Brava Gente and the Counter (Re)public of Italy: Constructing the Foibe as a National Symbol

Abstract

This article analyses the symbolic function of the foibe in Italian popular culture. The foibe are the deep caves found in the Istrian peninsula and in the vicinity of Trieste and the Julian March, areas that were alternately ruled by Yugoslavia and Italy throughout the twentieth century and that now comprise parts of Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. The foibe caves are now widely known as the sites of systematic killings of Italians by Yugoslavian Communist troops during World War Two. The article argues that the word foibe and all the accompanying connotations constructed in popular literature, film and digital sites function as a national symbol in Italy. It confronts the phenomenon of the symbolic weight garnered by foibe rhetoric in recent years and shows how specific visual and narrative iterations of the foibe, contextualized in cultural, national and international circumstances, have facilitated their conceptual transformation from a historical and political issue to an epideictic term that operates as a national symbol.