ITALIAN MODERNITIES Competing Narratives of Nationhood

ITALIAN MODERNITIES Competing Narratives of Nationhood ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND ITALIAN ITALIAN Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead , New York, USA This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of spe- cialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fi elds of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14835 Rosario Forlenza • Bjørn Thomassen Italian Modernities Competing Narratives of Nationhood Rosario Forlenza Bjørn Thomassen Columbia University Roskilde University , Denmark New York , NY , USA University of Padua , Italy Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-1-137-50155-4 ISBN 978-1-137-49212-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49212-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016916082 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image © Michele Castellani / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York To Friendship PREF ACE This book has been written as a dialogue that started many years ago. More precisely, it started during a morning run along the Arno River in 2009 when we both participated in a summer school on political anthropology IPASS, organized by Agnes Horvath. During the run, we realized the extent to which our ideas and interests converged. We shared the same passion for anything relating to Italian society and history, from football, to cooking, to party politics, and to religion. It even turned out that Rosario was born and bred very close to the town in the Cilento area where Bjørn had married into an Italian family. Contursi Terme and Pollica are both small hill-towns of the Salerno region less than 60 miles apart. Moreover, both of us had lived and studied for longer periods in both Rome and Central Italy (Viterbo and Florence) and in the Italian North-East (Trieste and Padova), where we also both have family. We also quickly realized that we liked to read and think across the dis- ciplines. In fact, this book is not easy to place in a disciplinary category. It is evidently a book on history, with hours of archival work behind it, but as the reader will hopefully appreciate, the analysis we try to provide moves between social theory, anthropology, and philosophy. In fact, one of the main aims of this book is to bring the wider fi eld of Italian studies closer to important developments in social and anthropological theories, and vice versa, to situate Italy as a pivotal case for any meaningful attempt to theorize modernity. A dialogue is always an open space. The dialogical landscape we have been moving within has been animated by a polyphony of voices that have stimulated our thinking and feeling in ways that are diffi cult to pin down vii viii PREFACE with words. We have been constantly inspired by the ideas and thoughts of our friends and colleagues: Arpad Szakolczai, Agnes Horvath, and Harald Wydra. Special thanks also go to our colleagues with whom we have, during the writing of this book, been working intensely on a European research project related to memory and identity in contemporary Europe, a project with many links to the concerns of this book: Christian Karner, Aline Sierp, Marcin Napiórkowski, Giorgos Bithymitris, Zinovia Lialiouti, and Leyla Neyzi. While working on this book we have both worked at or been affi liated with a host of institutions, providing us with computers, libraries, coffee machines, wonderful colleagues, and a sense of home in a world of con- stant movement. Bjørn received generous support from the Department of Social Science and Business at Roskilde University toward the writing of the book and also benefi ted from a research semester spent at the Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. Rosario found support and encouragement on both sides of the ocean—at Cambridge, Padova, Princeton, NYU, and Columbia. Because we have never worked at the same institution, much of our dialogue has been electronic, ping-ponging texts and ideas across the Atlantic. However, the substantial ideas behind this book took shape during encounters at conferences or workshops around the world during the last couple of years. In fact, since our morning run in Florence, we have been running and working together in London, Nottingham, Copenhagen, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington. There is an extent to which we should dedicate this book to our running shoes, but this is not the place for brand advertisement. We have been discussing our ideas behind the book with friends and colleagues in all these cities and express our gratitude to all of them. They are too many to be named—they know who they are. The proofs—and how could it be otherwise?—were fi nished in Jerusalem. Writing a book together is sometimes hard work. However, it is also a gracious experience, as co-authorship most fundamentally grows out of unbroken cycles of gift giving. As Arnold van Gennep wrote long ago, anticipating his friend Marcel Mauss, the circulation of goods, objects, and ideas serves to create continuous social bonds. Gift giving is the con- fi rmation of a bond, and ‘to accept a gift is to be bound to the giver’. True friendship emanates from gift giving. For the Greeks, philia concerned not only friendship between two human beings but also a sense of love, PREFACE ix vocation, and loyalty toward one’s family, toward one’s profession, and toward one’s political community. Indeed, we stand on the shoulders of colleagues within our profession and their love of wisdom, humbly build- ing on to generations of accumulated knowledge. We have been helped by and acted within our concrete political communities. Our families have been patient and loving all the way through. The family, as we all know, is indeed an important Italian institution. It also remains an existential anchorage point. That is why we dedicate this book to friendship, to philia . Not only to our own friendship, but to that universal value, to that bond without which human existence would lose all value. CONTENTS 1 Into Italy, into the Modern 1 2 Liberal Modernity 23 3 Catholic Modernities: Epics of a Christian Nation 57 4 Gramsci and the Italian Road to Socialist Modernity 91 5 Fascist Modernity 119 6 Frictions of Modernity: World War II as Historical Juncture 149 7 Competing Modernities: Postwar Italy and the Struggle over a Divided Past 179 8 Fragile Modernities: Critique, Crisis, and Emancipatory Politics 209 xi xii CONTENTS 9 After Modernity? Nationhood in the Post-Cold War Era 247 10 What If We Were Never Modern? 271 Name Index 283 Subject Index 291 CHAPTER 1 Into Italy, into the Modern Any visitor to the picturesque Umbrian town of Spoleto, elegantly tossed against the Apennine foothills, will eventually fi nd him or herself in front of the Cathedral of Saint Mary Assumption. Before entering, it is impos- sible not to contemplate the façade. The most striking feature of the upper façade is certainly the portrait of Christ giving a Benediction , signed by a certain Solsternus. But what is really striking is not only the portrait itself, but evenly so the inscription below, which is very easy to miss, but which reads as follows: Hæc est picture quam fecit fat placitura Doctor Solfernus hac fummus in arte modernus Annis inventis cum feptem mille duecentis This picture which will please well Was made by Doctor Solfernus, the ablest of the Moderns in this Art In the year 1207. In other words, in the early thirteenth century, there lived in Umbria a certain doctor Solfernus who thought of himself as a modern person. It is not easy to know what exactly he meant by this; a thorough discussion of this nontrivial question is much beyond what we can or will discuss in the present book. The point we want to make is a more general one. Discourses of modernity as applied to Italy in the ‘modern period’ have mostly missed the mark, cataloging Italy as a ‘latecomer to modernity’, © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1 R. Forlenza, B.

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