Dizionario del fascismo, vol. 2, L-Z

In the following article we will illustrate some of the most actual and fertile tendencies in the study of Italian fascism and of its relationship to culture. We will start off from the viewpoint that fascism in Italy succeeded in obtaining a high degree of popular support. Following Renzo De Felice, it could be argued that mass consenso (consensus) was crucial to Mussolini’s survival. Presenting itself as the only choice for the new Italy, fascism did thus in a very real sense reach a certain degree of –albeit unstable- gramscian egemonia (hegemony). The latter was in its turn the consequence not only of the use of force, but also of a careful orchestration of public life and, on a higher level, of aesthetics, of culture. Hence, in a second part of our study, we will turn to some of the most interesting, so-called ‘culturalist’, studies of fascist, mostly visual, culture. We will conclude with an analysis of Italian fascism as a form of secular myth, as a political religion in which the mentioned fascist aesthetics also played a crucial role.

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Dame in 1983 and was sponsored by the Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1989 until 2017. Hosted by JSTOR, Annali italianistica is an independent journal of Italian Studies managed and edited by an international team of scholars. Annali is listed among the top tier journals (class A, area 10) by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR). It is listed in the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). It is listed in the MLA International Bibliography. It is a member of the The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ).

Quaderni d'Italianistica, 2017

Any cursory review of the past five years of Italian historiography on fascism obviously would be subject to multiple criticisms and be Condemned for partiality, especially since the time span under investigation is relatively brief and only the work of select Italian scholars can be considered. Not all the published literature on fascism could be taken into account, given the enormous attention still given to the subject in academic monographs and journalistic accounts.

This article introduces two little-known episodes of opposition against the Italian fascist regime undertaken by professor Ettore Ciccotti (1863-1939), whose career traversed both the world of academia and that of politics. In each of these instances, Ciccotti expressed a particularly explicit form of anti-fascism. The article focuses firstly on a close reading of Ciccotti’s Profilo di Augusto (1938), in which the author openly criticises the myth of Romanness or romanità, a myth that played a major role in the ideology of Mussolini’s regime. That analysis will be prefaced by a brief overview of the negative contemporary reception of this controversial volume, as evidenced by a review article published by the then pro-fascist Istituto di Studi Romani. Secondly, the article will address an episode that occurred seven years prior to the publication of the Profilo, when in 1931, Ciccotti refused to pledge the oath of allegiance to the fascist regime and its duce, although at this time the oath was compulsory for all academics. The reasons Ciccotti put forward for this refusal were remarkably similar to those he later used to justify his 1938 criticism of Roman emperor Augustus, and are clearly stated in a letter he addressed to the Ministero dell’Educazione Nazionale at the moment of that refusal. The combination of Ciccotti’s Profilo di Augusto and his earlier exculpatory letter provide us with a remarkable insight into the thinking of this intellectual politician –Ciccotti was also a senator- whom, although confronted with the omnipresence of fascism, consistently opposed the cultural and ideological presumptions of the regime.