Fascism on display: the afterlife of material legacies of the dictatorship

Flaminia Bartolini

doi:10.32028/exnovo.v5i.409

Authors

Flaminia Bartolini McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research; Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32028/exnovo.v5i.409

Keywords:

Difficult Heritage, Fascism, Nazism, Mussolini, Contested Architecture

Abstract

The year 2015 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II, a commemoration that prompted Italy to reconsider the complexity of the Fascist phenomenon and how the artistic creations and urbanism of the regime contributed to shaping city landscapes across the country. Fascist material legacies are an unequivocal presence in any Italian city, but the ways in which they have been preserved or not, reused or abandoned, provokes consideration of the complexities of the country’s renegotiation of its Fascist past, shifting from iconoclasm to present-day heritage status. Heritage designation and the restoration of Fascist works of art and architecture have posed questions regarding selectivity in heritage and whether Italy has yet to come to terms with its Fascist past. This paper will look at how Italy’s approach to Fascist heritage, which has recently been framed as ‘difficult heritage’ following Macdonald’s work on Nazi Germany, is an expression of the conflicting narratives that surround any renegotiation of the Fascist past, and how some recent conservation projects and exhibition have failed to demonstrate reflexivity over Fascism. It will also deconstruct the role of restoration and the heritage practices of preservation and management and will question the link between conservation and changes of attitude regarding a ‘difficult’ past.

References

ARTHURS J. 2010. Fascism as ‘Heritage’ in Contemporary Italy, in: A. MAMMONE & G. VELTRI (eds.), Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe. London/New York: Routledge.

ARTHURS J. 2014. Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468841

BARTOLINI F. 2018. From Iconoclasm to Museum. Mussolini’s villa in Rome, as a Dictatorial Heritage Site. MARTOR The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Journal / Revue d'Anthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain 23 (2018): 163–73.

BARTOLINI F. 2019. Dealing with a Dictatorial past: Fascist monuments and conflicting memory in contemporary Italy, in: L. Macaluso (ed.) Monument Culture, International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World. London: Rowman & Littlefield: 233–53.

BEN-GHIAT R. 2017. Why are Fascist Monuments still standing in Italy? The New Yorker, 5 October 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/ why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-initaly#.

BILLI E. & D’AGOSTINO L. 2017. L’iconografia del murale, nuove riflessioni, in: E. BILLI & E. D’AGOSTINO (eds.), Sironi Svelato: Il Restauro del Murale alla Sapienza. Roma: Campisano Editore: 95–119

CARTER N. & MARTIN S. 2017. The management and memory of fascist monumental art in post-war and contemporary Italy: the case of Luigi Montanarini’s Apotheosis of Fascism. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 22 (3): 338–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2017.1321933

CARTER N. & MARTIN S. 2019. Dealing with difficult heritage: Italy and the material legacies of Fascism. Modern Italy, special issue ‘The Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism’ 24 (2): 117–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2019.16

FOCARDI F. 2014. Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano. Roma: Edizioni Laterza.

GORDON R. 2006. The Holocaust in Italian Collective Memory: Il giorno della memoria, 27 January 2001. Modern Italy 11 (2): 167–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13532940600709270

GUERRI G.B. 2016. Il lungo viaggio attraverso il fascismo: il Culto del Duce (1922-1945). L’arte del consenso nei busti e nelle raffigurazioni di Benito Mussolini. Edizioni Garda Musei.

MACDONALD S. 2006. Undesirable heritage: fascist material culture and historical consciousness in Nuremberg, International Journal of Heritage Studies 12(1): 9–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527250500384464

MACDONALD S. 2009. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. London: Routledge.

MALONE H. 2017. Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in Contemporary Italy. Modern Italy 22 (4): 1–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2017.51

MALONE H. 2019. The Republican legacy of Italy’s Fascist ossuaries. Modern Italy, special issue ‘The Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism’ 24(2): 199–217. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2019.7

MARCELLO F. 2019. Between censure and celebration: the decorative plan of the Casa Madre dei Mutilati in Rome (1926–1939). Modern Italy, special issue ‘The Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism’ 24 (2): 179–98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2019.11

MICHIELLI S. & OBERMAIR H. (eds). 2016. BZ ’18–’45 One Monument One City Two Dictatorships. The Monument to Victory. Bolzano: Folio

SØRENSEN M.L.S. & VIEJO-ROSE D. (eds.) 2015. War and Cultural Heritage, Biographies of Place. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107444911

STORCHI S. 2019. The ex-Casa del Fascio in Predappio and the question of the ‘difficult heritage’ of Fascism in contemporary Italy. Modern Italy, special issue ‘The Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism’ 24 (2): 139–57. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2019.8

VENTRESCA R.A. 2004. From Fascism to Democracy: Culture and Policy in the Italian Election of 1948. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442675070