Knowing that the wellbeing regime of contemporaneity has totally marginalized the risk factor from everyday life, which in the past was “guaranteed” by war and famine, but also by the strong arm of the law and by urban criminality, Alessandro Dal Lago identifies nightlife as a hedonistic possibility of living the risk. Considering the extract of a New York tourists’ guide, he highlights how every warning tends to turn the confrontation with the danger into an adventure, and push the visitor to explore the dark geographies of the city transformed by the nightfall.

Alessandro Dal Lago (Rome, 09/02/1947 - Trapani, 03/26/2022) was an italian sociologist. He has been a lecturer in Pavia, Milan, Bologna and Genova, where he was also the president of Education Sciences faculty. Editor of “Alfabeta” and “aut aut”, he has been a contributor of “Il manifesto” for more than fourty years, and published more than fourty books and two hundred articles. Among his works, La produzione della devianza, Non-persone.L’esclusione dei migranti in una società globale, Genocidi animali and, with Serena Giordano, Fuori Cornice: l’arte oltre l’arte e Mercanti d’aura. Logiche dell’arte contemporanea.