Table Of ContentITALIAN 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
