The historic imaginary Fogu, Claudio
The historic imaginary,
c2003, 20031002, 2003, 2014, 2003-01-01, 20030101
eBook
Focusing on both ritual and mass-visual representations of history in 1920s and 1930s Italy,The Historic Imaginaryunveils how Italian Fascism sought to institutionalize a modernist culture of ...history. The study takes a new historicist and microhistorical approach to cultural-intellectual history, integrating theoretical tools of analysis acquired from visual-cultural studies, art history, linguistics, and reception theory in a sophisticated examination of visual modes of historical representation - from commemorations to monuments to exhibitions and mass-media - spanning the entire period of the Italian-fascist regime.
Claudio Fogu argues that the fascist historic imaginary was intellectually rooted in the actualist philosophy of history elaborated by Giovanni Gentile, culturally grounded in Latin-Catholic rhetorical codes, and aimed at overcoming both Marxist and liberal conceptions of the relationship between historical agency, representation, and consciousness. The book further proposes that this modernist vision of history was a core element of fascist ideology, encapsulated by the famous Mussolinian motto that "fascism makes history rather than writing it," and that its institutionalization constituted a key point of intersection between the fascist aesthetization and sacralization of politics. The author finally claims that his study of fascist historic culture opens the way to an understanding and re-evaluation of the historical relationship between the modernist critique of historical consciousness and the rise of post-modernist forms of temporality.
Photography and fascism in interwar Europe developed into a highly toxic and combustible formula. Particularly in concert with aggressive display techniques, the European fascists were utterly ...convinced of their ability to use the medium of photography to manufacture consent among their publics. Unfortunately, as we know in hindsight, they succeeded. Other dictatorial regimes in the 1930s harnessed this powerful combination of photography and exhibitions for their own odious purposes. But this book, for the first time, focuses on the particularly consequential dialectic between Germany and Italy in the early-to-mid 1930s, and within each of those countries vis-à-vis display culture. The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive-even catastrophic-results.
ABSTRACT
The countless public speeches Ernst Toller gave during his six‐year exile from Nazi Germany included a particularly controversial one in 1938 at the newly founded Queens College, in New York ...City. The controversy stemmed from the fact that it almost did not take place: two days after receiving what he understood to be an invitation to speak at a symposium, Toller learned that the college could not host him after all because of his well‐known anti‐Nazi stance and the danger that it might offend German‐Americans throughout the borough of Queens. Eventually the college heeded widespread criticism, including in the New York press, and Toller did address the college audience. This article compares Toller's ‘Queens College affair’ to other examples of the collision between fascism, anti‐fascism, and free speech in New York City in the 1930s, including the German‐American ‘Bund’ rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939. The article considers what bearing these historical controversies have on current debates about free speech, including on college campuses.
Zusammenfassung
Ernst Toller hielt zahllose Reden im Laufe seines sechsjährigen Exils, darunter eine sehr kontroverse im Jahre 1938 am neugegründeten Queens College in New York City – kontrovers dahingehend, dass die geplante Rede fast nicht stattfand: zwei Tage nach der vermeintlichen Einladung erfuhr Toller, dass das Queens College ihn wegen seiner bekannten antinazistischen Haltung, die New Yorker deutscher Abstammung unter Umständen beleidigen könne, nun doch nicht empfangen wolle. Schließlich reagierte das Queens College aber auf die weitreichende Kritik in der New Yorker Presse und Toller konnte seine Rede vor Ort halten. Diese Affäre lässt sich mit anderen Events vergleichen, die den Zusammenstoß zwischen Faschismus, Antifaschismus und Redefreiheit im New York der 1930er Jahre verdeutlichen, unter anderem mit der Massenversammlung des Amerikadeutschen Bundes, die im Februar 1939 am Madison Square Garden stattfand. Abschließend werden die Zusammenhänge zwischen diesen historischen Kontroversen und der heutigen Debatte um die Redefreiheit an Colleges und Universitäten aufgezeigt.
Roberta Pergher transforms our understanding of Fascist rule. Examining Fascist Italy's efforts to control the antipodes of its realm - the regions annexed in northern Italy after the First World ...War, and Italy's North African colonies - she shows how the regime struggled to imagine and implement Italian sovereignty over alien territories and peoples. Contrary to the claims of existing scholarship, Fascist settlement policy in these regions was not designed to solve an overpopulation problem, but to bolster Italian claims to rule in an era that prized self-determination and no longer saw imperial claims as self-evident. Professor Pergher explores the character and impact of Fascist settlement policy and the degree to which ordinary Italians participated in and challenged the regime's efforts to Italianize contested territory. Employing models and concepts from the historiography of empire, she shows how Fascist Italy rethought the boundaries between national and imperial rule.
Although studies of fascism have constituted one of the most fertile areas of historical inquiry in recent decades, more and more scholars have called for a new agenda with more research beyond Italy ...and Germany, less preoccupation with definition and classification, and more sustained focus on the relationships among different fascist formations before 1945. Starting from a critical assessment of these imperatives, this rigorous volume charts a historiographical path that transcends rigid distinctions while still developing meaningful criteria of differentiation. Even as we take fascism seriously as a political phenomenon, such an approach allows us to better understand its distinctive contradictions and historical variations.
In this essay, I examine the ways in which Anna Messina’s and Fausta Cialente’s narratives set in Alexandria, Egypt in the interwar period suggest conflicting representations of Italian identity. ...Relying on the notion of resistance and the different ways to exist/resist in the porous context of the city, I propose that Messina’s Cronache del Nilo recreates a monolithic, idealized vision of the Italian identity within Alexandria’s international community. Her characters strenuously oppose any form of relation and contamination in the name of aesthetic, racial, and national superiority nourished by Fascist ideologies. On the other hand, Cialente’s Ballata levantina represents more complex and hybrid subjectivities that rebel against the homogenization imposed by Fascist propaganda in the colonial settings.
The foundation of the new settlements, both in Italy and colonial Libya, was a step to achieving the project of internal colonisation launched by Mussolini. The modernisation of the countryside was ...promulgated by the Fascist propaganda, which presented only a misleading impression of how life was. What happens if - as an additional level of interpretation we add the narratives of the inhabitants who lived these moments? This paper presents this original methodical approach, introducing the narratives of the settlers in relation to the presence of politics in daily life during the Fascist era.
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