Postwar Italy Research Articles

L'Italie et la Convention constitutionnelle : avant, pendant et après

Italy’s constitutional preferences at the European Convention were not distinct from those that eventually emerged in the draft document, at least as regards the most important constitutional features. This despite early suggestions that the Berlusconi government had moved away from traditional Italian preferences for federal solutions and stronger central institutions. However, in the aftermath of the Convention, particularly in the light of domestic coalition tensions and difficult economic and budgetary problems, it appears that a form of Euroscepticism is reappearing within the government. Currently this is focused mainly on the role of the European Commission, but in future it may be expected to spread to other institutional issues, particularly if European integration were to become, for the first time in postwar Italy, disputed electoral territory between the parties.

Shopping American-Style: The Arrival of the Supermarket in Postwar Italy

This article presents a case study of the establishment of the first Italian supermarket in 1957, carried out by an American industrial group called the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC). It raises the question of the export of a model born in the United States in a far different economic and political context. It was necessary to transform the technical and structural aspects of the supermarket as an institution to adapt to Italian society. This article also analyzes how other serious problems, deriving from the particular political and juridical situation of Italy, were confronted. In the end, the Italian supermarket was fundamentally different from the original model.

Shopping American-Style: The Arrival of the Supermarket in Postwar Italy

This article presents a case study of the establishment of the first Italian supermarket in 1957, carried out by an American industrial group called the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC). It raises the question of the export of a model born in the United States in a far different economic and political context. It was necessary to transform the technical and structural aspects of the supermarket as an institution to adapt to Italian society. This article also analyzes how other serious problems, deriving from the particular political and juridical situation of Italy, were confronted. In the end, the Italian supermarket was fundamentally different from the original model.

Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature Rocco Capozzi (bio) Eugenio Bolongaro. Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature University of Toronto Press. 239. $50.00 In the late 1960s, writer-critics, including Barth, Vidal, Updike, and Rushdie, praised Calvino as one of the most original, challenging, and entertaining writers of our times. Soon after, in the English-speaking world, numerous essays began to appear which examined mainly his so-called postmodern works like Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, and If on a Winter Night a Traveler. Calvino's fame has grown after his death (1985), as readers continue to recognize the author's talent as a fantastic fabulator and his faith in literature, brilliantly illustrated in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Eugenio Bolongaro's study 'stays away' from what he feels is the familiar beaten track of Calvino's recent criticism as he proposes instead to examine the author's earlier works from 1947 to 1963: I giovani del Po (written in 1950-51 and published in serial form in the journal Officina, 1957-58), the trilogy The Cloven Viscount, The Baron in the Trees, and The Non-Existent Knight (published between 1952 and 1959), and The Watcher (1963). Bolongaro claims that, whereas works dating from Cosmicomics to Palomar have drawn plenty of attention, the earlier ones have not. Although studies like those of Lucia Re, Martin McLaughlin, and Beno Weiss prove [End Page 581] the contrary, among English critics this may be partly true. But it certainly is not in Italy, where critics, especially those of Gramscian and left-wing formation, have delved at great length into Calvino's works associated with engagement and neo-realist narrative practices from the days of The Path to the Spiders' Nests to The Watcher. Bolongaro does an outstanding job in the introduction and first chapter in providing his readers with a clear and documented socio-historical background within which Calvino writes his earlier works. In pursuing his objective to 'reflect the foundation of the intellectual project that endures throughout Calvino's career' he discusses the relationships between Vittorini and Calvino and the ideological goals of journals such as Politecnico, Contemporaneo, Officina, and Menabò, in their attempt to 'shake the Italian intelligentsia out of its provincialism.' As other critics have done, Bolongaro focuses on Calvino's essays ('The Lion's Marrow,' 'The Sea of Objectivity,' and 'The Challenge of the Labyrinth') in which the author debates ideological and literary currents vis-à-vis the Gramscian definition of an 'organic intellectual.' Within his definition of neo-realism as a 'poetic' (however, neo-realism, as Calvino has also stated, was mainly a 'literary current' committed to narrate key socio-political issues of the time: the Resistance, Fascism, the war, the South, etc), Bolongaro develops an excellent discussion on political, sociological, and aesthetic elements of neo-realism and on intellectuals in postwar Italy. Never diverging from his position on Calvino's life-long commitment to the ethical function of literature, Bolongaro examines how the experience of writing I giovani remains in the back of Calvino's mind. This objective proves to be counterproductive, however, because Bolongaro is then forced to speak about the unsuccessful features of Calvino's work, beginning with the autobiographical protagonist: 'Nino's failure as a character mirrors directly Calvino's failure as a writer and intellectual'; 'this dream of cohesion, brotherhood, and clarity failed miserably in I giovani.' It is difficult to say why the author did not choose instead to examine The Path to the Spiders' Nests as the foundation of Calvino's work; after all, Calvino refused to publish I giovani in book form because he considered it 'a rather muddled neo-realist grotesque novel' (Weiss). Consequently, at the end of the analysis of each novel under examination, Bolongaro is compelled to point out Calvino's failures: 'the attempt to portray a convincing social synthesis, which Calvino has been pursuing since I giovani, has once again failed.' Bolongaro's stimulating close reading of the 'fantastic' trilogy demonstrates that he appreciates Calvino's narratological skills, including the metafictional ones. However, because he is constantly returning to I giovani as a point of reference of 'commitment...

