In Theorem, Pier Paolo Pasolini presents the arrival of a mysterious young man in a wealthy family whose lives are organized around stable identities and conventions. The intimate encounter each character establishes with him, followed by his sudden departure, dismantles that apparent order and questions the very possibility of constituting oneself apart from others.
The visitor’s presence introduces a desire that exceeds the sexual and reveals a lack that had previously gone unnoticed. Like Diotima in the Symposium, Eros arises from absence and moves the subject toward what they do not possess. In Pasolini, however, this movement does not necessarily lead to a higher form of knowledge. Instead, it exposes the fragility of the certainties that sustained the characters, becoming the trigger for their tragic outcomes.
This tension acquires particular depth in the relationship with Pietro, the son, who finds in art a way of responding to the transformation he has undergone. The visual references to Francis Bacon, with his distorted bodies and disfigured identities, emphasize the impossibility of preserving a unified image of oneself. Likewise, the visitor’s reading of Rimbaud introduces a significant symbol through his celebrated assertion, “I is another,” which calls into question the subject’s supposed transparency to itself.
The experience can also be understood from a Hegelian perspective: if self-consciousness requires the recognition of another self-consciousness, the encounter with the guest reveals that no identity is constituted in a self-sufficient manner. Yet the relationship contains a decisive asymmetry: while the members of the family are abruptly transformed, the visitor remains inscrutable, without establishing a reciprocal relation of recognition. His absence exposes their dependence on an other who is no longer there.
Thus, Theorem presents a fundamental paradox of being-with-others: what enables the subject to discover itself can also lead to its rupture. The encounter does not guarantee a positive transformation of being; it may instead reveal that apparently solid identities rested on relationships and conventions whose fragility becomes visible only when they are interrupted.