Cristina Della Coletta. World's Fairs Italian Style: The Great Exhibitions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860-1915. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. x + 351 pp. $74.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8020-9115-4.
Reviewed by Jonathan Morris
Published on H-Urban (September, 2009)
Commissioned by Alexander Vari (Marywood University)
From the 1851 Great Exhibition at London's economies and consumption systems," Della Co‐ Crystal Palace onward, the World's Fairs interna‐ letta does not discuss the role of Italian World's tional trade expositions fulflled dual roles as dis‐ Fairs in promoting consumer values or dissemi‐ plays of the latest products of the modern indus‐ nating new products and practices into Italian so‐ trial world and depictions of "national narratives" ciety (p. 4). Rather, her focus throughout the work that underlined the host nation's claim for consid‐ is on the second role of the World's Fairs as propa‐ eration as part of the avant-garde of international gators of national narratives, so that "by examin‐ capitalism. The huge number of visitors that such ing how Italian expositions masterminded Italy's fairs attracted made them as much instruments of process of nation formation from the margins of consumer education and political communication industrialised Europe yet within the ideological as of commercial exchange. As Cristina Della Co‐ context of modern nationalism and imperialism letta rightly recognizes, analyzing the staging of [it] ofer[s] ways to individualise and diversify such World's Fairs in Italy, at a time when the what has often been constructed as the West's country was still situated on the edge of the global monolithic and univocal 'discourse of Empire'" (p. economic core, ought to provide a wealth of op‐ 3). portunities for rereading the ways in which Italy's Although this aim is somewhat more limited, initial transition toward a consumer society was it should at least have had the efect of focusing experienced. the analysis. Readers may not be as surprised as Disappointingly, despite acknowledging the Della Coletta appears to be by her fnding that role of World's Fairs as "catalysts of popular taste such expositions also "inspired the development and promoters of mass culture [that] ... gathered of subordinate discourses that challenged the ab‐ all social classes around bourgeois values and solute ideological unity and cultural hegemony drew the lower social strata into modern market that fairs presented" to the point that "hybrid H-Net Reviews scripts criss-crossed the imperial divide, under‐ of the evolution of the formats of World's Fairs in mined the binary logic governing its ethos and general, notably the national and imperial narra‐ shattered the topographical duality implied in the tive themes that were developed within them. The notion of a fxed metropolitan centre governing a Turin national exhibition of 1884 forms the cen‐ silent and subordinated periphery" (p. 5). They terpiece of this analysis, interpreted as an attempt will, however, I suspect, be taken aback by the by the city to "reconfrm [its] status as the cradle fact that it turns out that over half the book con‐ of the Risorgimento and initiator of the process of sists of two chapters deconstructing the colonially nation formation" in the wake of having lost its inspired outputs of two authors, Emilio Salgari status as capital city to Rome, spectacularly em‐ and Guido Gozzano, whose work has no more bodied in the funicular rising from the city to the than a highly tangential link with Italian World's royal mausoleum at Superga (p. 46). At the same Fairs. time, however, "by portraying itself as the Italian The publishers should have known better capital of labour, Turin aspired to share Manches‐ than to have allowed (persuaded?) Della Coletta ter's industrial might and Paris's cultural charis‐ into using a title that is, at best, an inaccurate de‐ ma, and as such expected recognition in Europe," scription of the book's full content from both a de‐ thus attempting "to correct the idea of Italy as the scriptive and disciplinary perspective. This is not country of 'dolce far niente' by adopting what had so much cultural history as literary criticism in‐ become the standard World's Fair tropes of the formed by a historical perspective. These two ap‐ display of work, productivity and competitive proaches are not (whatever their detractors might achievement as visible signs of a nation's standing think) the same. Furthermore, the format for the on civilisation's ladder, alongside a celebration of scholarly apparatus that the publishers have leisure, pleasure and cultural diversion as marks adopted renders the work close to unreadable. of civilized well-being" (p. 23). The many quotations within the text are given in The site of the fair in the Valentino Park will the original Italian with an English translation in‐ be well known to visitors to the city today as the serted immediately afterward in parenthesis, fol‐ location of the faux medieval castle and village lowed by a Harvard style short citation that then built for the exhibition by the architect Alfredo needs to be located in the bibliography. Of course D'Andrade. As Della Coletta presents it, this was textual analysis of translated material needs to be an attempt to rewrite the city's local medieval his‐ verifable against the original, but using this for‐ tory into a "national past" as an alternative to that mat means that any sense of fow on the page is of Rome, focusing on "reproductions of a canon‐ lost, as the reader is constantly skipping over one ized and concluded world, rather than a colonial or other version of the quotations and has fre‐ reality that was still somewhat fuid" (p. 39). In quently forgotten the beginning of the sentence fact, as her citation from a description of the time by the time s/he reaches the end. Meanwhile, all makes clear, rather more was going on at the cas‐ those references that do not include direct quota‐ tle. She writes: "Workers of the Issel factory from tions take the form of endnotes, which are located Genoa and the Farina factory from Faenza, at the end of the volume. Surely it would have dressed in rough cloth, make terracotta pitchers made sense to have placed the original quotations with a primitive wheel they turn with their foot. here too. At the same time other workers paint vases with The frst of the two chapters that do deal with rough fgures and a blonde heavy-set female vil‐ the World's Fairs is an analysis of expositions in lager takes care of sales. This is the modern world Italy prior to 1911, interspersed with an account that enters the Middle Ages. This is the nineteenth