From Nationalism to Internationalism: Civil Religion and the Festival of Saint Catherine of Siena, 1940-2003

The article analyses the history of the annual festival of Saint Catherine of Siena from 1940 until 2003. It does so by identifying three distinct phases in the history of the festival during this time. In the first phase (1940-1944), following the proclamation of Catherine of Siena as an official patron saint of Italy (by Pope Pius XII in June 1939), the annual festival was strikingly patriotic, nationalistic, and even militaristic in tone and ethos - thus reflecting the fact that the campaign for Catherine to be proclaimed patron saint of Italy had taken place during the Fascist era and the further fact that her first annual festivals as patron saint of Italy occurred during the Second World War. In the second phase (1946-1989), her annual festival - although still described as a 'national' celebration - was re-constructed to emphasise Catherine's role as a messenger of peace, unity and social justice in her own day and also, therefore, her significance for post-war Italy and its place in a new European context and community. In the third phase (1990-2003), the annual festival was again re-worked to emphasise Catherine's European significance as well as her Italian status. This culminated in the proclamation of Catherine as an official co-patron saint of Europe (by Pope John Paul II in October 1999) and in the official redesignation of her annual festival as an 'international' celebration. In conclusion the article argues that the history of this particular festival shows, firstly, how the concept of 'civil religion' can change and develop over time, and secondly, how civil religion can move beyond narrow nationalism to include internationalist values and themes.

LABOR HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

LABOR HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy by Anna Maria Torriglia (review)

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy by Anna Maria Torriglia (review)

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy

The "Average Housewife" in Post-World War II Italy

This article examines the figure of the housewife and domestic work in post-World War II Italy. Fascism promoted two images of the housewife: the middle-class, urban homemaker inspired by American conceptions of "home economics," and the "rural farmwife" destined to prevail during the thirties. These two images offer both continuity and disjuncture with the image of the housewife in the post-1945 period. The social and economic context in postwar Italy favored the diffusion of the image of the full-time homemaker, an effect of the family policies promoted by the two principal political parties. Instruction manuals on home economics appeared in great numbers during the 1950s and 1960s. Examining these manuals prompts the following questions: How was the role of the woman in the home defined? What was her relationship with the world beyond the family? How was she supposed to perform her work? Domestic work expands in these decades to a few ultimate practices, becoming a totalizing mission and a value in itself, but resulting in the exclusion of women from any large-scale participation and activity in the life of the nation.

Natural mothers: teaching morals and parent-craft in Italy, 1945–60

SummaryAt the end of the Second World War, politicians and social observers apprehensively considered the condition of the family and its destiny and role in post-war Italy. As well as informing political discourses and sociological examinations, the family became a privileged terrain for medical and psychological enquiry, with particular attention given to parenthood and the maternal role of women. The article explores the role played by religious and medical authorities in shaping narratives of parental responsibilities during the post-war years. The interplay of biology and morality in medical discourse and Catholic teaching is discussed in the context of debates about motherhood and the management of childbirth. Particular attention is given to discussions about the use of pain relief in labour and the reception by Italian Catholic gynaecologists of the so-called ‘natural childbirth method’, advocated during the post-war period by a number of European and American practitioners.

