





















































Editorial II – Governing Transitions


Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

2 
(2022) 

1-2

Transitions

Edited by Tommaso Sgarro

First Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives 9

Tommaso Sgarro
The Human “Historicity” as a Permanent Transition 13 
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría

Luis Roca Jusmet
François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life 27

Jordi Riba Miralles
The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis 37

Alessia Franco
For an Epistemology of Transition: Paul B. Preciado, 51 
Psychoanalysis and the Regime of Sexual Difference

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

5

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial II – Governing Transitions 67

Pierpaolo Limone - Maria Grazia Simone
Becoming Support Teachers at the University of Foggia 71 
During the Pandemic. An Exploratory Survey

Francesca Finestrone
Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion 85 
of Well-being

Gennaro Balzano - Vito Balzano
Educating for Transition in Work Contexts 101

Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace
The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood 111 
of Unaccompanied Minors

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

6

https://www.ledonline.it/elementa 


Editorial II

Governing Transitions
Tommaso Sgarro
Università degli Studi di Foggia (Italy)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-edi2
tommaso.sgarro@unifg.it

The idea of transition is accompanied by the idea of fragility. Transition as 
a passage from one stage to another, narrates something not yet defined, 
determined; it narrates the becoming of something into something other 
than itself. The questioning of identity realizes fragility in the transitional 
dynamic, and this fragility marks the very meaning of humanity and its 
history, which never remain in itself, but is in constant movement. This is 
the reason a transition paradigm cannot be constructed; rather, it would 
be appropriate to seek a privileged vantage point from which to observe 
the “making” of transitional processes. If, to do this it was once necessary 
to destabilize the theoretical foundation, it is now essential to produce a 
direct field observation of a restless object that is difficult to grasp. Thus, to 
research transition is to never really grasp it where it is, because by the time 
one tries to describe it, it has already become something else. 

Observing social changes, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, 
has become particularly complicated. The hyper-digitalization of social 
changes has accelerated transitional processes, and this has developed a kind 
of ideology of transition, as if it does not deal with dynamics, but is the very 
goal of processes – elusive by their very nature – dedicated to continuous 
and indefinite transition. It is undeniable that this phenomenon has been 
reinforced by the communicative fluidity generated by the development of 
new communication technologies. If from the 6th century B.C.E., with 
Parmenides, Western culture began to see, the deep sense of the truth 
behind the real in the idea of permanence and stability, today, transition 
is seen as the real plot behind events. It is not a dialectical process but 
rather, it is a process of indolence of thought that brings the assumptions of 
post-modernity to saturation. Being has become “in transition”, constant, 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

67

https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-edi2
mailto:tommaso.sgarro@unifg.it 


Tommaso Sgarro

continuous. While there is no doubt that post-modernity has had impor-
tant merits in deconstructing the ideological systems that weighed heavily 
on the history of the 20th century, today, this lack of reference points risks 
limiting the scope of any hermeneutic discourse, which is already outdated 
in the instant it is proposed. 

While one cannot return to the impetuous vision of truth and reality 
that underlies Western metaphysics, one cannot fail to become aware that 
a government of transition is required. Otherwise, the risk is the subsump-
tion of an eternal aimless transition as an affirmation of ontological fragility, 
resulting in confusion between weak and fragile thinking. A definitive and 
in a negative sense, subversion of the limits that post-modernity itself had 
set. On the contrary, thought is always performative by its very nature, 
not merely describing but always constructing an approach to reality; its 
fragility is therefore the mere result of a socio-historical dynamic. Today, 
therefore, one cannot speak of transition in the singular. De-mythologizing 
and de-ideologizing does not mean taking the question backwards; on the 
contrary, it means trying to prevent it from ending up in the dead end of 
paradigms, of dialectics, of historicism as an end in itself. Let us try then 
to turn the tables by dealing with transitions in the plural. Let us try, from 
reality, to reconstruct thinking that defines social practices which bring the 
problem into focus by making its contours clearer. Let us not read transi-
tions from the idea of transition, but by interrogating the subjectivities that 
are within transitional processes. 

