Italian Cultural Research Articles

Words and actions: Italian ultras and neo-fascism

Over the past two decades the link – perceived and actual – between political extremism and football fans has been the subject of academic, political, and policing debate. It is not rare to witness manifestations of intolerance and ideological statements referring to regional, national and international issues at football stadia. In Italian football stadia, political representation has been evident for decades; politics has been integral to all realms of Italian society and culture since the origin of the nation. As one of the most significant Italian cultural practices, football has not been an exception. This combination of theory and action inspires thousands of young male football supporters. The football stadium might thus be interpreted as a twenty-first century social Agorá, where political opinions – otherwise ghettoized in society – can be freely expressed in pursuit of a wider consensus. This paper explores the under-researched milieu of neo-fascist ideology as displayed in contemporary Italian football stadia. Contributing original material and employing as conceptual frameworks the New Consensus Theory on fascism and the works of Julius Evola and Georges Sorel, this analysis hypothesizes that the neo-fascist tenets manifested by the ideologically-oriented ‘ultras’ fan groups, may be understood as both a consequence of, and a resistance against the dominant socio-cultural and political values of contemporary Italy. The research conducted between 2003–2007 sought to evaluate two internationally renowned ultras groups located in the Italian capital of Rome: the Boys of AS Roma and the Irriducibili of SS Lazio who enact their performances on their respective ‘curve’ [football terraces] of the city's Olympic stadium. Utilizing the ethnographic method, unique access was achieved in a notoriously difficult research milieu bringing the researcher into the social-cultural world of the participants and to the echelons of the extra-parliamentary Italian far right. Research sought to uncover the groups’ social interactions, values, and political beliefs, as a way of contributing to an understanding of both the Italian ultras of the twenty-first century and indeed the wider political milieu of the modern nation-state of Italy.

Introduction: A Tale of Two Italies—Continuities and Change in the Italian Republic, 1994–2006

The idea for this special issue of Modern Italy emerged from the Association for the Study of Modern Italy's annual conference ‘The Second Italian Republic Ten Years On: Prospect and Retrospect’, which was held at the Italian Cultural Institute, London, in November 2004. The conference afforded an opportunity for scholars and observers of contemporary Italy to reflect on one of the most eventful decades in the history of the Italian Republic and to offer an appraisal of how political, economic, social and cultural life had fared since the first election based on the new majoritarian voting system which first brought Silvio Berlusconi's coalition to power in April 1994.

Ethnic Minorities and the Built Environment in Rural and Regional Australia: Sites of Segregation or Inter-Cultural Exchange?

Australia has one of the highest proportions of migrants of any country in the world. One aspect of this migration that is still poorly understood is the impact of different ethnic groups on the built environment of Australian cities and towns. Recent arrivals often seek to create a home by modifying their new landscape, transforming public spaces by building monuments, religious buildings, social clubs and community centres. These sites have often been overlooked in studies of Australia’s built environment heritage. However, they often hold enormous significance not only for migrant communities but also in reflecting contestation over space and the contribution of migrants to the Australian political economy. Crucially, in a time of increasing concern over inter-cultural relations in Australia, these places can also be sites of inter-cultural exchange. Based on preliminary fieldwork in Griffith in New South Wales, the paper will explore the social, political and economic significance of one place built by non-Anglo-Celtic migrants to Australia: the Griffith Italian Museum and Cultural Centre. Using the concepts of inter-cultural dialogue and bonding and bridging social capital, the paper explores the role of the Museum in facilitating social networks and improved relations within and between Griffith’s ethnic communities.

Anti-communism at Home, Europeanism Abroad: Italian Cultural Policy at the Venice Biennale, 1948–1958

Using the fine arts exhibition of the Venice Biennale as a case study, this article considers the role of the Italian national government's cultural policy in pursuing its key domestic and foreign concerns between 1948 and 1958. These were, respectively, suppressing communism at home, and promoting Western European unification and Italy's role within it. By scrutinising their involvement at the Biennale, it aims to show the importance placed not only by the Italian Christian Democrats but also by their European counterparts on constructing the idea of a culturally integrated Western Europe as a vital complement to analogous economic and political initiatives.