The Art of Persuasion: Political Communication in Italy from 1945 to 1990s

Part 1 Party propaganda and political discourse: Italian modernization and the propaganda of the Marshall Plan, David W. Ellwood government propaganda - official newsreels and documentaries in the 1950s, Maria Adelaide Frabotta Italian propaganda abroad - the case of the surrogate voice of Italians in post-war Britain, Lucio Sponza the Italian Communist Party in propaganda films of the early post-war period, Mino Argentieri political identity and communication, Jeff C. Pratt political rituals, David I. Kertzer the political press, Mario Isnenghi picture battles in the Piazza - the political poster from 1945 to 1996, Luciano Cheles advertising politics on TV - the party election broadcast, Isabella Pezzini the languages of politics -from politichese to the discourse of serenity, Patrick McCarthy. Part 2 Persuasion through symbolism and spectacle: meetings of desire, Umberto Eco persuasion by violence - terror and its texts, David Moss the last laugh - cuore and the vicissitudes of satire, Robert Lumley the centre cannot hold -music as political communication on post-war Italy, Alessandro Portelli dress, politics and fashion, 1960-1980, Cristina Giorgetti fashion and political communication, from the 1980s to the present, Maria Pia Pozzato ritual degradation as a public display - a televized corruption trial, Pier Paolo Giglioli.

The Legacy of Benedetto Croce: Contemporary Critical Views by Jack D'Amico , Dain A. Trafton , Massimo Verdicchio (review)

MLR, 99.1, 2004 219 motherhood. In short, the book is a welcome addition to the swelling bibliography on Italian women's writing directed initially at an Anglo-American market, a companion piece to individual and collective enterprises such as the volumes by Kroha, Wood, and Barahski and Vinall, and Panizza and Wood's A History of Women's Writing in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), which includes complementary studies by a number ofthe same critics (although, interestingly,a cross-check for Cecilia Stazzone reveals that even this important publication is not exhaustive in its coverage). Much has been achieved but there is also much more to be done, not least in the editing of source texts, both literary and non-literary, and the further teasing out of the ideological, moral, and intensely personal contradictions experienced by these women writers and alluded to by so many of the contributors. Lastly, some quibbles. The provision of an index, particularly given the recurrence of individual names and issues in contributions across the volume, would definitely have been helpful. There are also occasional signs of a need forfurtherminor editorial intervention and some misprints have slipped through, most notably the date of Neera's death, given as 1816 (p. 44), and Beccari appearing as Baccari (p. 112). University of Bristol Judith Bryce The Legacy ofBenedetto Croce: Contemporary Critical Views. Ed. by Jack D'Amico, Dain A. Trafton, and Massimo Verdicchio. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press. 1999. xiv +244 pp. ?35- ISBN 0-8020-4484-0. In the cultural ethos of post-war Italy, dominated by a drive for reconstruction and renewal, Italian intellectuals were only too readily disposed to spot the conservative element in Croce's thinking and read it into the whole of his production. Despite the acknowledgement of his importance in pre-war Italy by isolated individuals like Bobbio and Garin, Croce has never recovered fromthis onslaught in his own country, except in his adopted city of Naples, where the study of his work is now concentrated. For decades, in school and university textbooks on philosophy his marginalization has taken the form of depicting his work as a form of idealist system-building now historically defunct. As someone who acknowledges having in many ways shared this historic misjudgement of Croce, I feel that a contribution addressing the problem of his neglect in post-war Italian culture would have made a welcome addition to the present volume, not least because Italian intellectual life is the poorer forhis neglect. Not surprisingly, the Anglo-Saxon academic world has been readier to revisit Croce's work, and the present volume is a further contribution to the revival of interest in his writings outside Italy. The firstthree studies, by Massimo Verdic? chio, Jack D'Amico, and Thomas Willette, concentrate on his early writings about Naples. Verdicchio links Croce's studies of popular legends to developments in his theory of history from its initial identification with art to its later and more enduring identification with philosophy. D'Amico examines Croce's writings on the commedia dell'arte of Naples, and sidesteps the philosopher's later disclaimers concerning these early writings to illustrate his ability to combine critical erudition with philosophical imagination. Willette's sensitive essay on Croce's early writings on historical places, monuments, and municipal preservation effortsargues persuasively that Croce's repudiation of these earlier writings conceals 'the complexity and unresolved contradictions of his life' (p. 74). Renata Viti Cavaliere shows how Croce's historicism highlighted the historical contingency of philosophical truths without, however, lapsing into relativism, while Dain A. Trafton's discussion of Croce's History of the Kingdom of Naples is devoted to an analysis of how the author discredited contemporary attitudes towards the Mezzogiorno and injected into his interpretation concepts of human freedom, creativity, 220 Reviews and responsibility to inspire the region's future leaders. Maurice A. Finocchiaro pro? vides a critical comparison with the thought of the elite theorist Gaetano Mosca, and characterizes Croce's political liberalism as a 'pluralistic elitism' (p. 117), in the pro? cess challenging the widespread thesis about his anti-scientific prejudice. The thrust of Myra Moss's contribution is to highlight differences between Croce...

