Emilio Gentile. La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century. Translated by Suzanne Dingee and Jennifer Pudney. George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. Illustrations. xiv + 408 pp. $29.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-299-22814-9.
Reviewed by Joshua Arthurs
Published on H-Nationalism (October, 2009)
Commissioned by Paul Quigley (University of Edinburgh)
Scholars of nationalism are fond of quoting nazione nel XX secolo) is a rigorous examination Massimo d'Azeglio's famous dictum--"We have of what the concepts of "nation" and "Italy" have made Italy, now we have to make Italians"--to il‐ meant across the tumultuous transformations of lustrate the constructed nature of national identi‐ the past century. As Gentile notes in the preface, ty. Similarly, the Risorgimento is often presented the Italian-language edition of this work was writ‐ as a prototypical example of nineteenth-century ten against the backdrop of the mid-1990s, a peri‐ state formation. With a few exceptions, however, od in which many Italian commentators were the study of Italian nationalism has remained rel‐ proclaiming la morte della patria ("the death of atively untouched by constructivist theories of the the fatherland"). At the end of the twentieth cen‐ nation, and tends to be approached either via the tury, few residents of the peninsula identifed lens of political and social history or through in- with the nation, other than during the World Cup depth studies of such protagonists as Camillo di every four years. When La Grande Italia was frst Cavour, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibal‐ published in 1997, then, the "rise and fall" of the di.[1] A thorough study of Italy's "imagined com‐ national idea in Italy was a pressing contempo‐ munities" or "invented traditions" has yet to be rary concern, as it remains today. written. Signifcantly, Gentile's narrative begins not While not explicitly invoking Benedict Ander‐ with nineteenth-century national unifcation but son (Imagined Communities: Refections on the rather in 1911 with the "Jubilee of the Fatherland" Origin and Spread of Nationalism [1991]), Eric that commemorated the fftieth anniversary of Hobsbawm (Nations and Nationalism since 1780: national unifcation. This event provides an ideal Myth, Programme, Reality [1992]), and others, setting in which to examine the liberal monar‐ Emilio Gentile's La Grande Italia (originally pub‐ chy's patriotic rhetoric and its self-presentation as lished in 1997 as La grande Italia: il mito della the fulfllment of the Risorgimento. Marked by in‐ H-Net Reviews ternational expositions in Turin, Florence, and tution of "Fascist" for "Italian" reached its peak-- Rome, the jubilee was a celebration of a dynamic and its moment of crisis--during the Second World and unifed Italy ready to take its place alongside War, when Mussolini invoked the "the 'Fascist the Great Powers of Europe. Above all, it aspired war' and 'Fascist victims' almost as if the war had to the "conquest of modernity," to a progressive been waged for the party rather than to save the and democratic vision of the nation that chal‐ people and the Italian nation" (p. 200). lenged stereotypes of Italian backwardness and Given the excesses of Fascism, it is unsurpris‐ indolence (p. 20). A particularity of Italian nation‐ ing that postwar Italy took a difdent stance to‐ alism was the tension between an inferiority com‐ ward nationalism and statism. The bitter struggle plex vis-à-vis northern Europe and a sense of cul‐ between the Resistance and the Nazi-backed Ital‐ tural superiority deriving from the peninsula's ian Social Republic belied the myth of national glorious historical and artistic heritage. unity, and most Italians preferred to retreat from The "new" Italy, therefore, had to overcome public life and focus on their private interests; the "old" Italy on its path to modernity, and this this also enabled them to present themselves as challenge elicited a range of responses that would innocent victims of Mussolini's regime. Militarism shape the country for the next several decades. and authoritarianism were believed to be embed‐ Gentile surveys the various positions that ded into the nation's "genetic code" (p. 239). Nev‐ emerged in the early twentieth century, from the ertheless, as Gentile ably demonstrates, the coun‐ "modernist nationalism" of avant-garde aesthetes, try's anti-Fascist leadership after 1945 strove to like Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's Futurists, who rehabilitate the principle of nationality and de‐ sought the creation of a New Italian, to imperial‐ fend national unity. Most signifcantly, this includ‐ ists who dreamt of an expansionist state, to hu‐ ed both the Communist Party, notwithstanding its manists who saw themselves as the guardians of internationalist and pro-Soviet orientation, and Mazzinian liberty. the Christian Democrats, despite Catholicism's tra‐ All of these currents, in turn, either fed into ditional antipathy toward the Italian state. A new or were suppressed by Fascism, and the middle mythical image of the Italian people was erected-- section of the book is devoted to Benito Mussoli‐ no longer based on imperial conquest and mili‐ ni's regime. While Fascism is typically presented tary discipline, but on the heroism of