Multilingualism in Italy Past and Present by Anna Laura Lepschy , Arturo Tosi (review)

228 Reviews Poetry gets a chapter to itself,but theatre only figuresthrough Theatre of the Absurd in the chapter on experimental writing, and there is no discussion of autobiography except in so far as it features in autobiographical fiction. There is little that is overtly revisionisthere, either in the account of principal trends oftwentieth-century French literature or in the choice of authors fordiscussion. The roll-call of important writers runs from Proust and Gide through to Perec and Tournier, taking in Apollinaire, Bonnefoy, Ponge, Eluard, Sartre, Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Colette, Beauvoir, Duras, and Cixous along the way. Inevitably in a book such as this, there is not enough space forsome authors who might have a claim for inclu? sion, such as Valery, Claudel, Cocteau, Mauriac, Giraudoux, or Malraux. Only one francophone author is discussed (Djebar), and the chapter on recent fiction focuses on three works, Perec's W ou le souvenir d'enfance, Tournier's Le Roi des Aulnes, and Djebar's Les Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement. Throughout, the author high? lights existential, experiential aspects of literature, so that even the most experimental writing is shown to be engaging with important issues as it strains to find new ways to express the traumas of the twentieth century. Literature emerges as a medium in which the possibilities and limits of ideas, identity, and experience can be explored. This is not primarily intended forthe specialist; rather it attempts to demonstrate to a less expert readership that French literature of the twentieth century is not as remote from our day-to-day concerns as it might sometimes appear. The touch is light and the more obscure quirks of critical languages are either avoided or explained. The book has the virtues of elegance, reliability, and accessibility, and it can be recommended with confidence to students who are new to the field. It should become a standard feature on introductory bibliographies for literature of the last century. University of Warwick Colin Davis Multilingualism in Italy Past and Present. Ed. by Anna Laura Lepschy and Arturo Tosi. Oxford: Legenda. 2002. x + 22opp. ?35. ISBN 1-900755-78-5. This interesting collection of articles derives from papers delivered at the Italian Cultural Institute in London on 20 October 2001, on the occasion ofthe Italian Lan? guage Week, under the auspices of the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Accademia della Crusca. Each paper in the volume, edited by Anna Laura Lepschy and Arturo Tosi, offersa stimulating reading on central questions in Italian linguistics, covering subjects from the formation of the language and the role of written and spoken Ita? lian in Italy and abroad, to contemporary issues of dialectology, sociolinguistics, and translation in the context of the European Union. The firstchapter, on 'The Italian of Renaissance Elites in Italy and Europe', by Brian Richardson, looks into the differenttypes of Italian available to members of the elites and to those of lower status in the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries, from both a written and a spoken point of view. The second chapter, by the late Joe Cremona, deals with 'Italian-Based Lingua Francas around the Mediterranean' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tackling 'a role of Italian almost wholly ignored by the historians of language, [. . .] that of being the chief diplomatic language between Europeans and Turks in the whole of the vast Ottoman Empire' (p. 26) and Italian's status as 'default language' (p. 27) in French and English consular documents of the time from Tunis and Tripoli. The two subsequent chapters explore the notion of multilingualism: Martin Maiden deals with the 'Definition of Multilingualism in Historical Perspective' (Chap? ter 3) and Mair Parry with 'The Challenges of Multilingualism Today' (Chapter 4). Nigel Vincent's 'Benvenuto Terracini and the Problem of Language Death' (Chap? ter 5) revisits, with original insights, a 1951 article by Terracini, reflectingalso on his MLRy ioo.i, 2005 229 position in the history of the realism versus idealism debate within Italian linguistics (see in particular pp. 67-69). Language-endangerment issues are as pressing as ever fiftyyears after Terracini's analysis: if?according to figures given by David Crystal in his Language Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)?we...