The Palimpsests of Italian Fascism

A review of: Torriglia, A. M. 2002. Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy by Anna Maria Torriglia (review)

MLR, 99.3, 2004 805 of language, and the core thematic strands of each work. In the case of Gli esami non finiscono mai, for example, the themes are the social constraints, the family as a bour? geois environment, and the constant 'examinations' to which the main character is subjected. Towards the end ofthe book, Esposito lays out the core themes ofthe plays in a series of tables which contain their differentaspects. For instance, under 'death', we have 'death as a final solution to solve conflict', 'irrational fear', or 'simulation of death'. The last chapter contains a more extensive summary of what the critic has identified as the overall main themes: the social environment, the family,and so on. These are defined as 'elements porteurs de sens', as they are the elements through which meaning is convey ed. Esposito undoubtedly identifies some of the main features of De Filippo's plays, but such a schematic analysis is not without its drawbacks. It risks becoming an oversimplified reading which proceeds along the old-fashioned critical lines of dissecting a play by 'themes', which appear unrelated to each other or even independent of each other. Today we no longer talk about 'themes', but about 'discourses', 'concepts', and 'ideologies'. These merge, clash, and intertwine, and in so doing bring to the surface the depth of a text. Esposito's book has stripped down De Filippo's plays to a number of thematic strands and, in the process, we have lost much ofthe richness of his plays. University of Strathclyde Donatella Fischer Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy. By Anna Maria Torriglia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2002. xxii +239 pp. ?28. ISBN 0-8020-3604-x. Anna Maria Torriglia's book presents the reader with a consideration of key themes in post-war ltalian cinema and narrative. There is innovation in Torriglia's work in that hers is an interdisciplinary approach where the differentsections (of which there are four, subdivided into individual chapters) investigate the treatment of a theme in filmand narrative, rather than the more traditional approach of standard anthologies that discuss, separately, post-war ltalian cinema and post-war ltalian narrative. The result is stimulating, inviting the reader to make interesting cross-cultural connec? tions. Such an approach is particularly successful in Section 2, 'From Mother to Daughter', where representation of female identity is examined in the writings of Anna Banti and Alba De Cespedes and then convincingly linked to the emergence of a sensitivity to feminist issues as evidenced in the cinema of Antonio Pietrangeli and in Visconti's Bellissima (1951). However, the system of selecting topic and represen? tative texts does not always produce a satisfactory outcome, and it is legitimate to ask why this should be. In Section 1, 'Time Has Changed', the aim is to show responses to war by studying aspects of the recurring father-son relationship. It is noted that, in Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (1947), the despairing son, located in the streets of a ruined Berlin, kills his fatherand then commits suicide; this is offeredas key evidence forthe author's conclusion that texts of the immediate post-war period are character? ized by a sense that 'there is no hope ofa future forthe younger generations surviving the end of Fascism' (p. 38). One might well ask how accurately such an argument properly reflectsthe overall tenor of Rossellini's work. Could such a conclusion have been drawn ifevidence from Rome Open City (1945) had been cited? The other maj or weakness ofthe book is its failure to take account ofthe full range of available critical material on a particular topic. Section 4, 'The Country at Hand', pro? poses to deal with 'the 'discovery' ofthe South' (p. 119). The argument is presented in such a way as to suggest this is purely a post-war phenomenon: there is no mention either within the section or the concluding, and lengthy,bibliography of the excellent 806 Reviews work of writers such as Gabriella Gribaudi, John Dickie, and Jane Schneider, who have investigated the emergence of particular constructs of Southern identity in the nineteenth century during and after the period of unification. In many...

