Italian Fascism: History, Memory and Representation PDF
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ITALIAN FASCISM Also by R. J. B. Bosworth EXPLAINING AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA: History Writing and the Second World War, 1945-1990 FREMANTLE'S ITALY (with M. Bosworth) *ITALY AND THE APPROACH OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR ITALY AND THE WIDER WORLD, 1860-1960 ITALY, THE LEAST OF THE GREAT POWERS: Italian Foreign Policy before the First World War LA POLITICA ESTERA ITALIANA , 1861-1985 (editor with S. Romano) OLD WORLDS AND NEW AUSTRALIA: a History of Non-British Migration to Australia since the Second World War (with J. Wilton) THE ITALIAN DICTATORSHIP: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism *from the same publishers Italian Fascism History, Memory and Representation Edited by R. J. B. Bosworth Professor of History University of Western Australia and Patrizia Dogliani Professor of European History University of Bologna Italy First published in Great Britain 1999 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndrnills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-27247-1 ISBN 978-1-349-27245-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27245-7 First published in the United States of America 1999 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-21717-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Italian fascism: history, memory and representation I [edited by] Bosworth/Dogliani. p. ern. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-21717-4(alk. paper) 1. Fascism-Italy-Historiography. 2. Italy-History-1922-1945- -Historiography. 3. Anti-fascist movements-Italy-Historiography. 4. Fascism and culture-Italy-Historiography. I. Bosworth, R. J. B. II. Dogliani, Patrizia. DG571.16.185 1999 945.091'07'2-dc21 98-34146 CIP Selection, editorial matter, Preface and Introduction© R. J. B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani 1999 Chapter I © Patrizia Dogliani 1999 Chapter 6 © R. J. B. Bosworth 1999 Chapters 2-5,7-12 ©Macmillan Press Ltd 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999 978-0-333-71206-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenharn Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 Contents Preface Vll Notes on the Contributors viii Introduction R.J.B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani 1 1 Constructing Memory and Anti-Memory: the Monumental Representation of Fascism and its Denial in Republican Italy Patrizia Dogliani 11 2 Peasant Memory and the Italian Resistance, 1943-45 Roger Absalom 31 3 Italians in Germany, 1938-45: an Aspect of the Rome-Berlin Axis Brunello Mantelli 45 4 From Croce to Vico: Carlo Levi's L 'orologio and Italian Anti-Fascism, 1943-46 David Ward 64 5 Liberation: Italian Cinema and the Fascist Past, 1945-50 Ruth Ben-Ghiat 83 6 Film Memories of Fascism R.J.B. Bosworth 102 7 The Representation of Fascism and the Resistance in the Documentaries ofltalian State Television Guido Crainz 124 8 The Fascist Mentality after Fascism MircoDondi 144 9 The Italian Empire and brava gente: Oral History and the Dodecanese Islands Nicholas Doumanis 161 v vi Contents 10 Italian National Memory, National Identity and Fascism Glenda Sluga 178 11 Memory and Representations of Fascism: Female Autobiographical Narratives EldaGuerra 195 12 Days of Sodom: the Fascism-Perversion Equation in Films of the 1960s and 1970s David F orgacs 216 Index 237 Preface The compilation of a book of essays is always a somewhat complicated task. One of the editors of this book once had salutary experience of an author who ran five years late in his submission. As the plan unfolded to bring together five historians working in Italy, two from England, two from the United States and three from Australia, there were some rea sons to be fearful. However, in this instance, all fears proved groundless. Part of the explanation may be technological. Email is binding the schol arly world in an utterly new way - somewhere behind the pages of this book is chatter cheerfully exchanged between Western Australia and Bologna. In the past, Perth has often been defined as the most isolated city in the world; geographically it may remain so, intellectually it has no future need to be. But the real explanation is personal. Every contributor to this book met the set deadlines and, whether to the relief or amaze ment of Annabelle Buckley at Macmillan, it reached her almost on schedule. Another formal matter deserves noting. The five Italian authors in the collection submitted to their chapters being translated by Richard Bos worth. They knew the old Italian pun that any traduttore (translator) is