the Resis‐ as a pathological form of hyper-nationalism, Gen‐ tance and the nation's victimization by Fascism. tile argues counterintuitively (though persuasive‐ Gentile concludes the book in 1961, with the cele‐ ly) that it also represented the decline of the na‐ bration of the centenary of national unifcation. tional ideal. Even as it exalted italianità and ro‐ By this point, the anti-Fascist coalition had been manità (Italianness and Romanness), Fascism "de‐ torn apart by Cold War politics, and with it, any manded exclusive control over patriotism" lead‐ prospect of a coherent and unitary identity for Re‐ ing to "the 'Fascistization' of the nation, institu‐ publican Italy--a state of afairs that seemingly ex‐ tionalizing the role of the party as the pillar of the tends into the present. new state and the creator of a new Italy" (pp. Gentile is extremely prolifc, and those famil‐ 152-153). Mussolini's regime sought to remake the iar with his other works (in English, see, for ex‐ country in its own image, subjugating it to Fascist ample, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist ideology and state authority. More than a nation, Italy [1996] and The Struggle for Modernity: Na‐ Italy would be a hierarchical and universal com‐ tionalism, Futurism and Fascism [2003]) will not munity, the core of a new order emanating from be surprised at his encyclopedic grasp of modern Rome and transforming all of Europe. The substi‐ Italian political culture or his broad and ambi‐
2 H-Net Reviews tious vision of national history. By the same token, solini's regime, and its aftermath, than about Ital‐ this book also shares many of its predecessors' ian nationalism in the longue durée. limitations. One criticism that is often leveled A fnal shortcoming--or rather, a missed op‐ against Gentile is that he tends to focus solely on portunity--is that the book has not been substan‐ elite discourse, and refuses to consider how ideo‐ tially updated in this new version. The present logical debates "from above" relate to popular re‐ edition appears over a decade after the Italian ception "from below." La Grande Italia is no ex‐ original, and one would have thought that the in‐ ception in this regard. Despite his claims that the tervening years would have provided ample op‐ liberal state successfully instilled a belief in the portunity for Gentile to refect on more contempo‐ "religion of fatherland," and passing nods to insti‐ rary events, from 1968 and the "Years of Lead" to tutions, like schools, the army, and the press, the post-Cold War collapse of the "First Republic," there is virtually no evidence of how everyday to the emergence of the separatist Lega Nord and Italians responded to the national project, or how Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. Concluding the they negotiated between national, regional, politi‐ narrative in 1961 would seem to suggest that Ital‐ cal, and religious identities (p. 72). The persistent ian national identity has remained static for al‐ divide between l'Italia reale and l'Italia legale-- most half a century. between the authentic nation and its "paper" or Even with its biases and limitations, La ofcial version--is not sufciently bridged here. Grande Italia is a masterful survey of the national One might also question Gentile's rather sun‐ idea in Italy--an idea that has always been con‐ ny view of Risorgimento and liberal nationalism, tested, appropriated, and reframed. To scholars of which he sees as an enlightened "fusion between modern Italy, it builds an efective bridge between nation and freedom" (p. 48); this despite the fact the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and be‐ that Italian unifcation was largely the result of a tween the story of national unifcation, Fascism, conquest--by force of arms--led by a conservative and the postwar Republic. To scholars of national‐ monarchy (Piedmont) with little sympathy for ism, it ofers insight into one of the most impor‐ participatory democracy, and imposed without tant and compelling manifestations of the nation‐ signifcant popular consent or enthusiasm. Gen‐ al idea in Europe. tile's championing of nineteenth-century liberal‐ Note ism means that all challenges to the prevailing or‐ der--whether from socialists, Catholics, or republi‐ [1]. See, for example, Nicholas Doumanis, cans--are portrayed as pathological adversaries of Italy (London: Arnold, 2001); and Alberto Banti, democracy rather than expressions of genuine La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e tensions and divisions within the body politic. onore alle origini dell'Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, Similarly, Gentile repeatedly accuses Fascism of 2000). "ideologizing" the national myth, as though its previous incarnations were somehow not "ideo‐ logical" themselves. The periodization of the nar‐ rative--from the eve of World War One to the af‐ termath of World War Two, with Fascism at the center of its "parabola"--reinforces the sense that this book might actually be more about the demise of the liberal ideal, the excesses of Mus‐
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Citation: Joshua Arthurs. Review of Gentile, Emilio. La Grande Italia: The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. October, 2009.
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