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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Peasant Culture and Intellectual Environmental Activism: The Legacy of the Italian Resistance and Contemporary Spaces of Activism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ck6h07m Author Tabusso Marcyan, Ilaria Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Peasant Culture and Intellectual Environmental Activism: The Legacy of the Italian Resistance and Contemporary Spaces of Activism A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan Committee in charge: Professor Pasquale Verdicchio, Chair Professor Page duBois Professor Amelia Glaser Professor Jeff Haydu Professor Stephanie Jed 2016 Copyright Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, 2016 All rights reserved Dissertation of Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2016 iii DEDICATION I would like to lovingly dedicate this work to Paolo Tabusso, my father, who was a partisan in the Italian Resistance. I am not aware of his exact role during that period in the Piedmont mountains of Canavese, but I know that his courage and actions, however great or small, alongside the thousands who participated to the Resistance, made a distinct difference. This research work has helped me to vividly imagine what it might have been like to be present in those mountains, and what agonies, as well as blessings, my father might have experienced. iv EPIGRAPH … sembra che la storia non sia che un enorme fenomeno naturale, un’eruzione, un terremoto, del quale rimangono vittima tutti, chi ha voluto e chi non ha voluto, chi sapeva e chi non sapeva, chi era stato attivo e chi indifferente. E questo ultimo si irrita, vorrebbe sottrarsi alle conseguenze, vorrebbe apparisse chiaro che egli non ha voluto, che egli non è responsabile. Altri piagnucolano pietosamente, altri bestemmiano oscenamente, ma nessuno o pochi si domandano: se avessi anch’io fatto il mio dovere, se avessi cercato di far valere la mia volontà, il mio consiglio, sarebbe successo ciò che è successo? Ma nessuno o pochi si fanno una colpa della loro indifferenza, del loro scetticismo, del non aver dato il loro braccio e la loro attività a quei gruppi di cittadini che, appunto per evitare quel tal male, combattevano, di procurare quel tal bene si proponevano. - Antonio Gramsci … it would seem that history is nothing more than an enormous natural phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, of which everyone is a victim, those who may have wanted and those who did not want, those who knew and those who did not know, those who were active and those who remained indifferent. The latter, the “indifferent”, feels irritated. He would prefer to avoid the consequences, to make it clear that it was not his doing, that he is not responsible. While some whine pitifully, and still others curse obscenities, few ask themselves: if I had only done my part, if I had only tried to make my will known or given advice, would what happened, have happened? But no one, or few, blame their indifference, their skepticism, their not having lent support and acted with those groups of citizen who, in order to avoid that evil, fought for that good that they proposed. - Antonio Gramsci v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………………………………………….........iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………..iv Epigraph………………………………………………………………………….........v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………….vi Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………….........viii Vita……………………………………………………………………………………xv Abstract of the Dissertation………………………………………………………..xvi Introduction……………………………………………………………………...........1 Chapter 1: Peasant’s Culture in Pavese’s House on the Hill and Viganò’s L’Agnese va a morire. An Ecocritical Approach on Italian Literature of the Resistance………………………………………………………………………….. 27 1.1. The Social and Historical Background of the Protagonist of L’Agnese va a morire……………………………………………………….33 1.2. The Natural Settings in The House on the Hill and L’Agnese va a morire………………………………………………………………………..41 1.3. Protagonists’ Relatioships with Locals…………………………….........47 1.4. Intellectual Differences in the Protagonists of The House on the Hill and L’Agnese va a morire……………………………………………..51 Chapter 2: A Story of Peasant Resistance: The Cervi Family…………………68 2.1. Italo Calvino’s Influence in My Seven Sons…………………………….73 2.2. From Sharecroppers to Small Landowners…………………………….84 vi 2.3. The Family…………………………………………………………… 89 2.4. The Land and Campi Rossi………………………………………… 96 Chapter 3: Nuto Revelli and the Disappearing Voices of Peasant Resistance………………………………………………………………………..107 3.1. Revelli’s Encounter with Peasants……………………………………114 3.2. Paraloup, a Place where Memories Resisted……………………….124 3.3. Memories from a Disappearing World. From Depopulation to a Slow Repopulation…………………………………………………………..139 Chapter 4: Rural Traditions, Environmental Activism and New Forms of Resistance in Food Cultures. Slow Food and Terra Madre…………………148 4.1. The Beginnings: Cultural and Literary Landscape of Slow Food….156 4.2. Slow Food and the Globalization of Food…………………………....162 4.3. Ermanno Olmi’s Terra Madre………………………………………….171 4.4. Terra Madre: A New Paradigm Through Food Cultures…………....178 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...192 Appendix: A Conversation with Carlo Petrini on Italian Peasant Traditions and Slow Food……………………………………………………………………196 Work Cited……………………………………………………………………......210 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would have never been possible without the support, advice, encouragement and knowledge shared from individuals and institutions to which I express my gratitude and wish to acknowledge here. I am deeply grateful for the mentorship received, since my arrival at UCSD, from my advisor and chair Pasquale Verdicchio. His guidance and intellectual vitality have been a source of inspiration and support since the beginning of my graduate studies. I owe to his intellectual encouragement my initial participation in conferences, organization of panels, and as an active member and founder of the research group “Transdisciplinary Ecocriticism”, founded with Pasquale, and my colleagues Paulina Gonzales and Melissa Martinez. This dissertation would have not taken its final shape without Pasquale’s constant presence and availability to discuss my research at any moment necessary. I want to acknowledge in particular his ability to direct me toward new perspectives, inviting me to deepen my research and thinking, never forcing his ideas upon me. Most importantly, I am grateful for Pasquale’s patience, intellectual generosity and ability to give me the space to foster and mature my own vision of this research. My Gramscian and ecocritical approach has been directly and gracefully inspired by Pasquale’s courses, and is also the result of the countless hours spent talking about academic as well as worldly topics. I cannot imagine anyone better shaping me as a scholar and guiding me in this academic experience at UCSD. viii I also want to acknowledge the invaluable encouragement received by Stephanie Jed. Stephanie’s specialization on women's studies has helped me to fashion my first chapter and sharpen my reading of Renata Viganò’s novel. Her scholarly experience and advice have often offered me instrumental hints on how to approach my readings and research. Our shared interest in food has given me the good fortune to teach one of her summer courses on the politics of food, and I will be always grateful to her for her generosity in sharing her scholarly knowledge and experience with me. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Stephanie for connecting me with professor Dianella Gagliani, through whom I learned about the Istituto Alcide Cervi and Archivio Emilio Sereni, pivotal sources for my second chapter. My special gratitude goes to Page duBois, with whom I feel very fortunate to have worked. Her astonishing wide range of knowledge has helped me over the years to configure my theoretical background and has given me the intellectual tools in adapting my research. Page's encouragements, advice and support throughout my PhD program have been a constant and reassuring point of reference. This dissertation could not have found its final theoretical strength without the instrumental advice of Amelia Glaser. I am grateful to have taken my first seminar at UCSD with her, as her scholarly outlook in the different stages of my dissertation have helped to develop the emotional distance necessary to work on the authors analyzed. Finally, I want to acknowledge professor Jeff Haydu whose knowledge on food and familiarity on peasants’ movements have pushed me in ix the last period of my writing to think of my work from a broader perspective, beyond the Italian social, economic and political reality which I analyze in my dissertation. His feedback has motivated me to continue to expand my research and explore possible connections between Italian peasant culture and global movements related to food.