Broken Time, Fragmented Space. A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy

Broken Time, Fragmented Space. A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy

Electoral Connections: The Effects of the Personal Vote on Political Patronage, Bureaucracy and Legislation in Postwar Italy

This article examines the relationship between the legislature and the public administration in postwar Italy (understood as the period from about 1948 through 1994). Italian public administration is normally characterized as badly designed and inefficient, and government performance is usually classed as poor. I argue by contrast that bureaucratic inefficiency, excessive legislation and widespread bureaucratic corruption were features of Italian public administration that were deliberately designed by legislators and intended to enhance the re-election prospects for incumbents by providing them with opportunities for extensive constituency service. The underlying incentives stemmed from the candidates' search for the personal vote, essential for retaining public office. Differences in the laws regulating the financing of political campaigns explain why excessive bureaucratization in the Italian context also resulted in extensive political corruption.

Happy Italy? The Mediterranean Experience of Homosexuality, Psychoanalysis, and the Mental Health Professions

SUMMARY The authors outline the history of the relationship between Italian psychoanalytic and psychiatric institutions and homosexuality. In a “don't ask-don't tell” climate, this history evolved between post-war Italy's ideological polarization between Catholicism and postwar Marxism as well as between two different “local cultures”: Middle-European and Mediterranean. In a review of the Italian psychoanalytic, psychological and psychiatric literature from 1930 to the present, there is a dearth of articles dealing with homosexuality. In the articles that do exist, most link homosexuality with psychopathology or developmental arrests. There is no discussion of the concept of internalized homophobia in the Italian literature. The authors present some early, empirical research in which they assess attitudes toward homosexuality among members of Italian psychoanalytic institutions, both Freudian and Jungian. Preliminary data indicates a greater antihomosexual bias in Freudian institutes. The authors conclude...

The costs of coalition

The Costs of Coalition tackles big questions of enduring interest in real-world politics and in political science. The substantive aim of the book is to understand and explain who governs, and for how long, under the institutions of parliamentary democracy. Its epistemological purpose is to investigate the nature of political scientists' knowledge of coalitional behavior and how to advance it. The book starts from the well-known fact that governments in postwar Italy are extremely short-lived, and identifies a puzzle about coalition politics posed by the Italian experience. In postwar Italy until 1992, cabinets fell frequently but the same parties returned to office again and again. This book focuses on that stability-the perpetual incumbency of the Christian Democrats and the limited degree to which parties alternated between government and opposition in Italy. It probes how stability was tied to instability in Italian governments. It also compares Italian coalitions with those in nine other parliamentary democracies: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The author argues that the costs and benefits of building and breaking coalitions vary in systematic ways. The variations arise in part from parties' deliberate efforts to redefine payoffs in coalition politics, and they also reflect the constraints and opportunities created by the institutions of parliamentary democracy and the configuration of the party system. Under some conditions, such as those in Italy, coalitions are cheap, and politicians can easily make coalitions cheaper. The picture of strategic behavior drawn in the book illuminates Italy's extremes and the degrees of stability found in other parliamentary democracies. In addition, the book advocates and embodies a rethinking of the relationship between game-theory literature in political science and empirical research on political institutions.

Broken time, fragmented space: a cultural map for postwar Italy

Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Post-war Italy examines how the artists and intellectuals of post-war Italy dealt with the 'shameful' heritage of their fascist upbringing and education by trying to craft a new cultural identity for themselves and the country. The continuities between the culture of the fascist and post-fascist periods were, however, far greater than what intellectuals were ready to admit, creating an uncomfortable, sometimes schizophrenic relation to time, as a painful urge to erase the past. Drawing on a variety of critical approaches, Torriglia investigates the efforts to reconstruct a personal as well as a collective self by analyzing both canonical and lesser-known cinematic and literary texts. Organized around four main themes - the use of language, the interaction between personal and public spheres, the perceptual categories of history and memory, and the reconstruction of the female identity - the study also includes historical introductions and sociological commentary that provides an extensive and captivating picture of the cultural production in 1950s Italy, a period that has not yet been extensively studied.

A.M. Torriglia, "Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy"

A.M. Torriglia, "Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy"