Deviant career and "smarginatura": From Elena Ferrante to the process of desistance from crime

Within the framework of a progressive rapprochement between literature and criminology, the intent of the essay is to present the concept of "smarginatura", closely connected to that of "frantumaglia" - both created by the writer Elena Ferrante - and to reconnect them to the scientific interest for the discontinuities of deviant life cycles. The literary talent of Ferrante in the description of episodes of "smarginatura", in which the references are lost and the existential chaos explodes is useful on the one hand, to better define the criminological knowledge on the path of the desisters, from other, to work with offenders facilitating the recognition of the potential of some disorienting experiences. More precisely, the hypothesis is that "smarginatura" can lead to abandoning a deviant self and to experimenting with a different narration of oneself.