This essay will compare the model of the communist family during the era of Palmiro Togliatti's ‘partito nuovo’, beginning with the famous ‘svolta di Salerno’ in 1944, with the model outlined when the Italian Communist Party (PCdI) was first founded in 1921. The sources used vary, spanning memoirs, literature, the press and autobiographies of political activists. The aim of this essay is to expand the research on the ‘communist tradition’; to examine the characteristics of both its theoretical thinking and pedagogic structure; to explore the nature of its propaganda; and to study the individual experiences of activists.

The alliance between the Lega Nord (LN) and Forza Italia (FI), later Popolo della Libertà (PDL), continued, uninterrupted, for over a decade, until November 2011. The problems that beset it under the fourth Berlusconi government are known; however, there is a lack of academic analysis of how such an alliance was seen and experienced by the people who made up the fabric of its constituent organisations. Based on interviews with institutional representatives and members from both parties, this article addresses the question of how people within them saw their ally and its leaders, and what they thought of the centre-right alliance under the fourth Berlusconi government. The analysis reveals that, although the LN's rhetoric, style and uncompromising stances on policy were the target of much criticism within the PDL, the latter nonetheless showed much respect for its ally, the way it was led, its ability to communicate effectively and its rootedness at the local level. However, LN members and representatives were, in turn, extremely critical of the PDL and its leader, and very much conceived of the alliance as a ‘marriage of convenience’. This notwithstanding, it is reasonable to expect that the PDL and the LN may find ways to rebuild their alliance in the future, if indeed the PDL continues to exist in its present form, due to their fundamental compatibility at the ideological level and their understanding of each other's priorities.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's first experience of active combat was as a member of the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Motorists in the autumn of 1915, when he fought in the mountains of Trentino at the border of Italy and Austria-Hungary. This article examines his experience of mountain combat and how he communicated aspects of it both to specialist, Futurist audiences and to the general public and soldiers, through newspaper articles, manifestos, ‘words-in-freedom’ drawings, speeches and essays written between 1915 and 1917. Marinetti's aim in all of these wartime writings was to gain maximum support for the Futurist movement. Thus, he adapted his views to suit his audience, at times highlighting the superiority of the Futurist volunteers over the Alpine soldiers and at others seeking to distance Futurism from middle-class intellectualism in order to appeal to the ordinary soldier. Marinetti interpreted the war's relationship with the natural environment through an exclusively Futurist lens. He sought to ‘futurise’ the Alpine landscape in an effort to reconcile the urban and technophilic philosophy of his movement with the realities of combat in the isolated, rural and primitive mountains of Trentino.

Mussolini had declared that Fascism, through the anti-mafia campaign entrusted to Cesare Mori, prefect of Palermo, in the second half of the 1920s, had conclusively liberated Sicily from the mafia. However, from the early 1930s a new deterioration of public order on the island was evident, and the regime was forced to launch a second, and much less publicised, repression of this phenomenon. In the course of its careful investigations the body given responsibility for pursuing this repression, the Ispettorato Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza per la Sicilia, compiled a series of reports, including the Processo verbale di denunzia relating to the area around Palermo. With a level of detail never seen before, these reports described the structure, organisation and dynamics of mafia groups. This was possible because police officers had available members of the mafia groups themselves – genuine pentiti – who had decided to make disclosures to the authorities.

A number of Italianists have recently argued the need to reconsider the term impegno in the light of feminist and queer critiques. Such critiques do not simply highlight the way in which impegno has usually been construed as a masculine, heterosexual domain. They also note that its employment often presupposes a gendered, heteronormative account of politics itself. Complicating this sense of politics via a reading of recent work in queer theory which insists that desire and need are intertwined, this essay argues for a reconsideration of the work of Italian poet Sandro Penna – someone whose oeuvre has regularly been construed by literary critics as apolitical – as an example of impegno. Bringing together psychoanalysis, the work of Michel Foucault, and historical materialism, the essay argues that, in their historical context, Penna's poems staged a resistance to what Freud termed the genital organisation of the libido and are thus ‘anti-Oedipal’.

This article seeks to reposition the popular cinematic genre commedia all'italiana within the context of the rapid expansion of the media industries which accompanied Italy's postwar economic miracle. The article looks at three distinct aspects of the relationship between commedia all'italiana and other media. First, it outlines the important role played by the media during the boom in disseminating images of consumer lifestyles, and highlights the way in which commedia all'italiana participated in this process. Second, through a discussion of media appearances by Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, the article emphasises the extent to which their commedia all'italiana star personas were constructed and circulated in a multimedia context. Finally, it examines how the genre represented other media, focusing in particular on the representation of gender in advertising scenes. Through close readings of commedia all'italiana advertising scenes, the article notes points of continuity with and difference from advertising imagery that was circulating at the time. The article argues that in order to further our understanding of commedia all'italiana and its relationship to Italian society, it is essential to understand the genre's relationship to other media production of the period, which both influenced the comedies' representations and was influenced by them in turn.

