Three years have passed since that August 10th when Michela Murgia passed away, aged just 51, after having also transformed her own illness into a public act of clarity and collective care. Since then, Italy has continued to discuss inclusive language, gender violence, non-traditional families, authoritarian tendencies: exactly the terrain on which Murgia had dug for years, often alone, often against the grain. It is no coincidence that his name continually returns in public debate: what is missing is his ability to dismantle a cliché in three sentences, his refusal to simplify, his way of transforming anger into organized thought instead of noise.
Rereading it today is not a nostalgic exercise. It is a necessary act, because many of the battles she named first – on the power of words, on the thin line between populism and fascism, on the right of women to exist without asking permission – are still open, and perhaps more urgent than three years ago. Here are eight of her most powerful reflections on society, chosen to remember not the writer she was, but the thinking that continues to work among us.
On fascism, which is not measured by consensus
In the essay Instructions for becoming fascists (2018) Murgia overturned the common way of evaluating a government. The real indicator, he wrote, is not how many people support him, but “the possibility of exercising dissent”.
A democracy is recognized by how it treats those who contest it, not by those who applaud it: a simple, and therefore uncomfortable, criterion, which remains its most cited political legacy.
On language as an infrastructure of power
Murgia was among the clearest voices in saying that grammar is never neutral. Language is a cultural infrastructure that reproduces power relations, he argued, explaining why the battle over overextended masculine or feminine professional titles was not “a question of form”, but a map of who society considers legitimate to speak.
On sincerity as an alibi
Against the rhetoric of “I say what I think”, Murgia warned against those who mistake a special distrust – his own – for those who are pleased to always say what they think, remembering that sincerity is often just the inability to control thoughts, not a virtue. In an age of instant opinions on social media, it is a warning that is more valid today than when he wrote it.
On ignorance that has become comfortable
In a sharp reflection on the crisis of school and the authority of knowledge, he observed that in a society where ignorance is no longer a defect, teaching is no longer a virtue. A merciless diagnosis on the way in which, today, competence and experience are often derided rather than recognized.
On the death that society chooses not to see
As a scholar of cultural representations, Murgia noted how a significant part of our imagination is played on the representation of death, and also on its lack of representation: we only stage it in certain forms, and exclude all the others. A thought that she herself made concrete, publicly describing her terminal illness to restore dignity to an experience that society prefers to hide.
In her last interviews, having been ill for some time, she said one of the most quoted phrases of recent years: “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m fifty years old, but I’ve lived ten lives.” It’s not just a personal confession: it’s a statement about what it means to live fully in a society that often measures the value of a life by its length, not its intensity.
On inheritance that is not biological
Without children of his own, Murgia publicly redefined the concept of legacy, speaking of a legacy to leave made up of what one knows how to do, what one has seen, what one has learned – a heritage that, he said, would go “to other people’s children, if there is anyone who wants to learn”. A vision of community and transmission of knowledge that goes beyond blood ties, consistent with his idea of ”queer family”.
On how she wants to be remembered
Aware of his imminent end, and of how divisive his public image had long been, he left a statement that today sounds like a moral testament: “Remember me as you like,” he said, claiming that he had never played a part to please someone. In a time in which the public image is a daily commodity, it is an invitation to remain consistent with oneself even at the cost of unpopularity.
