Adriana Cavarero – Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona – has published her latest work, “Il canto delle sirene” (The Song of the Sirens, 2025), with @Castelvecchieditore. In her work, she explores the female voice, arguing that sirens do not sing for Ulysses but for their own pure pleasure.
In a compelling comparison with Plato, Kafka, Brecht, Blanchot, Adorno and Eliot, Adriana Cavarero questions the traditional representation of sirens as primordial, bewitching and dangerous beings, rethinking these mythical figures as free subjects, women who sing for themselves, enjoying their own voices and music as a shared experience that escapes the rigidity of logos. Opposing the Homeric paradigm of the cunning and victorious hero – who, according to some 20th-century interpretations, has become a ridiculous little man – with a vision in which the female voice is harmonious and plural, Cavarero offers a novel and subversive interpretation of a millennial myth, capable of restoring to the Sirens the still unsolved mystery of their singing power.
Press review
- Adriana Cavarero – Il canto delle sirene | Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies
- Il canto delle Sirene – Castelvecchi Editore
- Odiseo ha mentito. Le sirene cantano per la gioia di cantare | La lettura, Corriere della Sera
- Il canto irresistibile delle Sirene rivolto a soddisfare loro | La Stampa
- La dignità dei diritti e dei corpi | Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno




