From LecceCronaca.it
June 6, 2023

Sergio Starace, of Lecce, professor of philosophy, essayist, militant environmentalist, musicologist, tireless social and cultural animator, died yesterday at the ominous outcome of cancer.

He was 70 years old.

In these hours there are numerous testimonies of esteem, affection, and participation posted on social media. Below is the remembrance sent to us by the FORUM AMBIENTE E SALUTE.

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For many years, his music often flooded Piazza Sant'Oronzo, and many other places where social mobilization was active and alive in the city and in Salento. The music of the beloved singer-songwriters of the cultural revolution, which Starace interpreted with mastery; as well as his own compositions, always inspired by the denunciation of the evils of the alienating, standardized society, victim of the social and political powers.

An anarchist, he could not help but distrust verticalization and centralization in every sector of society. The culture of dutiful "suspicion" of official truths translated into demystifying analyses.

His intellectual inspiration was Jungian psychology, the key to understanding and popularizing socio-cultural phenomena and dynamics. Since 1987, three volumes in particular ensued: " Contemporary Songwriters in the Light of Deep Psychology," "Anarchism and Deep Psychology," and "Reflection Rooms on Life and Death." His refined and clean prose, in which he expressed a sharpness, sometimes incomparable and with bold elaborations; but which nevertheless forced one to question, to investigate, to doubt, to look behind appearances and the obvious.

A philosophy and history teacher for a long time in Lecce's Liceo Palmieri, his lectures were always tools for stimulating and problematizing teaching content, in the light of students' psychological experiences and correlating them with the current social context and debate.

He was a protagonist of a mobilization spotlighted twenty-five years ago by the national media, in defense of the rights of separated fathers; in the forefront of movements denouncing wars , the result of imperialist aggressions perpetrated in recent decades; lately a promoter of a circle of reflection and reading. But his figure for decades has been connected to the more and more lively activism that developed in Salento, engaged in the defense of the territory from nefarious practices, in the denunciation of questionable and violent policies harmful to the Salento ecosystem.

At the same time, his proactive contribution was among the first to advocate and urge the establishment of a process and instrument of coordinated participation between institutions and civic movements; the process that led to the birth of the current Provincial Council for the Environment emerged.

Despite his serious visual impairment, he had a farsightedness of social dynamics, always oriented to peering beyond appearance, to investigate the depths. And to look and hope beyond the present, even in the regeneration of life, which was realized in the great forest, planted with his hands, for his own and the territory's well-being.

May the fronds of these trees echo the melody of your guitar and song.

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