On September 18, 1938, Benito Mussolini disembarked in the port city of Trieste to begin a seven-day visit of the Tre Venezie. The tour was in keeping with Mussolini's policy of andare verso il popolo which involved periodic visits to Italy's regions. It was also an opportunity to impose the cult of the Duce on a frontier region which had, since the 1920s, been the site of harsh anti-Slav policies designed to Italianize the Venezia-Giulia region. This article examines the workings of the cult in Trieste where the regime was anxious to demonstrate that it was present in a city that had felt neglected by Rome. Often viewed as a top-down enterprise, this article will explore how the cult of the Duce relied significantly on local dynamics and spaces.

This article focuses on Italian foreign and security policy (IFSP). It looks at three examples of the country's policy-making which reveal its poor results as a security provider, namely: Italy's tardy reaction to the violence in Libya in 2011, its prompt reaction to the Lebanon crisis in 2006, and its efforts to be included in the diplomatic directorate, the P5 + 1, approaching relations with Iran in 2009. The article considers whether government action has bolstered the reliability of IFSP and also discusses the country's FSP in terms of its basic differences from that of its partners in the European Union, France, Britain and Germany, envisaging how Italy could react to build more credibility. Italy's policy is observed through a three-pronged analytical framework enriched by concepts of the logic of expected consequences. The article concludes that IFSP is predictable, but it must still reveal that it is reliable, and explains why this is the case.

Following consideration of the most common representations of migrants in Italian cinema, where they are often portrayed as victimised and minor subjects, this article analyses a film by Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti, Corazones de Mujer (2008) as a ‘post-migration alternative’. This film considers a different way of depicting ‘foreigners’, and addresses the complex issues of gender and sexuality as they emerge at the interface between Western and Arab cultures. Within the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's ‘gender performativity’ and Rosi Braidotti's ‘nomadic subject’, this article aims to suggest an alternative way of representing migrants in Italian cinema as agents of social and gender transgressions.

One of the aspects of the formation of consensus under the Fascist state concerns the construction of the Fascist ‘man’. This article takes up this notion and explores it in relation to children. The first part deal with the legislative process according to which Fascist rituals and myths were introduced into the school curriculum. The second part examines the letters that were sent to the Duce by children during the period of the regime. The majority of letters appear to have been dictated by elementary school teachers according to precise directives, but nonetheless there is some evidence of the spontaneous manifestation of the feelings of infants. The most significant aspect concerns the transfiguration of the Duce himself into a figure of fable in ways that could not but impact on the imagination of those who were born and raised between the 1920s and later 1930s.

The article discusses the thinking of Mario Einaudi in relation to the ambitious measures with which the Italian government sought to move towards land reform in the immediate post–war period. Einaudi, an intellectual and academic, was by birth Italian but moved to the United States during the Fascist period. Like his father Luigi, the noted economist, he was convinced of the need to stimulate the free market in land in order to increase productivity and modernise cultivation methods; in his writings he repeatedly sought to develop a plan of action that would facilitate collaboration between Rome and Washington in this field, identifying the Tennessee Valley Authority approach as especially suited to the Italian case. However, while his ideas achieved a good public airing, they had a limited impact: on the political front, Cold War priorities pushed Italian and US Marshall Plan experts more towards the redistribution of landownership than towards stimulating the productivity of agricultural businesses, in the attempt to rapidly build a consensus behind the government; and on the cultural front, at the end of the 1950s the issue of backwardness in the rural South started to be interpreted in terms of cultural and social anthropology, an approach which did not directly relate to the development of political programmes.

During his long pontificate, John Paul II pursued a wide and carefully articulated policy of canonisations whose aim was to underwrite his magisterium by presenting hagiographical models that would convey well-defined pastoral teaching and contain both ecclesiastical and ecclesiological messages for the faithful. The high number of Italians declared blessed and/or made saints analysed in the present article is proof of the special interest the Pope showed in Italy and specifically in the sanctity of the country. The high concentration of beatifications and canonisations of hagiographical figures from Italy can be explained only in part by the canonical system, which regulates the process of canonisation and which makes it easier to open and support a cause, above all from a financial point of view, if the pressure group behind the candidate for sainthood is located near the Vatican. More precisely, what emerges is both the attempt to create a specific public image of Italy as a nation which has been a historic stronghold of Catholicism and is still capable of reacting to secularisation, and the objective of laying down more effective guidelines and robust directives for civil society. In other words, by proposing Italian hagiographical models, John Paul II was striving to mould Italy's national identity in a Christian form, conferring on the country the role of model for other European states.

