Late Hirschman: Theoretical exercises in "Self-Subversion" draws from the Colorni-Hirschman intellectual tradition the author has developed with close colleagues: recalls and rationalizes personal memoires that come from the long collaboration of the author with Albert Hirschman; learns – once again – in depth from his work; desires, if possible, to make progress on some vexed questions; and breaks away from all forms of ritualism.

Hirschman, homme libre, did not like orthodoxies or intellectual boundaries and the like. He certainly would not have liked to be now pigeon-holed by a part of the Academia.

Gradually exploring alternative directions, Meldolesi proposes, therefore, in this book a group of exercises. They have been suggested by the late Hirschman's self-subverting phase of intellectual elaboration that, starting from the "interpretive social science" point of view elaborated in the late '70s of last century together with Clifford Geertz and other leading intellectuals at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton N.J.), touched later on numerous aspects of the long experience of Hirschman developed in three continents, and mirrored cautiously in his extraordinary work.

The ambition of these exercises lies in helping the "triggering off" the cultural, economic and political potential that might be stemmed from late Hirschman: for understanding some key aspects of the past, exploring hand in glove the world we live in, and acting accordingly.