The civilization of the Holocaust in Italy: poets, artists, saints, anti-Semites

This book studies the persecution of Italian Jews during the Fascist period in relation to the Italian cultural tradition. It shows that Mussolini's anti-Semitic laws and Italian support for Hitler's war on the Jews stem directly from beliefs deeply embedded in Italian culture. After studying anti-Judaic characterizations in the Christian tradition and representations of Jews by Dante and other Medieval and Renaissance authors, the book shows how the anti-Semitic tradition became reinvigorated in the nineteenth century. In the second half of the book, the focus is on three leading anti-Semitic cultural figures in the period between 1900 and 1940: the writer Giovanni Papini, the Catholic educational leader Agostino Gemelli, and the artist and critic Ardengo Soffici. The book then examines Mussolini's specific anti-Semitic policies and argues that the Italian cultural system contributed to generating the evil that led to the Holocaust. Wiley Feinstein is Associate Professor of Italian at Loyola University Chicago.

Cultural Pluralism through Translation? Imagining the Italian Other in the Habsburg Monarchy

The historical relationships between the Italian peninsula and Austria are also reflected in the reception of Italian literary production in the Habsburg monarchy. This can be seen in the formation of a literary canon which always goes together with selective mechanisms. These selections decisively contribute to the formation of cultural hegemonies. This paper presents the creation of the Other through the activity of translation in the context of the reception of national Italian literature in the Habsburg Monarchy. It will analyze what was accepted on the cultural market of the Habsburg Monarchy and what the criteria for the reception of translated Italian literature were. Against the background of a short survey of the various aspects of the Italian image created through intercultural contacts, this paper investigates the ways in which these images were discussed, created and represented through translation. The analysis of some paratexts will show that the margin left for the Italian cultural Other was quite narrow and largely reduced to stereotypical views of Italian culture.

Eh, Paesan!: Being Italian in Toronto

Shouts of 'Forza Italia!' rang out along St Clair Avenue West each time Italy won a game in World Cup 1994. But is a soccer tournament all that almost a half-million Italians in Toronto have in common? What does it mean to be Italian in Toronto? In this book Nicholas DeMaria Harney invites us to explore with him the symbols and sites of Italian culture in Toronto. Ethnic identity, we discover, is a process - it is constantly being remade and reproduced. Do Canadians look beyond the stereotypes that picture Italians as peasant construction workers, members of organized crime, and soccer fanatics to see the diversity of Italian life in Toronto? Second-generation Italian Canadians, familiar with Italy's fashion, sports, and design worlds have new images to confront. In today's global economy, ideas and products arrive rapidly from Italy, targeted at markets among people of Italian heritage and nourishing Italianit+, spaces of Italian cultural life. While the familiar greeting 'Eh Paesan!' is commonly used by young Italian Canadians, Harney leaves no doubt that their Italianness and that of their parents is rooted in Toronto.

Review of Molinaro & Kuitunen (1993): The Luminous Mosaic: Italian Cultural Organizations in Ontario

Review of Molinaro & Kuitunen (1993): The Luminous Mosaic: Italian Cultural Organizations in Ontario

Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology

The field of in Italy is parceled out among three closely related but institutionally distinct disciplines. The first, ethnology (etnologia), has the oldest tradition in Italian academics, although its first permanent chair was not established until 1967 (82, 84). The second, history of popular traditions (storia delle tradizionipopolari, also known asfolklore and demologia), has been formally included in the university curriculum since 1911. In some countries, folklore studies are quite distinct from anthropology, but in postwar Italy they are closely associated. The third discipline is known as cultural anthropology (antropologia culturale), but this term has a special and somewhat polemical sense in Italy, having come into use in the 1950s to designate a theoretical and topical orientation framed in opposition to that of ethnology. None of these three is institutionally affiliated with physical or archaeology, for reasons discussed below. Italian scholars have long been interested in anthropology, but it was not systematically represented in the university faculties and curriculum prior to 1967.1 Though slow in finding its institutional space, however, anthropology2 has in the past 20 years established itself in Italian intellectual

Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology

Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology