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“Well, Then Foibe?“ Giorno Del Ricordo and the Eternal Return of the Social Drama of Foibe in Italy

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“Well, Then Foibe?“ Giorno Del Ricordo and the Eternal Return of the Social Drama of Foibe in Italy FACULTY OF SOCIAL STUDIES “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Master's Thesis FRANCESCO DE VIDO UČO 486604 UČO: 486604 Supervisor: Dr. Werner Binder Department of Sociology Cultural Sociology Brno 2021 1 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Bibliographic Record Author: Francesco De Vido UČO 486604 Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University Department of Sociology Title of Thesis: “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Degree Programme: Cultural Sociology Supervisor: Dr. Werner Binder Academic Year: 2021 Number of Pages: 89 Keywords: Collective memory, Cultural trauma, Italian his- tory, Social drama, Collective suffering, Italian newspapers, Cultural representations, Foibe 1 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Abstract This thesis examines the process of cultural construction and symbolic representation that in the last decades turned the manifold violent events known as Foibe into an Italian national tragedy. Since the begin- ning, cultural representations worked as scripts to code, weight and nar- rate Foibe as deep evil, transforming, in the Italians’eyes, various epi- sodes of collective suffering into a unique “trauma drama”. The establish- ment of a commemoration day, called Giorno del Ricordo, in 2004 aimed to give recognition and symbolic reparation to the trauma victims and survivors after a 50-year-long latency. Despite becoming a fundamental step of the trauma drama, the commemoration day triggered a heated societal conflict that took soon the shape of a social drama. Through an interpretative analysis, this thesis aims to show how symbolic represen- tations and tragic emplotment of the events in Italian newspapers’ arti- cles both strengthen the trauma drama and trigger the social drama of Foibe. 2 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Statutory Declaration I hereby declare that I have written the submitted Master's Thesis con- cerning the topic of “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN IT- ALY independently. All the sources used for the purpose of finishing this thesis have been adequately referenced and are listed in the Bibliog- raphy. In Brno, 13 January 2021 ....................................... Francesco De Vido UČO 486604 1 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr. Werner Binder, for his precious guidance. My sincere thanks go, then, to my family, for unconditionally trusting and supporting me both in my studies and in my growth path. To my friends Arghavan, Angela and Luz, who made my years in Brno lighter and fuller at the same time. To Kristýna, the most precious inter- locutor, friend and support I could have in this last year. To Kristýna, Klàra, Nasťa (and Smog), who made „La Tana Nora“ the best place where I could spend this challenging 2020. “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Table of Contents List of Images 7 List of Terms and Acronyms 8 1 Introduction 9 2 The Backdrop of Foibe 14 2.1 Account of the events until 1943 ......................................................... 14 2.2 After September 8, 1943 ......................................................................... 15 3 Theoretical Framework 18 3.1 From memories of collective suffering to cultural traumas ..... 18 3.2 Towards the trauma drama of Foibe: “Coding, weighting, narrating” ............................................................................................................. 22 3.3 The narration of trauma in the different institutional arenas . 28 3.4 From trauma drama to social dramas ............................................... 30 4 Methodology 37 4.1 Used Data ...................................................................................................... 38 5 Analysis 38 5.1 Representation of Foibe and Exodus in 1943-1947 .................... 38 5.2 After the latency. Representation of Foibe in the 2000s ............ 50 5.2.1. Towards Consensus: Norma Cossetto and the Personalization of the Trauma ............................................................. 55 5.2.2. Basovizza: stage for the Right, arena for the Lef ............... 60 5.2.2.1. Narrative styles and representations of the breach ..... 62 5.2.2.2. Institutional or ideological? The use of binary codes .. 67 6 Conclusion 66 Bibliography 71 5 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY Index 81 6 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY List of Images Figure 5.1. Dalla fossa di Katyn alle “foibe” istriane [p. 44] Nucleo Propaganda. 1944. Historical Archive of Biella. Šablona DP 2.0.1 (9. ledna 2018) © 2014, 2016, 2018 Právnická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY List of Terms and Acronyms PD – Partito Democratico, social democratic political party in Italy (2007-). FI – Forza Italia, centre-right political party in Italy (1994-2009; 2013- ). PCI – Partito Comunista Italiano, communist political party in Italy (1943-1991). RSI – Italian Social Republic, German puppet state rul- ing North of Italy from September 1943 to May 1945. Risorgimento – The 19th-century political and social movement that accomplished the Italian unification. Irredentismo – The late 19th and early 20th-century nationalist movement that aimed at the unification of geo- graphic areas inhabited mostly by Italian-speak- ing people. Italianità – The patriotic awareness of being and feeling Ital- ian, i.e., of belonging to the Italian history and cul- ture. Sommo Poeta – “The Supreme Poet”, epithet used to call the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. 8 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY 1 Introduction Since 2004, for every Italian, February 10 means Giorno del Ricordo, and with that a turmoil of statements and declarations which often generate debates and controversies. A continuous rebound of critiques, attacks and j‘accuse. The defendant continuously changes in an inexorable switch of roles: who has been criticized yesterday will criticize tomorrow and vice versa. Media, political institutions, and all of civil society are involved in an overwhelming debate, hard to follow and contain. Initiatives, ceremonies, and commemorations spring from every part of the country in a sort of memory delirium produced by an imperative to remember and the need for recogni- tion. The Giorno del Ricordo – i. e. the Day of Remembrance – is an official commemoration that, since 2005, has been celebrated every February 10 in Italy to “preserve and keep alive the memory of the tragedy of the Italians and all victims of the foibe, the exodus of the Istrians, Fiumans and Dalmatians after the Second World War and the more complex affair of the Eastern fron- tier” (Italian Law 92, 2004)1. In Autumn 1943 and Spring 1945 executions of Italian soldiers and spread episodes of violence against the Italian-speaking population unfold in the freed territories of Dalmatia, Fiume, Istria and Ve- nezia Giulia. Accused to be fascists or collaborators of the Nazis, an unde- fined number of Italians2 have been killed by the communist partisans led by Josip Broz “Tito”, the future leader of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugosla- via. Executions were carried out using the peculiar morphology of the karstic territory of Venezia Giulia and Istria, regions dotted with sinkholes and ra- vines ‒ vertical caves that take the name of foibe3, used both as an execution 1 From the official text of the Italian Law, 92 of March 30, 2004. 2 The question of the number of the victims is a continuous source of debate among historians and politicians, and of conflict between the Italian institutions and the ones of the ex-Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia. 3 Foibe ‒ sing. foiba ‒ The etymology is uncertain: it probably comes from the Julian dialect foibe that in turn comes from the Latin term fovea, which means “pit” (Nuzzo, 1973; Garzanti, 2001). Foiba is also the name of the creek that flows in the bottom of the abyss of Pisino/Pazin, in Istria. For, the river would give the name to the abyss of Pasino/Pazin, and by extension, to all the karstic sinkholes of the Julian region (Cernigoi, 2013: 39-40). 9 “WELL, THEN FOIBE?“ GIORNO DEL RICORDO AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF THE SOCIAL DRAMA OF FOIBE IN ITALY method, both as mass graves4. Threats of retaliation and the prospect of living in a territory that was not “homeland” anymore pushed most of the Italian inhabitants still living there to opt for repatriation, leaving their house and most of their possessions behind. Foibe survivors and the so-called esuli5 or- ganized already in the immediate postwar period to preserve the memory of their displacement and to claim for economic and symbolic recognition of property-losses and of a forced exodus from their homeland. Nevertheless, the restoration of a political memory about Foibe for the public and institutional recognition of the events entered soon into a phase of latency (Giesen, 2004). Foibe took the form of silenced histories. The missed acknowledgment of the massacres from the Yugoslav institutions ‒ with Ital- ian authorities avoiding addressing the topic ‒ determined what has been de- fined as “politics of submersion” (Ballinger, 2003). Porosity between the civil sphere and the institutional arena made sure that the victimized groups gained voice in the public debate only in the late 1990s, finding gradually defenders and spokespeople at the institutional and political level. The institution of the commemoration date with the Italian Law, 92 of March 30, 2004 has been the result of an 8-year-long legislative procedure in which foibe have played a significant role in the Italian political debate.
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