
religious irrationalities.

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(Applause)