Abstract
The history of the monumental representation of the past in Republican Italy and its combined denial and utilisation of the Fascist version of history needs to be set in a full context. Fascism occurred at a crucial moment during the making of national identity in post-Risorgimento Italy. The initial process elaborating a single, united, image of the nation, composed of certain monuments and traditions and reinforced by the identification of a Pantheon of heroes and fathers of the patria, had been thrown out of kilter by the outbreak of the First World War. Between 1871 and 1915, a public memory was being built from three basic elements: the whole story or myth of the Risorgimento, the construction of the Savoy dynasty as a national ruling house, and the forging of a cultural, linguistic and historical italianità (sense of Italian-ness). This operation had a number of features. The battle sites of 1848 and 1859–61 were monumentalised. Certain figures were selected to be founding fathers and had their statues erected in squares all over the country. A calendar of national holidays or feste was established. Rome was transformed from a sleepy town, dependent on the funds of landowners from the surrounding Lazio countryside, to an elegant and impressive capital of the new regime.
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Notes
Several studies have already been published on the invention of a national tradition in Italy. Among the most important of these are B. Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani: spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell’Italia unita (1870–1900), Bari, 1991;
U. Levra, Fare gli italiani: memoria e celebrazione del Risotgimento, Turin, 1994;
M. Isnenghi, L’Italia in piazza: i luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 ai giorni nostri, Milan, 1994;
M. Baioni, La ‘religione della patria’: musei e istituti del culto risorgimentale (1884–1918), Quinto di Treviso, 1994;
I. Porciani, La festa della nazione: rappresentazione dello stato e spazi sociali nell’Italia unita, Bologna, 1997.
Cf. also a number of books of essays, S. Sol-dani and G. Turi (eds), Fare gli italiani (2 vols), Bologna, 1993;
M. Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria (3 vols), Bari, 1996–7; and ‘Pédagogie et liturgie nationale dans l’Italie post-unitaire’, special issue of Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée, 109, 1997. For further development of my own views, see my paper ‘Un’immagine alternativa dell’Italia? L’Italia socialista’ (pp. 35–44) in this volume.
For further work on this first memorialisation process, see C. Canal, ‘La retorica della morte: i monumenti ai caduti della Grande Guerra’, Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, 11, 1982, pp. 657–69;
R. Monteleone and P. Sarasi-ni, ‘I monumenti italiani ai caduti della Grande Guerra’, in D. Leoni and C. Zadra (eds), La Grande Guerra: esperienza memoria immagini, Bologna, 1986, pp. 631–62.
Or, more generally, P. Dogliani, ‘Les monuments aux morts de la Grande Guerre en Italie’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contem-porains, 42,1992, pp. 87–96 and ‘La mémoire de la Grande Guerre en Italie’, in J-J. Becker, J.M. Winter, G. Krumeich, A. Becker and S. Audoin-Rouzeau (eds), Guerre et cultures 1914–1918, Paris, 1994, pp. 315–21.
Or, more generally, P. Dogliani, ‘Les monuments aux morts de la Grande Guerre en Italie’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contem-porains, 42,1992, pp. 87–96 and ‘La mémoire de la Grande Guerre en Italie’, in J-J. Becker, J.M. Winter, G. Krumeich, A. Becker and S. Audoin-Rouzeau (eds), Guerre et cultures 1914–1918, Paris, 1994, pp. 315–21.
In English, the matter can be briefly pursued in, for example, G. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of World Wars, Oxford, 1990
J.M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, Cambridge, 1995.
For a narration of the construction of the Italian version of the Unknown Soldier, see V. Labita, ‘Il milite ignoto: dalle trincee all’Altare della Patria’, in S. Bertelli and C. Grottanelli (eds), Gliocchi di Alessandro: potere sovrano e sacralità del corpo da Alessandro Magno a Ceaisescu, Florence, 1990, pp. 120–54 and, more specifically on the Altare della Patria, B. Tobia, ‘Il Vittoriano’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.), Iluoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Ita-lia unita, Bari, 1996, pp. 243–54.