In this respect, pedagogical-experimental inquiry allows us to sketch 
out and propose a method in the field, avoiding simplistic theorizing. 
Governing transitions means educating about them; it does not mean 
governing processes in a technocratic and universalistic sense, but rather, it 
is about learning to be able to navigate the dizzying flow of current social 
transitions. The overlap between transitions and the speed of social processes 
is in fact the clearest signal of how the issue risks slipping into a futurism 
that is never tame in the human spirit, but always a dangerous harbinger 
of authoritarian drifts, an assumption of ideological risk. Governing transi-
tions means instead constructing an autocratic discourse, which starts from 
the care of the self, of subjectivities, as a prerequisite for the care of the We, 
of the human being in its transition within its own community dimension 
before its social dimension. It is a matter of disabling possible new power 
devices, hidden behind a narrative of transition that degenerates into 
rhetoric. To do this requires, as Edgar Morin wrote: “striving to think well, 
making ourselves capable of elaborating and using strategies, and, finally, 
making our bets with all consciousness”. Some of these bets are addressed 
in the second volume of this issue of Elementa in Transitions. 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

68



Editorial II – Governing Transitions

Pierpaolo Limone and Maria Grazia Simone, in the essay Specializing 
Online During the Pandemic: An Exploratory Survey on Support Teachers in 
the Initial Training Phase take a close look at the new figure of the support 
teacher in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic; they also delve into the 
training needs and critical issues related to their initial training. The Italian 
law 107 of 2015 specifically defines the process of school inclusion of 
students with disabilities in Italy by redefining the role of support teachers. 
The two authors analyze data from an exploratory analysis of tests admin-
istered to participants in the fifth cycle of the TFA (Tirocinio Formativo 
Attivo) at the University of Foggia. In particular, the field analysis reveals 
the need to use technologies, factors accelerating transitional processes, 
as cultural mediators capable of affecting learning processes and refining 
teaching methods. In this sense, governing transitions means governing 
educational processes from the structural changes of digital pedagogy, one 
of the most evident effects of the post-pandemic phase.

Francesca Finestrone, starts from the ancestral relationship that exists 
between music and education to analyze current trends that bring together 
the therapeutic and rehabilitative value of music within the sphere of 
digital transition and educational programming. In Music: For a Sustainable 
Community and the Promotion of Well-being, the prerequisites of the transi-
tion to special education are defined, which in the interaction of technology, 
music, and education build new and effective practices to help pupils with 
special educational needs. These move from recognizing the role of tech-
nology in a proactive sense and rejecting its simplistic demonization. 
Gennaro Balzano and Vito Balzano reckon with the transitions of the 
world of work in the face of the digital work wagers developed during the 
pandemic phase. What emerges from the reconstruction of Educating for 
Transitions in Work Contexts is that the digitization of work processes was 
a process that was already in place and that the pandemic has only accel-
erated this. This would confirm the overlap between transition and the 
speed of socio-work transformation processes within a transitional dimen-
sion ideologically set by the current phase of reorganization of the liberalist 
economic system. Against this drift, an alternative form of “permanence”, 
understood as continuity of the educational process, is defined. This latter 
goes on to coincide with the entire lifetime of the human being, is not 
aimed at the mere production cycle, and allows a rethink of work as a tool 
and not as an end.

Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace, on the other hand, addresses the 
transition par excellence, that of the phenomenon of migration, not in an 

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

69



Tommaso Sgarro

aseptic way but by delving into the specific case of unaccompanied minors 
in their personal transition to adulthood. What emerges is a narrative 
about “transitions in transition”, capable of addressing the issue of self-
identity from personal experience. In The Future We Want: The Transition 
to Adulthood of Unaccompanied Minors, the development of the migrant 
person, as it intertwines with structural factors of a socio-political nature 
that interact and mark the transition to adulthood is reconstructed with a 
certain abundance of references and data.

Thus, training processes are not neutral, but they respond to inputs from 
socio-historical changes, modifying the way in which human beings 
think and deal with reality. The plural declension of transitional processes 
helps to understand their complexity, and their irreducibility to dialec-
tical dynamics. Transition must be read within the rhetorical device of 
the precise phase that produces it. Transitions, on the other hand, speak 
of human beings and their passage through history. The recent Russian-
Ukrainian crisis, shows that it is not over, that it is changing, in transition, 
and that, however, there is no single point of arrival, contrary to the belief 
of Francis Fukuyama (The end of history and the last man, 1992). Seriously 
considering transition as transitions is the approach that we have tried to 
bring into play in the pages of this issue of Elementa. As mentioned above, 
this is an outline, a starting point, without any claim to great detail or 
peremptoriness: one must always, however, start somewhere. 

Copyright (©) 2022 Tommaso Sgarro 
Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 
 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to cite this paper:
Sgarro, T. (2022). Editorial II – Governing transitions. Elementa. Intersections between 
Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 2(1-2), 67-70. doi: https://dx.doi.
org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-edi2

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 2 (2022) 1-2 
https://www.ledonline.it/elementa - Online ISSN 2785-4426 - Print ISSN 2785-4558

70

https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-edi2
https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-edi2

	Elementa_2-2022-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey


	Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey





