Abstract
Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on contemporaneity (Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, 2009), this chapter focuses on alternate histories, asserting that the genre has been used to interpret Italian political history. For instance, Enrico Brizzi’s and Mario Farneti’s alternate history trilogies, which feature different visions of Italy’s past—either decolonizing the Italian imagination or celebrating Italy’s “civilizing” role in Africa—embody what John Foot has termed “Italy’s divided memory,” and its constitutive ambivalence regarding the legacy of Fascism (Italy’s Divided Memory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Stefano Amato’s Il 49esimo stato (2013a)—an alternate history that imagines what would have happened in the 1960s and 1970s if Sicily had become part of the United States—imagines Italy as a country colonized by the United States.
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview about Italian alternate history novels, see Marra (2014b).
- 2.
In reality, the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila won the marathon, triumphing in the capital city of the country that had violently colonized his own.
- 3.
On May 4, 1949, a plane carrying almost the entire Torino F.C. team crashed into Superga Hill near Turin, killing the plane’s crew and all the players.
- 4.
- 5.
The importance of soccer both in the colonies and in Italy can be evaluated in relation to Garane Garane’s autobiographically inspired novel Il latte è buono [Milk Is Good], which describes the important influence of this sport in Somalia after Italian colonialism (2005: 103). Garane also compares some Italians expert knowledge of the soccer players’ names to their ignorance of their own country’s history (2005: 67).
- 6.
- 7.
Fabio Liverani, whose mother was from Somalia, was the first black player to be called to Italy’s national team, although he played only occasionally. The presence of Balotelli, a striker and top scorer, caused more controversy because he has unmistakably African features and much darker skin, plus a reputation for being an unmanageable player.
- 8.
For a historical account of gender relations in Italian colonies, see Stefani (2007: 29).
- 9.
Significantly, the Italian national soccer team manager from 2004 to 2010, Marcello Lippi, claimed that there are no gay people in professional soccer in an interview with Klaus Davi published on the internet (www.youtube.com/klauscondicio) on January 7, 2009.
- 10.
After the Risorgimento, d’Azeglio supposedly declared: “We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians” (Hobsbawm 1992: 44).
- 11.
Some of these stereotypes—which are clearly depicted both in Captain Tsubasa and Victory—are Brazil’s highly technical soccer, German concreteness, French “champagne” soccer, Dutch “total” soccer, Italy’s contropiede [counterattack] tactics, and the centrality of a solid defensive bloc.
- 12.
Other Italian authors have also employed sf in order to talk about the resurgence of a Fascist imagery during the Berlusconi’s three terms as a prime minister (1994–1995; 2001–2006; 2008–2011). For instance, Corrado Guzzanti’s movie Fascisti su Marte [Fascists on Mars] parodizes the past to satirize contemporary crises (Watters 2012: 201): in 1938, a group of Blackshirts goes to Mars in order to conquer that “rosso pianeta bolscevico e traditor” [red, Bolshevik, and traitorous planet]. As Raffaella Baccolini argues: “it is exactly on the issue of masculinity and gender that the film critically intervenes in today’s political situation. Fascists on Mars makes fun of the discourse of Italian virility during Fascism, unfortunately an all-too-timely topic in Italian politics given the cultural prejudices to which the conduct and statements of former prime minister Berlusconi and his Lega Nord ally Umberto Bossi have only contributed. Thus, the film becomes a powerful commentary on today’s political situation” (2014: 194).
- 13.
Brizzi wrote a satirical pamphlet about Berlusconi, La vita ai tempi di Silvio [Life in the Time of Silvio] (2009b).
- 14.
On this controversial law, see Dal Lago (2005 [1999]).
- 15.
- 16.
This rhetoric is epitomized by one of Berlusconi’s speeches delivered in an official visit to Germany on September 26, 2001, in which he claimed the superiority of Western civilization (Redazione Repubblica Online 2001).
- 17.
On historical revisionism and “Fantafascism,” see Malvestio (2018).
- 18.
Giorgio Almirante was an Italian politician who signed the Manifesto of Race in 1938, and was the founder and leader of the Movimento Sociale Italiano.
- 19.
Hereafter David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella’s English translation of Che cos’è il contemporaneo? [What Is the Contemporary?] (Agamben 2009) is referred to.
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Brioni, S., Comberiati, D. (2019). Future Pasts: Revisiting the Colonial Legacy in Alternate History Novels. In: Italian Science Fiction. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19326-3_9
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