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century that fantastically returns to the 15th" (p. sior in conjunctions with exhibitions in 1881 and 39). One would have liked, and the author could 1882 respectively), yet there is no mention, let have done, so much more with this: more infor‐ alone any analysis, of Milan's hosting of the mation about the respective factories and their World's Fair in 1906: an inexplicable omission giv‐ products, the workers, the role of contemporary en the objectives of the book. commerce and consumption within this historical Chapter 2 is primarily concerned with the display, and, indeed, the exposition as a whole. staging of the World's Fair in Turin fve years lat‐ Above all, one would have liked to know more er in 1911. The Italian organizers recognized an about the people who bought these items. Accord‐ opportunity for "creating that sense of collective ing to Della Coletta, there were over three million national identity that would overcome (the coun‐ visitors to the exhibition, an extraordinary num‐ try's) endemic regional, historical and cultural ber equivalent to the entire population of Pied‐ fragmentation," while "proposing itself as a viable mont. Who were these people? Why did they member of a larger 'civilisation' of which Great come? How did they consume the exhibits, or Britain and France constituted the models" (p. read the narratives laid out in front of them? On 103). This civilization was exemplifed in imperi‐ all of these issues, the book is virtually silent, alism as much as industrialism, leaving Italy making one wonder if the author is not guilty of again anxious to utilize an opportunity to ad‐ casting these visitors as mere "passive readers" of vance its own claims to already be a colonial pow‐ the narratives she wishes to lay out before us. er, even as the military convoys were leaving Similar questions, nearly all to do with issues Turin to secure Italy's "Fourth Shore" in Libya. of context, are raised by consideration of other This was underlined in three exhibits, each em‐ fairs in Italy during the period and the themes phasizing the degree of authority and structure that emerge from these. An analysis of Edmondo within the existing Italian enclaves in Eritrea and De Amicis's 1880 guide to Turin reads more like a Somalia--a notable departure from previous dis‐ formulaic exercise in the application of the theo‐ plays that tended to contrast chaotic native vil‐ ries of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the lages with the order of the West. A war exhibit, use of description to sort, categorize, and classify situated close to the Somalian village, featured the urban landscape into "harmonious hierar‐ "indigenous policemen, all cleaned up European chies," rather than investigating the degree of cor‐ style," embodying the success of Italy's colonial relation or contradiction between De Amicis's pre‐ mission (p. 100). These representations of Italy's sentation of the city and the concrete realities of imperial ambitions are well deconstructed by Del‐ Turin at the time. Although drawing on many la Coletta, while there is also a fascinating section spectacular examples of the celebration of Italy's on the stage managed return of Luigi Amedeo, scientifc and industrial progress, such as Luigi Duke of Abruzzi's return from his 1898 expedition Manzotti's 1881 "propaganda ballet" Excelsior to the North Pole, essentially orchestrated into a with its scenes of drilling the Mount Cenis tunnel progression through the Italian peninsula de‐ in the Alps, the mixing of diverse exhibitions signed to restore the royalty's reputation in the along with many other sources serves to highlight wake of the social unrest that had swept through omissions and dissipate analysis rather than focus the kingdom during that year. it. For example, one theme running through this However, this chapter again sufers from an and subsequent chapter is the rivalry between attempt to capture a collection of diverse "narra‐ Milan and Turin for the role of leading industrial tives" through reference to a multiplicity of expo‐ city in Italy (exemplifed in their stagings of Excel‐ sitions, which results in a difusion, rather than a
3 H-Net Reviews deepening, of the analysis. The use of evidence why the bourgeoisie had only belatedly invested and implied causalities are often questionable, Rome with "a purely ceremonial and representa‐ while a lot of the contextualization does little tive function" within the 1911 World's Fair, one more than reiterate what we might expect. The that pointed to a "meaningful silence" over the World's Fair was actually divided between Turin, "repressed story of the division between the Rome, and Florence with the other two cities northern and southern parts of the Italian penin‐ mounting exhibits representing the historical and sula "(pp. 87, 86). artistic patrimony of Italy's past, while Turin con‐ One cannot help feeling that an alternative centrated on contemporary commerce and indus‐ and simpler reading would be to refer to the most try. It is not clear how that division was arrived common model for representing Italy after unif‐ at, or how we should "read" it, because Della Co‐ cation--that is to say, the celebration of locality letta does not give us any details on the adminis‐ and region within a national framework (a com‐ trative entities that directed the fairs and the bal‐ mon trope in other Italian exhibitions as the book ance of power within them. Instead, she attempts recognizes). A World's Fair divided between three to decode power relations based on the cultural Italian cities, each utilizing diferent reference manifestations of the exhibitions