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.
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.
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.
During the interwar period, Japanese intellectuals, writers, activists, and politicians, although conscious of the many points of intersection between their politics and those of Mussolini, were ...ambivalent about the comparability of Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy.InThe Fascist Effect, Reto Hofmann uncovers the ideological links that tied Japan to Italy, drawing on extensive materials from Japanese and Italian archives to shed light on the formation of fascist history and practice in Japan and beyond. Moving between personal experiences, diplomatic and cultural relations, and geopolitical considerations, Hofmann shows that interwar Japan found in fascism a resource to develop a new order at a time of capitalist crisis.
Japanese thinkers and politicians debated fascism as part of a wider effort to overcome a range of modern woes, including class conflict and moral degeneration, through measures that fostered national cohesion and social order. Hofmann demonstrates that fascism in Japan was neither a European import nor a domestic product; it was, rather, the result of a complex process of global transmission and reformulation. By focusing on how interwar Japanese understood fascism, Hofmann recuperates a historical debate that has been largely disregarded by historians, even though its extent reveals that fascism occupied a central position in the politics of interwar Japan. Far from being a vague term, as postwar historiography has so often claimed, for Japanese of all backgrounds who came of age from the 1920s to the 1940s, fascism conjured up a set of concrete associations, including nationalism, leadership, economics, and a drive toward empire and a new world order.
During the interwar period, Japanese intellectuals, writers, activists, and politicians, although conscious of the many points of intersection between their politics and those of Mussolini, were ambivalent about the comparability of Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. InThe Fascist Effect, Reto Hofmann uncovers the ideological links that tied Japan to Italy, drawing on extensive materials from Japanese and Italian archives to shed light on the formation of fascist history and practice in Japan and beyond. Moving between personal experiences, diplomatic and cultural relations, and geopolitical considerations, Hofmann shows that interwar Japan found in fascism a resource to develop a new order at a time of capitalist crisis.Japanese thinkers and politicians debated fascism as part of a wider effort to overcome a range of modern woes, including class conflict and moral degeneration, through measures that fostered national cohesion and social order. Hofmann demonstrates that fascism in Japan was neither a European import nor a domestic product; it was, rather, the result of a complex process of global transmission and reformulation. By focusing on how interwar Japanese understood fascism, Hofmann recuperates a historical debate that has been largely disregarded by historians, even though its extent reveals that fascism occupied a central position in the politics of interwar Japan. Far from being a vague term, as postwar historiography has so often claimed, for Japanese of all backgrounds who came of age from the 1920s to the 1940s, fascism conjured up a set of concrete associations, including nationalism, leadership, economics, and a drive toward empire and a new world order.
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