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Race, Gender, and the Fascist Colonial Imaginary

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Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy

Part of the book series: Mapping Global Racisms ((MGR))

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Abstract

Giuliani focuses on the construction of whiteness in fascist Italy through a process of “externalisation” of blackness onto the African colonies. The chapter explores rearticulations of exoticism and symbolic cannibalism in the representation of the Overseas racialised Other as tools to legitimise colonial submission and appropriation and accomplish the “whitening” of Italians (1922–1936), as well as claiming Italians’ Mediterranean Aryanness (1936–1945). These processes are analysed through the deconstruction of representations of subaltern/racialised and hegemonic (white) masculinity and femininity in colonial photographs, magazines and films such as Messalina by Enrico Guazzoni (1922), Il cammino degli eroi by Corrado d’Errico (1936), Scipione l’Africano by Carmine Gallone (1937) and La corona di ferro by Luigi Maggi (1941).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this sense, the fascist regime saw itself as the heir to the mission that the Liberal State had been called on to fulfil in Ferdinando Martini’s famous invitation: “we have made Italy. Now we have to make Italians.” This quote has often been erroneously attributed to Massimo D’Azeglio. Simonetta Soldani, and Gabriele Turi, eds., Fare gli italiani. Scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993), 1:17. See also Umberto Levra, Fare gli italiani. Memoria e celebrazione del Risorgimento (Torino: Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1992) as well as Francesca Rigoni’s PhD dissertation, Inseguire la Nazione. Ferdinando Martini e la parabola dell’Italia liberale (Padova: Università di Padova, 2010), available at http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/2619/.

  2. 2.

    See Sandro Bellassai, “The Masculine Mystique. Antimodernism and Virility in Fascist Italy,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10, no. 3 (2005): 322–5.

  3. 3.

    “Discorso all’augusteo,” November 9, 1921, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 2: 201–3.

  4. 4.

    This was instead a discursive and ideological construction, accompanied by a series of governmental interventions aimed at promoting infrastructural inclusion and linguistic and cultural homogenisation within the period set by the regime for the different geographical areas and social groups of the country. For a discussion of the genesis, premises, and legacy of the Southern Question, see the anthology edited by Rosario Villari, Il Sud nella storia d’Italia. Antologia della questione meridionale (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1988).

  5. 5.

    Antonio Gramsci, “Il Mezzogiorno e il Fascismo,” in L’Ordine Nuovo, March 15, 1924, reprinted in La questione meridionale (1935) (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1966).

  6. 6.

    See Patriarca , Italian Vices, 164–5.

  7. 7.

    These include, for instance, Sole (1929), Terra madre (1931), Gli uomini, che mascalzoni (1932), which, in the words of the critic Vito Zagarrio, show how “the land is difficult and yet virile, challenging and yet rich in ethical values to which the owner returns in the end; the city is easier, lived to the rhythm of swing, but it is also a temptress and a corruptor, embodied by the femme fatale.” Vito Zagarrio, Cinema e Fascismo. Film, modelli, immaginari (Venezia: Marsilio, 2004), 53.

  8. 8.

    Bellassai , “The Masculine Mystique,” 315. See also Ipsen , Dictating Demography, 229ff.

  9. 9.

    See “Il Fascismo e i rurali,” May 25, 1922, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 2: 283–90; and Mussolini , La dottrina del Fascismo, 70. On the fascist articulation of the concept of virility and continuities between the fascist and the Liberal era’s nationalist and futurist versions of this concept, see Sandro Bellassai, L’invenzione della virilità. Politica ed immaginario maschile nell’Italia contemporanea (Roma: Carocci, 2011), 59–62 and Barbara Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 1–33. On the ruralist and pronatalist turn of the Fascist National Party and fascist regime, see Ipsen , Dictating Demography, 51ff. On the relationship between futurism and Fascism, see Angelo D’Orsi , Il Futurismo tra cultura e politica. Reazione o rivoluzione? (Roma: Salerno, 2009).

  10. 10.

    Anti-bourgeois virilism “made its significant contribution to the reproduction of the essential core of hierarchical conceptions legitimised by transcendent, divine or ‘natural’ rules [establishing] the necessary division of humanity into upper and lower subjects.” Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 22, 64.

  11. 11.

    “Discorso alla premiazione del concorso nazionale del grano,” October 14, 1928, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 6: 257–63; “Il significato della battaglia del grano,” July 30, 1925, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 3: 123–4; and “La battaglia del grano,” December 7, 1930, in Mussolini, Scritti e discorsi, 7: 235–9.

  12. 12.

    Spackman , Fascist Virilities, xii. On the relation between virility and youth, on the centrality of the latter for the fascist regime, and on discipline in youth organisations—a model that Nazi Germany soon emulated—see Alessio Ponzio, Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015). For a study that highlights the complexity and forms of resistance to this mono-dimensional idea of virility in fine, performing, and literary arts, see John Campagne, Aesthetic Modernism and Masculinity in Fascist Italy (London: Routledge, 2013).

  13. 13.