B. Tobia, ‘Il Vittoriano’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.), Iluoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita, Bari, 1996, pp. 243–54.
For further detail, see P. Dogliani, ‘Redipuglia’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.), Iluoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita, pp. 375–89. For a period assessment, cf. R. Michelesi, ‘Dove riposano gli eroi della grande guerra’, Le Vie d’Italia, 45, November 1939, pp. 1436–43.
For a survey of Fascist cults and celebrations, see E. Gentile, Il culto del littorio: la sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista, Bari, 1994.
For furhter detail on the TCI,see R.J.B. Bosworth,’The Touring Club Italiano and the Nationalisation of the Italian Bourgeoisie’,European His-tory Quarterly,27,1997,pp.371–410.Cf.also the several times republished TCI,Sui campi di battaglia:guida storico-turistica,Milan,1928–31.
For further detail on the symbolic use of piazze, see M. Isnenghi, ‘L’esposizione della morte’, in G. Ranzato (ed.), Le guerre fratricide: le guerre civili in età contemporanea, Turin, 1994, pp. 331–52; M. Dondi, ‘Piazzale Loreto’, in M. Isnenghi (ed.), Iluoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita, pp. 487–500.
M. Isnenghi, ‘La guerra civile nella pubblicista di destra’, Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, 18, 1989, pp. 104–15.
L. Galmozzi and E. Nizza, Monumenti alla libertà: resistenza e pace nei monumenti italiani dal 1945 al 1985, Milan, 1986.
For a preliminary attempt to use Bologna as a case study in Italy and to differentiate the size and nature of monumentalisation in the Emilia-Romagna region from the rest of the country, see P. Dogliani, ‘Monumenti alla Resistenza’ and P. Dogliani, E. Guerra and E. Lorenzini, ‘Il monumento come documento’, in Istituto beni culturali Regione Emilia-Romagna, La premiata resistenza: concorsi d’arte nel dopoguerra in Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, 1995, pp. 21–36; 99–118.
For a preliminary attempt to use Bologna as a case study in Italy and to differentiate the size and nature of monumentalisation in the Emilia-Romagna region from the rest of the country, see P. Dogliani, ‘Monumenti alla Resistenza’ and P. Dogliani, E. Guerra and E. Lorenzini, ‘Il monumento come documento’, in Istituto beni culturali Regione Emilia-Romagna, La premiata resistenza: concorsi d’arte nel dopoguerra in Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, 1995, pp. 21–36; 99–118.
It would be interesting to study further the changing representation of youth in Italian monuments. At least in regard to Fascism, see L. Malvano, ‘Il mito della giovinezza attraverso l’immagine: il fascismo italiano’, in G. Levi and J.C. Schmitt (eds), Storia dei giovani. 2 L’età contemporanea, Bari, 1994, pp. 311‘48.
No full study has yet been published of post-1945 veterans’ associations.For some indications, see, however, C. Pavone, ‘Appunti sul problema dei reduci’, in N. Gallerano (ed.), L’altro dopoguerra: Roma e il Sud 1943–1945, Milan, 1985, pp. 85–106
cf. P. Dogliani, ‘L’associazionismo resistenziale nel primo decennio della Repubblica: politiche ed insedia-mento di una memoria’, Memoria e Ricerca, 5,1997, pp. 165–83.
See J.E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Mem-ory , New Haven, 1993. It is a shame, however, that Young does not extend his important work to Italy itself.
See here the important remarks of Nicola Gallerano in his paper ‘Memoria pubblica del fascismo e dell’antifascismo’, in ‘Manifestolibri’, Politiche della memoria, Rome, 1993, p. 16 or, more generally, N. Gallerano (ed.), L’uso pubblico della storia, Milan, 1995 (cf. my own contribution there, P. Dogliani, ‘Guerra e memoria nella società contemporanea’, pp. 223–30).
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Dogliani, P. (1999). Constructing Memory and Anti-Memory: the Monumental Representation of Fascism and its Denial in Republican Italy. In: Bosworth, R.J.B., Dogliani, P. (eds) Italian Fascism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27245-7_2
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