also a traditore (traitor), but tried gently to guide Bosworth away from his more blatant treacheries. He is grateful for their courtesy. The editors are also happy that the book meant that they got to visit each other in the delightful surrounds of Bologna and Clare Hall, Cambridge (where, in 1998, Bosworth was spending a marvellous sabbatical as a Visiting Fel low). Even Perth may eventually see another meeting. For the editors and the other contributors, the production of the book has thus meant a reinforcement of international scholarly contacts, and a confirmation of those friendships and debates which make university life so gratifying. Finally, we are all very pleased that Macmillan/St. Martin's Press took on the publication of this work. Annabelle Buckley and her colleagues have treated us with exemplary goodwill and efficiency. Monica O'Connor was a swift and able copyeditor. May Macmillan/St. Martin's Press pub lish lots more readable and interesting books, and may quite a few of them be on Italian history. R.J.B. BOSWORTH and P. DOGLIANI vii Notes on the Contributors Roger Absalom is an Honorary Research Fellow, Sheffield Hallam University. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Assistant Professor of History, Fordham University, New York. Richard Bosworth is Professor of History, University of Western Australia. Guido Crainz is Senior Lecturer in History, University ofTeramo. Patrizia Dogliani is Senior Researcher and Professor of European His tory, University of Bologna. Mirco Dondi is a post -doctoral fellow in History, University of Bologna. Nicholas Doumanis is Lecturer in History, University of Newcastle (Australia). David Forgacs is Reader in Film Studies, Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway College, University of London. Elda Guerra is deputy chair of the Centre for research on women's stud ies at Bologna. Brunello Mantelli is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Turin. Glenda Sluga is Lecturer in History and director of the Centre for Euro pean Studies, University of Sydney. David Ward is Associate Professor of Italian, Wellesley College. viii Introduction R.J .B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani In his recent history of the footnote, Anthony Grafton has drawn atten tion to something odd about Italian scholarship: To the inexpert, footnotes look like deep root systems, solid and fixed; to the connoisseur, however, they reveal themselves as anthills, swarm ing with constructive and combative activity. In Italy, for example, the footnote often operates as much by omission as by statement. The failure to refer to a particular scholar or work amounts to a polem ical statement, a damnatio memoriae, which the circle of interested parties will immediately recognize and decode .... Only those who have memorized the dots and dashes of citation code-a code which changes, naturally, by the hour-will read the lacunae as charged and argumen tative. To outsiders the same notes will seem calm and informative. Many Italian historical texts with footnotes, in other words, tell not only the theoretically required two stories [of textual narrative and footnote infrastructure] but three.1 Italy, we seem to learn from this account, is a very particular place. Cer tainly its scholarship and perhaps its history and present character can only be read by outsiders through a glass darkly. 2 In the rest of his book, Grafton proclaims that the footnote is the sure defence of the discipline of history against postmodernist levity and, in the freedom of the argu ment maintained through the practice of annotation, constitutes for us all the great armour against tyranny. 3 But how, a historian of contempor ary Italy, might be tempted to ask, is the peculiarity of Italian footnoting to be reconciled with this optimistic conclusion? Grafton himself pro vides no answer to the query, except the decidedly unhelpful implication that a waywardness or a baroque coyness in footnoting technique is part of the Italian national character. If it is to have meaning, his perception needs to be integrated into a fuller exploration of Italian historiography and into a better understanding of the sounds and the silences and the oblivion which hang over certain segments of the national past. In the book which follows our contributors will, witting and unwittingly, pursue these themes of knowledge and obscurantism, acknowledgement and forgetfulness in a double, and not altogether duplicitous sense. Two worlds mingle here, since half of our writers operate in the Anglo-Saxon academic world and the other half in the Italian. 1
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