    Benito Mussolini , The political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, trans. Jane Soames (London: The Hogarth Press, 1934), 25.

  14. 14.

    This was in line with the fiercely nationalistic idea of citizenship and emigration outlined in a law passed by the parliament (no. 555 of June 13, 1912), which interpreted emigration as a possible means to create “free colonies” of emigrants with a strong sense of patriotism and capable of supporting the interests of the motherland in the host countries. See Tintori, “Cittadinanza e politiche dell’emigrazione,” 86–102.

  15. 15.

    “Il problema dell’emigrazione,” 1934, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 3: 97–8.

  16. 16.

    The valorisation of emigration coincided with a legal, political, social, and discursive strategy aimed at transforming Italian migrants (especially those headed for the Americas) into skilled workers by monitoring the international labour market, entering into contracts negotiated by the CGE (General Commissariat on Emigration), and providing professional and technical training to workers abroad. One of the aims was to challenge the view, widespread in host countries and elsewhere, that Italian immigrants were necessarily poor and unskilled potential criminals. It also sought to build a stronger affiliation with the regime. Hence, the idea was to raise awareness among new generations of emigrants by establishing the Fasci abroad; there was a special focus on reaching more receptive minority groups of young migrants to spread the culture and spirit of fascist ideology in the host countries. See Emilio Gentile, “La politica estera del partito fascista. Ideologia e organizzazione dei Fasci italiani all’estero (1920–1930),” Storia Contemporanea, 6 (1995): 897–956. See also Joao F. Bertonha, “I Fasci italiani all’estero,” in Bevilacqua et al., Storia dell’emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, 527–34.

  17. 17.

    Benito Mussolini, in Il Popolo d’Italia, May 2, 1921.

  18. 18.

    Because race and land are one, as the Duce stated in 1936: “[…] land and race are indivisible, and the history of race is made through the land, and race rules over and fertilises the land.” “Ai ‘fedeli alla terra’,” May 3, 1936, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 3: 10: 87.

  19. 19.

    Mussolini , “Al gran rapporto del Fascismo,” May 26, 1929, in SC, 7:128–9. For an interesting cross-reading of the concept of (racial, territorial, economic) “improvement” in this specific phase of Fascism, see Ben-Ghiat’s introduction to Fascist Modernities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). See Corrado Gini, Nascita, evoluzione e morte delle nazioni: la teoria ciclica della popolazione e i vari sistemi di politica demografica (Roma: Libreria del littorio, 1930); Gini , Le basi scientifiche della politica della popolazione (Catania: Studio editoriale moderno, 1931) and especially Francesco Cassata, Molti, sani e forti. L’eugenetica in Italia (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2006); on the Aryanist turn, see Cassata , “La Difesa della razza.” Politica, ideologia e immagine del razzismo fascista (Torino: Einaudi, 2008).

  20. 20.

    “Fertile populations are the ones who have a right to the empire; those possessing the pride and the will to propagate their race on the face of the earth, virile populations in the most literal sense of the word.” See “Al popolo di Lucania,” August 27, 1936, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 10: 161–4.

  21. 21.

    On this point and on the position of the Catholic Church in the debate on positive and negative eugenics, see Father Gemelli, one of the most influential theorists (together with Corrado Gini and Serafino Patellani) in the field of “nativist” eugenics. In particular, see his published work on religion and eugenics in the proceedings of the Primo congresso di eugenetica sociale. Milano 20–23 settembre 1924 (Milano: Reale società d’igiene, 1924). For a general discussion of Gemelli’s work, see Maria Sticco, Padre Gemelli. Appunti per la biografia di un uomo difficile (Milano: Edizioni O.R., 1974). On the Catholic Church’s expectations from Fascism and her stance against modernist/pro-modernity trends in Liberal Italy, see Miccoli, Tra mito della Cristianità e secolarizzazione, 112–30. See also Miccoli, Santa Sede, questione ebraica e antisemitismo, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 11, vol. 2, Gli ebrei in Italia (Torino: Einaudi, 1997), 1369–574.

  22. 22.

    On models of femininity, masculinity, rural citizenship, and the Catholic influence on the debate within the fascist regime as well as on race legislation, see next paragraph. On resistance to these models among middle-class women, see Cristina Lombardi-Diop, “Pioneering Female Modernity. Fascist Women in Colonial Africa,” in Italian Colonialism, ed. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 145–54.

  23. 23.

    Pende, Bonifica, 241.

  24. 24.

    Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 80.

  25. 25.

    Nani, Ai confini della nazione, 138–54.

  26. 26.

    “Discorso dell’ascensione,” May 26, 1927, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 6: 39.

  27. 27.

    See Cristina Lombardi-Diop, “L’Italia cambia pelle,” 67–116.

  28. 28.

    Ferdinando Fasce highlights how, according to fascist propaganda, Italians invaded Ethiopia to redeem themselves from the humiliation and despair they experienced during migration: Fasce, “Gente di mezzo. Gli italiani e gli altri,” in Bevilacqua et al. Storia dell’emigrazione italiana. Arrivi, 241. See also Nicoletta Venturini, Neri ed italiani ad Harlem. Gli anni Trenta e la Guerra d’Etiopia (Roma: Edizioni Lavoro, 1990).

  29. 29.

    Alessandro Triulzi, “La costruzione dell’immagine dell’Africa e degli Africani nell’Italia coloniale,” in Burgio, Nel nome della razza, 169.

  30. 30.

    See Gianmarco Mancosu, “L’impero Visto da una Cinepresa: il Reparto ‘Africa Orientale’ dell’Istituto Luce,” in Quel che Resta dell’Impero: la Cultura Coloniale degli Italiani, ed. Valeria Deplano and Alessandro Pes (Milano: Mimesis, 2015), 259–78.

  31. 31.

    Valeria Deplano, L’africa in casa. Propaganda e cultura coloniale nell’Italia fascista (Firenze and Milano: Le Monnier/Mondadori Education, 2015).

  32. 32.

    Palma , L’Italia coloniale, 27–8.

  33. 33.

    See Luigi Tomassini, “L’album fotografico come fonte storica,” in Bertella Farnetti et al., L’impero nel cassetto, 59–70.

  34. 34.

    Valeria Deplano, “I confini dell’italianità. Cittadinanza e sudditanza coloniale nel progetto imperiale fascista,” in Ruocco and Bascherini, Vicino lontano, 201–24.

  35. 35.

    See, for instance, Giuseppe Sergi, Origine e diffusione della stirpe mediterranea: induzioni antropologiche (Roma: Società editrice Dante Alighieri, 1895), 43–9; for a discussion on this topic, see Wong, Race and the Nation, 101.

  36. 36.

    Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh shares the same position and argues that Sergi’s classification casting Italians as originating from Africa had to be set aside in favour of the idea that they were indisputably white. See her essay “Gli italiani sono bianchi?” in Petrovich Njegosh and Scacchi, Parlare di razza, 24.

  37. 37.

    Paraphrasing Proglio , Memorie oltre confine, 79.

  38. 38.

    Gabriella Gribaudi, “Images of the South: The Mezzogiorno as Seen by Insiders and Outsiders,” in Lumley and Morris, The New History of the Italian South, 91.

  39. 39.

    See “Gli italiani nel mondo,” June 5, 1928, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 6: 175–228.

  40. 40.

    Gabaccia , Italy’s Many Diasporas, 130.

  41. 41.

    “Popolo d’Italia,” September 4, 1934, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 9: 122. On Mussolini’s references to the Italic race and its relationship with Fascism, the Italian people, and the nation, see Spinetti, Sintesi di Mussolini, 106–9. For a discussion of the way the regime stressed the Mediterranean and Roman character of the Italic race up until 1936, in opposition to the idea of the superiority of the British, French, and German race championed by Europeanist and Aryanist positions, see De Donno , La Razza Ario-Mediterranea, 403. De Donno offers relevant insights on nationalist interpretations of the relationship between Mediterraneanism, Orientalism, European revitalisation, and Southernism in “Routes to Modernity. Orientalism and Mediterraneanism in Italian Culture 1810–1910,” California Italian Studies 1, no. 1 (2010): 1–23.

  42. 42.

    See Cristina Lombardi-Diop, “L’Italia cambia pelle,” 67–116.

  43. 43.

    Although, as mentioned above, race was conceptualised in highly culturalist terms and in this phase mainly overlapped with Italy’s culture, civilisation, and history from the Roman era through Medieval Communes and the Renaissance to the fascist era.

  44. 44.

    “Al popolo di Bari,” September 6, 1934, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, vol. 9.

  45. 45.

    See Giuliano Pancaldi, Darwin in Italia (Bologna: il Mulino, 1983), 263–86, and Claudio Pogliani, “Eugenisti, ma con giudizio,” in Burgio, Nel nome della razza, 429.

  46. 46.

    See, for instance: Vincenzo Giuffrida-Ruggeri, “Le origini italiche,” Rivista di scienze biologiche, no. 2 (1900): 926–32.

  47. 47.

    According to the very influential Deniker, then president of the Anthropological Society of Paris, who in 1904 took stock of the studies on European races (Mediterranean included) without ever mentioning Sergi’s name, the term “Mediterranean race” was coined in 1881 by Houzé, a Belgian anthropologist, to indicate the dark-haired dolicocephals of southern Europe. Deniker’s Italian source for his treatise on European races was Rodolfo Livi, whose military anthropometry data were at the time 40 years old. Joseph Deniker, “Les Six Races Composant la Population Actuelle de l’Europe,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 34 (July–December 1904): 181–206.

  48. 48.

    Sergi , Europa, 551, 553, 571.

  49. 49.

    Sergi reformulated the distinction between Aryans and Mediterraneans (Sergi, Europa, 549–634), confirming most of what he had argued in 1898 and 1895. In his 1895 work, he rejected the idea that Aryans had European origins and were superior to the Mediterranean people, and theorised that Italic and Mediterranean/Euro-African lineages were equivalent (Sergi, Origine, 177–8), asserting the anthropological existence of a “Mediterranean race” (Sergi, Origine, 42–3; Sergi , Europa, 628). In his 1908 work, he stated that European civilisation and culture were not at all Aryan but rather truly Mediterranean (Sergi, Europa, 555, 617). Pende himself later drew heavily on Sergi’s arguments (Pende, Bonifica, 212–4). On this point, see also De Donno , La razza Ario-Mediterranea, 399.

  50. 50.

    Pende, Bonifica, 227, 212, and Pende, “Psicologia individuale e psicologia di razza,” Rivista di psicologia 26 (1930): 213–27.

  51. 51.

    Pende, Bonifica, 227. The term purity is very seldom mentioned: in this phase, politicians and scientists referred instead to the integrity and health of the Italic lineage or race.

  52. 52.

    See Bellassai , “The Masculine Mystique,” 322.

  53. 53.

    See Ipsen , Dictating Demography, 244–52.

  54. 54.

    On the fascist transposition of anti-Jewish prejudice in biological-deterministic terms and the classification of Jewish people as a separate human type, see Italy’s central state archives, Archivio Centrale di Stato, Ministero dell’interno, Direzione Generale per la Demografia e la Razza (1938–1943), b. 13, file 43, folder IV/1, La situazione dei non ariani presenti in Italia; b. 3, file 13, Definizione di ebreo (September 1938) and file 14, folder 6, Accertamento razza. Provvedimenti per la difesa della Razza italiana.

  55. 55.

    See Mantovani, Rigenerare la società, 355; Gianluca Gabrielli, “Un aspetto della politica razzista nell’impero. Il ‘problema dei meticci,’” Passato presente 41 (1997): 77–105; Alessandro Triulzi, “La costruzione dell’immagine dell’Africa e degli africani nell’Italia coloniale,” 165–81. Giuseppe Sergi had claimed a sort of Hamitic descent for Europeans, originating from positive mixing among different European and African racial lineages. On Sergi and Coudenhove-Kalergi, see Liliana Ellena, “Political Imagination, Sexuality and Love in the Eurafrican debate,” European Review of History 11, no. 2 (2004): 248–50.

  56. 56.

    See De Donno , La Razza Ario-Mediterranea, 404.

  57. 57.

    In a way, this was in line with the fascist character itself, according to which praxis and thought intertwine and alter each other, which was a generally though not universally accepted principle. See “La dottrina del Fascismo,” in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 8: 67–8.

  58. 58.

    See Pende, Bonifica, 98, but also, significantly, 256–57; for a critical reading, see Maiocchi, Scienza e Fascismo, 146–53. See also Pende, Biologia delle razze ed unità spirituale mediterranea, talk given in Nice (France), on January 5, 1934, in Gillette, Racial Theories, 48.

  59. 59.

    Libya was considered “already” Italian in 1911, as Cyrenaica and Tripolitania had been annexed by the Roman Empire and there was extensive trade and cultural exchange between the two shores of the Mediterranean. In 1919, the Libyans were also granted Italian citizenship (Decrees June 1 and October 31, 1919). See Mia Fuller, “Preservation and Self-Absorption. Italian Colonization and the Walled City of Tripoli, Libya,” The Journal of North African Studies 5, no. 4 (2000): 137.

  60. 60.

    See Sòrgoni , “Racist Discourses,” 43.

  61. 61.

    This emerges very clearly in Spadaro’s Una colonia italiana.

  62. 62.

    For this reason, the conquest of Addis Ababa on May 15, 1936, was hailed as the victory/liberation of populations previously dominated by a barbarian and tyrannous people. See “Discorso all’assemblea delle corporazioni,” March 23, 1936, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 10: 64; “Discorso per la proclamazione dell’impero,” May 9, 1936, in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, 99. For an analysis of the inferiorising description of Ethiopia, its population, customs, and culture to legitimise colonisation after condemnation by the League of Nations, see Simonetta Falasca Zamponi, Lo spettacolo del Fascismo (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003), 255–62.

  63. 63.

    Giulietta Stefani, Colonia per maschi (Verona: ombre corte, 2007), 40–5.

  64. 64.

    On “madamism,” see Barbara Sòrgoni, Parole e corpi. Antropologia, discorso giuridico e politiche sessuali interrazziali nella colonia Eritrea 1890–1941 (Napoli: Liguori, 1998), 58–71; and Ruth Iyob, “Madamismo and Beyond. The Construction of Eritrean Women,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 22, no. 2 (2000): 217–38. On the particular relationship between white Italian men and black Ethiopian and Eritrean women, see Giulia Barrera, Dangerous liaisons. Colonial Concubinage in Eritrea 1890–1941 (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1996); Barrera , Colonial Affairs: Italian Men, Eritrean Women, and the Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea 1885–1941 (Evanston: Northwestern University, 2002), 101. For a general discussion of the intersection and mutual reinforcement of racial and gender hierarchies within interracial colonial relationships, see Alloula Malek, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Stoler , Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power; McClintock , Imperial Leather.

  65. 65.

    As Giulietta Stefani has pointed out, unlike in French and British colonial contexts, there was little to no “fear of the black” among Italians (see in general the work of Ann Laura Stoler, Anne McClintock, and Radhika Mohanram). On the contrary, what was seen as a serious threat was the possibility that Italians could “become black” as a result of being away from home and getting too attached to the colony, thus earning the label of “insabbiati.” See Stefani , Colonia per maschi, 79–86.

  66. 66.

    While Gabriele Proglio has underlined the lack of interviews with Eritrean women regarding their perceptions of the colonisers’ whiteness and the attribution of colour in the colonies—see Proglio , Memorie oltre confine, 70–98—several Italian researchers have recently attempted to fill this gap: these include Giulia Barrera (see her PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1996), Barbara de Vivo, and Sabrina Marchetti. See Barbara de Vivo and Sabrina Marchetti, eds., “Io noi voi. Intervista a donne della diaspora eritrea nell’Italia post-coloniale,” interviews with Domenica Ghidei Biidu and Elisabetta Hagos, Zapruder 23 (2010): 144–52; Sabrina Marchetti, Le ragazze di Asmara. Lavoro, donne, e migrazioni postcoloniali (Roma: Ediesse, 2012).

  67. 67.

    As noted by Sòrgoni , Poidimani, and Stefani , some figures such as Alberto Pellera and his struggle to grant Italian status to children after the 1936–37 laws represent a striking example of this. See Barbara Sòrgoni, “Italian Anthropology and the Africans: The Early Colonial Period,” in Palumbo, A Place in the Sun, 62–80. Sòrgoni, Etnografia e colonialismo. L’Eritrea e l’Etiopia di Alberto Pollera 1873–1939 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001); Nicoletta Poidimani, Difendere la ‘razza’. Identità razziale e politiche sessuali nel progetto imperiale di Mussolini (Roma: Sensibili alle foglie, 2009); Stefani , Colonia per maschi.

  68. 68.

    See Gabriella Campassi and Maria T. Sega, “Uomo bianco, donna nera. L’immagine della donna nella fotografia coloniale,” Rivista di storia e critica della fotografia 4, no. 5 (1983): 54–62. On the construction of blackness and colonial women, see also Elisa Bini, “Fonti fotografiche e storia delle donne: la rappresentazione delle donne nere nelle fotografie coloniali italiane” (report, meeting of the Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea SISSCO, Lecce, 2003).

  69. 69.

    See Victoria de Grazia, “Le patriarcat fasciste. Mussolini et les italiens 1922–1940,” in Histoire de femmes en Occidente, ed. George Duby and Michelle Perrot (Paris: Plon, 1992), 5: 115–42.

  70. 70.

    For a discussion of Law 2590 of 1937 criminalising “madamism” (together with all kinds of intimate relationships between colonisers and the colonised) and a comparative analysis of Laws 1933, 1937, and 1940 regarding the protection of mixed-race children and their progressive exclusion from the right to Italian citizenship, see the remarkably detailed analysis by De Napoli in La prova della razza, 63–82, 205–9.

  71. 71.

    Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh, “Il meticciato nell’Italia contemporanea. Storia, memoria e cultura di massa,” in Petrovich Njegosh , “La ‘realtà’ trasnazionale,” 146.

  72. 72.

    In line with this, homosexuality was framed as “treason against lineage.” See Daniele Petrosino, “Traditori della stirpe. Il razzismo contro gli omosessuali nella stampa del Fascismo,” in Studi sul razzismo italiano, ed. Luciano Casali and Alberto Burgio (Bologna: CLUEB, 1996), 89–107.

  73. 73.

    On Italian youth and fascist organisations, see Alessio Ponzio, Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015).

  74. 74.

    See “Al popolo di Lucania,” in Mussolini , Scritti e discorsi, August 27, 1936, 10: 161–4.

  75. 75.

    See Ben-Ghiat , Fascist Modernities, 157–206. On Mussolini’s eugenics, see also Gillette, Racial Theories, 40–3.

  76. 76.

    Pende, Bonifica, 204.

  77. 77.

    Pende, Bonifica, 107.

  78. 78.

    Pende, Bonifica, 110.

  79. 79.

    Pende, Bonifica, 120.

  80. 80.

    Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 82.

  81. 81.

    Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 83.

  82. 82.

    Mussolini was explicit in this regard in his “Discorso dell’ascensione,” 41–2.

  83. 83.

    As part of the fight against birth control, abortion, and infanticide, and in line with RDL 6/11/1926, several laws were passed: no. 1848, public safety Laws L. 23/6/1927, no. 1070, and RDL 19/10/1930, no. 1398 of the Rocco penal code. Under Titolo X, Dei delitti contro l’integrità e la sanità della stirpe, in Libro II of the Rocco penal code, abortion and birth control were criminal offences.

  84. 84.

    The well-known art. 587, in Titolo IX, Dei delitti contro la moralità pubblica e il buon costume, of Libro II of the Rocco penal code, 1930.

  85. 85.

    In accordance with Law 6/6/1929, no. 1024 and RDL. 21/8/1937, no. 1542.

  86. 86.

    In 1926, Nicola Pende founded the Biotypological Orthogenetic Institute in Genoa, which was relocated to Rome in 1935.

  87. 87.

    Law 27/5/1929 no. 847.

  88. 88.

    Law for the assistance and protection of foundlings (RDL 8/5/27 no. 798 and RDL. 29/12/27 no. 2822).

  89. 89.

    The last two measures were clearly aimed at officialising illegal families and protecting maternity. Similar legislation included a tax on bachelors (RDL. 19/12/1926, no. 2132, and following measure), the outlawing of homosexual practices (Penal Code, 1931), tax exemptions and reductions for large families (L. 14/6/1928, no. 1312, and RDL. 21/8/1937, no. 1542); changes to the inheritance tax to favour direct inheritance (RDL. 20/8/1923, no. 1802); measures concerning welfare: rewards for marriage and births from the State and other public entities (OMNI and local authorities); preferential treatment on lists for public housing to multiple-child families; increased unemployment benefits with special allowances for dependent children (RDL. 4/2/1937, no. 463). For an exhaustive interpretation of these measures, see Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 42–115.

  90. 90.

    Françoise Thébaud, introduction to “La nationalisation des femmes,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident. Le XXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1992), 13–23. The process of “nationalising” women’s bodies, as argued by Cristina Lombardi-Diop, alternately celebrated three different figures: the country housewife, a class-less model of urbanised and modernised femininity, and, starting in the 1930s, the idealised figure of the female citizen. Ideally, these figures were to blend beyond the confines of class and conform to the (heavily racialised) national prototype of femininity. See Lombardi-Diop , “Pioneering Female Modernity,” 146.

  91. 91.

    Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 94–5.

  92. 92.

    It is interesting to note how Pende himself places a “racial” value on all fascist policies up until 1933, such as land reclamation, laws against bachelorhood and sexual perversion, maternity policies, and infrastructure aimed at supporting the race and helping it flourish. See Pende, Bonifica, 240ff.

  93. 93.

    Puwar, Space Invaders.

  94. 94.

    Monica Di Barbora, “Colonizzare la bellezza. Fascismo e estetica femminile tra razza e classe (1935–1941)” (paper presented at the symposium Le esclusioni della bellezza, co-organised by InteRGRace, CIRSGE, MODI, Department of Education Studies, University of Bologna, June 5, 2015).

  95. 95.

    Giuliani, “L’italiano negro,” 21–66.

  96. 96.

    de Grazia , “Le patriarcat fasciste,” 115–42.

  97. 97.

    de Grazia , “Le patriarcat fasciste,” 138–41.

  98. 98.

    “Fascist agrarianism, having assumed as an ideal model not so much the farmers […] as the patriarchal sharecropper and smallholder families, explicitly aimed at imposing a traditional, pre-modern, rigidly hierarchal gender and social order.” Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 73. Pende, Bonifica, 126–7, clearly references the praising of Southern country housewives in opposition to the (unnatural) sexual equality of urbanised housewives.

  99. 99.

    On this topic, see Ferdinando Loffredo’s arguments in Politica della Famiglia (Milano: Bompiani, 1938). As Bellassai reminds us, the internal inclination towards a Darwinist-inspired school of thought that “grouped together in one unsettling scenario ‘masculine’ women, ‘savage’ populations and human species that were considered inferior along the evolutionary ladder,” was already widespread during the belle époque, distinctly nurturing nationalist thinking on virility. Bellassai , L’invenzione della virilità, 47. On the Catholic Church’s position on madamism, see Lucia Ceci, Il papa non deve parlare. Chiesa, Fascismo e guerra d’Etiopia (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 2010).

  100. 100.

    The film critic Giovanni Aristarco wrote that she was “the mother of ‘race’ in general, not so much of the farmers alone as of the ‘good master’ of ancient nobility who, born in the countryside, is a feudatory, a noble lord to whom they are devoted.” Guido Aristarco, Il cinema fascista. Il prima e il dopo (Bari: Dedalo, 1996), 69.

  101. 101.

    See Zagarrio, Cinema e Fascismo, 56.

  102. 102.

    Annabella Gioia, Donne senza qualità. Immagini femminili nell’archivio storico dell’Istituto Luce (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2010), 822, 26ff.

  103. 103.

    See Mario Lupano and Alessandra Vaccari, Una giornata moderna. Moda e stili nell’Italia fascista (Bologna: Damiani, 2009) and Sofia Gnoli, Eleganza fascista. La moda dagli anni Venti alla fine della guerra (Roma: Carocci, 2017).

  104. 104.

    Giuliani, “L’italiano negro,” 21–66.

  105. 105.

    Maria Elena D’Amelio, “Belle e dannate. Donne di potere nel cinema storico-mitologico italiano,” in Non solo Dive. Pioniere del cinema italiano, ed. Monica Dall’Asta (Bologna: Cineteca di Bologna, 2009), 305–13. See also Maria Elena D’Amelio, Ercole, il divo. Dall’antica Grecia al cinema italiano degli anni sessanta (Serravalle: AIEP, 2012).

  106. 106.

    Di Chiara , Peplum , 40.

  107. 107.

    Di Chiara , Peplum , 114. See also Oscar Lapeña Marchena, Guida al cinema peplum : Ercole, Ursus, Sansone e Maciste alla conquista di Atlantide (Roma: Profondo Rosso, 2009), 59–60.

  108. 108.

    Labanca , “Italian Colonial Internment,” 34.

  109. 109.

    Nicola Labanca, “L’Impero del fascismo. Lo stato degli studi,” in L’Impero fascista. Italia ed Etiopia (1935–1941), ed. Riccardo Bottoni (Bologna: il Mulino, 2009), 43ff.

  110. 110.

    Accordingly, it may be argued that fascist Imperialism was an important element in the construction of the figure of the patriot-and-coloniser underlying the fascist idea of citizenship. See Goglia and Grassi, Il colonialismo italiano, 203–54 and Nicola Labanca, “Constructing Mussolini’s New Man in Africa? Italian Memories of the fascist War in Ethiopia,” Italian Studies 61, no. 2 (2006): 230–1.

  111. 111.

    As previously highlighted, while Libya was considered “already Italian,” Ethiopia was included in the fascist project known as “Magna Italia.” The situation changed for Libya when the colonial legislation of 1939–40 (no. 1004/1939 and no. 822/1940) was brought in line with other instances of colonial domination in the name of the racial conception introduced by Il manifesto degli scienziati razzisti and the adoption of Aryanism as a state doctrine. See Angelo del Boca, Gli italiani in Libia; Gianpaolo Calchi-Novati, “Amministrazione e politica indigena in Libia nella prima fase del colonialismo italiano 1911–1919,” Studi urbinati di Scienze giuridiche, politiche ed economiche 57–8, no. 41–2 (1988–1990): 361–98; Paolo Capuzzo, “Sudditanza e cittadinanza nell’esperienza coloniale italiana dell’età liberale,” Clio 31, no. 1 (1995): 65–95.

  112. 112.

    See Haile M. Larebo, The Building of an Empire: Italian Policy and Practice in Ethiopia 1935–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); and Larebo, “Empire building and Its Limitations: Ethiopia 1935–1941,” in Ben-Ghiat and Fuller , Italian Colonialism, 83–94.

  113. 113.

    See Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassel, 1999); Lorenzo Veracini, “Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation,” Borderlands e-journal 6, no. 2 (2006).

  114. 114.

    In Pierre-André Taguieff, Le Racisme. Un exposé pour comprendre, un essai pour réfléchir (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), and Wolfe, Settler Colonialism.

  115. 115.

    Both in terms of “the colonisers’ right to settle and the success of their establishment in the territory,” and in terms of “the conquest of the secrets of antiquity and origins of civilisation”—which explain the English, French, and Italian obsession with archaeology. These issues are amply discussed in Spadaro, Una colonia italiana.

  116. 116.

    I am referring to the campaigns in Libya (1922–32), the operations against Somalian resistance in Mijjertein (1926–28), the war against the Ethiopian Empire (1935–36), the failed attempts to overcome the Ethiopian resistance movement (1936–41), not to mention violence perpetrated against the population on a daily basis—rape, forced labour, kidnappings, segregation, and confinement in camps, political assassinations, summary executions, deportations, theft, and mutilation. On the extreme violence suffered by the Libyan, Ethiopian, and Eritrean populations at the hands of Italian colonisers see, amongst others, Angelo del Boca, “Le leggi razziali nell’impero di Mussolini ,” in Il Regime fascista. Storia e storiografia, ed. Angelo del Boca, Massimo Legnani, Mario G. Grossi and Enzo Collotti (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1995), 329–51; Angelo del Boca, ed., I gas di Mussolini. Il Fascismo e la guerra d’Etiopia (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996); Del Boca , Italiani brava gente. Un mito duro a morire (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005); Ali A. Ahmida, “When the Subaltern Speak. Memory of Genocide in Colonial Libya 1929–1933,” Italian Studies 61, no. 2 (2006): 175–90; Labanca , “Italian Colonial Internment,” 27–36; Giorgio Rochat, “The Italian Air Force in the Ethiopian War 1935–1936,” in Ben-Ghiat and Fuller , Italian Colonialism, 37–46; and Alberto Sbacchi, “Poison Gas and Atrocities in the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935–1936,” in Ben-Ghiat and Fuller , Italian Colonialism, 47–56.

  117. 117.

    Wolfe, Settler Colonialism, 168–90. For example, in the case of the repression in Libya in 1911, massacres and atrocities were functional to the so-called colonial lesson and to the conservation of power but not to the evacuation of the land for appropriation on behalf of Italian settlers.

  118. 118.

    See, in general, Giulia Barrera, “Patrilinearità, razza e identità: l’educazione degli italo-eritrei durante il colonialismo italiano, 1885–1934,” Quaderni storici, no. 1 (2002), 21–55; Giulietta Stefani, “Italiani e Ascari. Percezioni e rappresentazioni dei colonizzati nell’Africa Orientale Italiana,” Italian Studies 61, no. 2 (2006), 207–23.

  119. 119.

    Wolfe, Setter Colonialism, 168–90.

  120. 120.

    As Giorgio Rochat commented in 1973, 1930s colonial legislation gave “us Italians the unenviable leadership in producing the most organic racist legislation in the history of colonialism, second only to Nazi racism and the South African apartheid regime in scope, rigor, contempt for man and brutal wickedness.” Giorgio Rochat, Il colonialismo italiano (Torino: Loescher, 1973), 223.

  121. 121.

    Aryanism had always been present amongst the racist doctrines circulating amid fascist intellectuals. We can distinguish between “spiritual” Aryanism, represented by Julius Evola, Carlo Costamagna, and Giovanni Preziosi, and the “biologistic” Aryanism professed by Telesio Interlandi, Giulio Cogni, Giovanni Preziosi, and Giorgio Almirante. In both cases, racist theorisations based on a conceptualisation of pure and exclusive, self-reflexive whiteness, defined non-Aryans as non-human and were very much in line with Nazi Aryanism. Either way, it is necessary to remember, as argued by Olindo De Napoli , that even spiritual Aryanism sought to articulate a specifically “Italian” doctrine, in which the “biological factor” was subordinated to the “spiritual” one. See De Napoli , La prova della razza, 214–18, 225.

  122. 122.

    De Napoli , La prova della razza, 59–90.

  123. 123.

    On the effects of the juridical status of Libya, see Giorgi, L’Africa come carriera, 103–12. On the effects of discrimination and segregation in Eritrea, see Alessandro Volterra, Sudditi coloniali. Ascari eritrei 1935–1941 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2005), 140–54.

  124. 124.

    De Napoli , La prova della razza, 38–39.

  125. 125.

    De Donno , Razza Mediterranea, 405.

  126. 126.

    Roberto Esposito, Bios (Torino: Einaudi, 2004), xiv–xv, 146–57.

  127. 127.

    See Mauro Raspanti, “Il mito ariano nella cultura italiana tra Otto e Novecento,” in Burgio, Nel nome della razza, 75–86; and Luigi Urettini, “Stereotipi antisemiti ne ‘il Mulo,’” in Burgio, Nel nome della razza, 293–308. Maria T. Pichetto, Alle radici dell’odio. Preziosi e Benigni antisemiti (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1983), 11–25, 103–28; and Pichetto, “Giovanni Preziosi e la questione della razza in Italia,” conference proceedings, Avellino-Torella dei Lombardi, November 30–December 2, 2000 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005). De Felice , “Giovanni Preziosi,” 493–555.

  128. 128.

    See Riccardo Bonavita, Spettri dell’altro (Bologna: il Mulino, 2009), 86.

  129. 129.

    See Mussolini , “Roberto Sarfatti,” January 30, 1921, in Opera Omnia, 16:134–6; and Emil Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1932). Of course, anti-Semitism was already present during the early years of Fascism, especially as part of the Aryanist theories I briefly described earlier. Several scholars have written about the fascist movement opening its membership to Jews and about the latter’s support for Fascism, which (as in the case of Renzo Ravenna) came about through their militant participation in the National Soldiers’ Association and their presence in the National Fascist Party up to the drafting of the Manifesto and Racial Laws. Among them, see Ilaria Pavan, Il podestà ebreo: La storia di Renzo Ravenna tra Fascismo e leggi razziali (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 2006).

  130. 130.

    Renzo De Felice, Il Fascismo e l’Oriente: Arabi, ebrei e indiani nella politica di Mussolini (Bologna: il Mulino, 1989), 29–30.

  131. 131.

    De Felice , The Jews , 264. According to De Felice, the Manifesto and racial legislation were a result of Mussolini’s slapdash attitude during their drafting; he had not been advised by his closest associates, but only by the most fervent anti-Semites. In any case, as De Felice explains on page 252, evidence of the Duce’s direct intervention is hinted at by Galeazzo Ciani and confirmed by notes written by Mussolini himself, as well as by the delay between the publication of the Manifesto (July 14) and the publication of the names of the 10 editors and signatories (July 25), a period of time during which the Duce rewrote the document. The version edited by Mussolini is a substantially modified document, as suggested by the fact that two of the signatories—Nicola Pende and Sabato Visco—expressed aversion to the official text.

  132. 132.

    Benito Mussolini, “Discorso semisegreto al consiglio del PNF,” in Opera Omnia, ed. Edoardo and Duilio Susmel (Firenze: La fenice, 1951–1980), 29: 185–96.

  133. 133.

    This does not mean that the Manifesto and the Aryan turn did not enjoy wide support. On this issue, see Giorgio Israel and Pietro Nastasi, Scienza e razza nell’Italia fascista (Bologna: il Mulino, 1998), 99–187.

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    Gaia Giuliani

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Giuliani, G. (2019). Race, Gender, and the Fascist Colonial Imaginary. In: Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy. Mapping Global Racisms. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50917-8_3

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