The "Pharmakon" of Solitude: Toward a Semiotics of "Hikikomori"
Hikikomori are one of the emblems of contemporary solitude: young people who withdraw from social life for months or even years, confining themselves to their rooms and interrupting participation in social activities. First identified and widely studied in Japan, the phenomenon is now spreading across the globe, including Italy, where estimates suggest that around one hundred thousand young people may be involved.
Hikikomori are interpreted as the manifestation of a relational deficit or as a pathological form of isolation. This paper proposes to approach the phenomenon as a limit semiotic configuration through which the contemporary transformation of the relationship between solitude and community can be interrogated. The hikikomori retreat can thus be read as a reconfiguration of the semiotic conditions of presence to oneself and to others. The drastic reduction of interactions is compensated by the construction of highly regulated environments which function as semiotic niches characterized by predictability. Within these spaces, interaction does not disappear but is filtered and modulated. The technological environment therefore constitutes a condition of possibility for the phenomenon, providing the last fragile thread of access to the vulnerability of these adolescents. From this perspective, hikikomori solitude appears to oscillate between a defensive strategy for managing social anxiety and a toxic condition capable of eroding the very possibility of social existence.
Luigi LOBACCARO | Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna
Cycle of Seminars: “Solitude and Communion in Religion and Ethics“
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The speaker will connect remotely.
The event, organized by FBK’s Center for Religious Studies, will be held in Italian.
Registration by April 10, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. is required so as to arrange the connection.
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Image: AdobeStock_518968971
Guest Speakers
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Luigi Lobaccaro - Guest SpeakerDepartment of Philosophy, University of BolognaLuigi Lobaccaro is a Research Fellow (RTDa) at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bologna. His research focuses on interpretive semiotics, cognitive semiotics, 4E cognitive science, and psychopathology. In particular, his work investigates the interdisciplinary analysis of meaning-making processes in schizophrenia, including the study of schizophrenic language, the relationship between schizophrenic narratives and embodied experience, and the cognitive semiotics of delusions. These themes are explored in his monograph "Ai confini del senso", published by Quodlibet. He is the principal investigator of the national Young Researcher 2024 project MICA – Mental Illness, Creativity and Arts, which investigates the relationship between creativity and psychopathological deviations from a semiotic-cognitive perspective. He teaches Semiotics of Perception and the Body and Semiotics of Psychopathologies in the Master’s Degree Program in Semiotics at the University of Bologna.
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The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.