themselves. points situated in a local context, can be interpret‐ For example, the fair organizers in Turin ed, and, much more important, was surely intend‐ chose to adopt an overarching architectural style ed to be interpreted, not as a competition between based on the Turin baroque while those in Rome them, or as an indicator of their individual def‐ unsurprisingly turned to a Roman one. According ciencies, but of the greater collective unity that to Della Coletta, the choice in Turin was made "ar‐ could be constructed on top of them. The texts guably with the intent to propose the Turin that Della Coletta deconstructs to demonstrate the baroque as the model for a national architectural existence of silent divisions within the country style," though she presents no evidence to justify (such as a joint declaration by the mayors of Turin this assertion (p. 82). Nonetheless, when, well and Rome) were, of course, constructs that were over a decade later, the Fascists also adopted a Ro‐ put together to do precisely the reverse. In this in‐ manized architectural style, this was proof that stance, the act of construction and the power ne‐ "the Turin baroque (had) failed to reactivate its gotiations that lay behind it are of more interest symbolic values in the present and thrust them than deconstructing a document by elaborating forward into the future, and thus could not re‐ contexts of which the reader will be well aware spond to the collective needs and appease the all- (though it is remarkable the voice that she choos‐ too-modern anxieties of united Italy" (p. 86). es to use to illustrate those southerners excluded There are two problems here: frstly, there is from the prevailing narrative within the World's no evidence that such a contest was intended by Fair is that of Don Fabrizio di Salina, protagonist the exposition organizers; and secondly, why are of Di Lampedusa's The Leopard--that is to say, a the Fascists given the power of decision as to who fctional Sicilian prince from a novel published in is the winner? At the very least, this sounds like the 1950s). Whig history. There is also an implicit contradic‐ The unanswered question remains that of tion in the analysis; here Rome is presented as be‐ how the Worlds' Fair narrative was received. The ing capable of representing Italian modernity in a Turin exhibits may have "provided fairgoers with way that Turin cannot, while literally, on the next well-engineered and sanitized adventures and page, Della Coletta argues that the superior safe returns home," but again we learn nothing strength of the northern marketplace explained about who these visitors actually were (p. 119).
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Sadly we learn very little more about the Western industrial might on one side and their World's Fairs, or Turin, over the course of the sec‐ colonial exhibits on the other" (p. 225). ond half of the volume. The chapter on Salgari is This comparison of the narrative styles within by far the best in the book, arguing that the story Gozzano, Salgari, and the World's Fairs exposi‐ of Sandokan, the deposed prince-cum-pirate from tions, is, of course, the peg on which Della Coletta Borneo who is the hero of the popular "Jungle" cy‐ hangs her overarching analysis. Yet given that, as cle of novels chronicling his confict with the she identifes, World's Fairs contained multiple, British antihero James Brooke, is modelled on conficting, simultaneous narratives, even within Alexandre Dumas's account of Giuseppe Garibal‐ each individual edition, this hardly brings the di's early life as a rebel in Latin America. The fol‐ work together, as it is simply too difuse an argu‐ lowing chapter, of almost one hundred pages, on ment to carry any weight. The reader becomes Gozzano, focuses on the 1917 posthumous publi‐ more and more conscious that the only real link cation of sketches from his journey through India, between Salgari and the World's Fair is that he entitled Verso la cuna del mondo (Toward the cra‐ may have based a description of a giant telescope dle of the world), which argued that: "The West‐ in his futuristic novel Le meraviglie del Duemila erner who returns to India does not recognize his (The wonders of the twenty-frst century [1907]) cradle any longer.... I am well aware that these on one he saw at the 1884 exhibition, and that Hindus are Aryans like us, our brothers, but Gozzano wrote about the 1911 fair as part of his brothers who refuse to hold out their hand to us. journalistic duties--albeit this piece is not much We are too diferent. Too many millennia separate cited in the text. This is not nearly sufcient a con‐ us. We said farewell to one another too long ago" nection to justify the title and the implied unity of (p. 201). the work. What Della Coletta wants us to appreciate about both Salgari and Gozzano is that despite their apparent deviations from convention--Sal‐ gari making his leading protagonist a nonwhite Muslim with an Anglo-Italian bride, Gozzano seeking the cradle of the world not in Greece but in Asia--both share many instinctive prejudices of the time. Sandokan's anti-British perspective ap‐ pealed to Italian readers during the 1880s when their country's own imperial ambitions were held in check by the same rival, but Salgari's "formula‐ ic narrative world thrives on a notion of racial dif‐ ference based on a crude moral binarism (just) like Ian Fleming" (p. 145). Gozzano "engaged in a symbolic practice that World's Fairs repeatedly employed when putting together their ephemeral shows ... making his narrative the quintessential case study of all the best, and all the worst, that the relationship between East and West had to of‐ fer ... confrming ... the binary and oppositional hermeneutics that expressed itself visually in many World's Fairs layouts with their displays of
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Citation: Jonathan Morris. Review of Coletta, Cristina Della. World's Fairs Italian Style: The Great Exhibitions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860-1915. H-Urban, H-Net Reviews. September, 2009.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23510
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