During the Fascist regime millions of postcards circulated featuring Mussolini in many different guises and forms. This article reflects on their production, distribution and consumption and considers the extent to which they can be seen as part of the propaganda of a totalitarian regime. It also explores the meanings of the imagery of a selection of postcards. It argues that Mussolini postcards, despite their vast numbers, amounted in fact to only a small proportion of those circulating under the regime. Moreover, many of them were produced by private publishers for profit rather that Fascist organisations or the state. Therefore they cannot simply be considered as a manifestation of totalitarianism and must rather be conceived in large part as an effect of the impact of Mussolini on popular culture.

In the mid-1970s the reform of Italy's radio and television system led to the end of RAI's monopoly and the advent of commercial television stations. This resulted in a reorganisation of the system according to the precepts of daily life and domesticity, with viewers at the centre of the relationship with the medium. This article, by analysing televisual archives such as game shows, explores how television formed part of the changes taking place in society and reveals how it became a kind of meeting-place, coinciding with the rise of an affluent society, between aspirations and desires and stereotypical models dictated by the market. These models were able to express new values that went beyond the boundaries of ideological affiliations and were in effect a response to the search for new forms of identity. In particular, television's place became an open space that was defined through modes of socialisation. It thus constructed a wider intimacy, a ‘mediatised hearth’, that progressively eroded the barriers between the private and the public sphere and led unexpectedly towards a ‘relationship of interest’ between television, competitors, viewers and financial backers. A new community then emerged, characterised more by possessing than by existing.

This article considers the emergence of a corpus of victim centred-narratives addressing the experience of political violence during the anni di piombo in the period surrounding the establishment of the ‘Day of Memory for the Victims of Terrorism’. Bringing a critical victim-studies approach to bear, it explores how the victim of terrorism is portrayed in the corpus of victim-centred narratives and asks what is claimed, effected and achieved by the corpus in cultural terms. It further explores how the perspective of survivors of terrorist attacks and of relatives of the victims reshapes the cultural imaginary of the anni di piombo in the new millennium.

Historians agree that the liberation of Florence (11 August 1944) was a key moment in the war in Italy for political, rather than military, reasons. This was the case, above all, because the Allies found for the first time, in a city of great international importance, an administration that at both city and provincial level was an expression of the antifascist forces. The parties as well as the organisations had, it transpired, worked to create the foundations of popular self-government during the struggle against the Germans and the Fascists and, in particular, during the months immediately preceding the Liberation. It was in Florence itself that, confronted with such a demonstration of the maturity and organisation of the Resistance, the Allied forces were compelled to rethink their relationship with the various partisan and antifascist forces. The difference between Florence and Rome was such that the Allies had, at the very least, to acknowledge the institutional and social ambitions of the Resistance movement and the desire of the partisans to change the way the country would be run after the war. These aspirations were a key aspect of the Resistance in Florence and Tuscany and, as the Allies discovered, the partisans in the North shared these same hopes and ambitions.

Language as it appears in the public space is at the centre of investigations into linguistic landscapes. Language agents immersed in a given geo-historical context contribute to the construction of spatialised meaning and to the transformation of space into place. The visibility of a language in a linguistic landscape does not just index a reality, i.e. the use of one or more languages within a community, but contributes to the symbolic construction of a given space. The current study aims to investigate the peculiarities of place-making and -marking of the Slovenian-speaking community in the area of Trieste via an analysis of written signs displaying the minority language. The paper will show that the tension resulting from achieved equality in the legal status of Slovenian and the perception of unequal power relations between different ethnic groups is reproduced in the construction of the local linguistic landscape. The final part of the discussion will suggest that public use of the Slovenian language is central to the performance of a material border.

Despite the increasing scholarly attention dedicated to the study of reception and memory of Fascism, these issues have not yet been widely addressed from the standpoint of collective memories in specific local contexts. Through a combined use of oral history and micro-history, this study explores the identity and collective memory of Predappio, Mussolini's hometown. Predappio is an emblematic place on account of its ‘public’ role within the Italian nation as the town of the Duce and, since 1957, the site of neofascist pilgrimages. By looking at memories of people born under the regime from different political orientations, ranging from the right to the left, it concentrates on the local collective memory of Fascism, of Mussolini and of the ongoing post-war cult of the Duce. The article aims to demonstrate both the relevance of local mythologies and the increasing spread of a reconciliatory narrative of Fascism based on traditional values such as family and kinship.

Analysis of electoral results implies in many cases differences and similarities between various areas of a polity. Differentiated electoral outcomes are evident not only within each context, but also between two (or more) territorial levels, such as elections at national, regional and provincial level, etc. Nevertheless, studying the territorial electoral discontinuities almost inevitably induces the concept of nationalisation of politics. This article presents a comparison between national and sub-national levels expressed in different electoral results between legislative and regional elections in Italy. In order to carry out a consistent analysis, the comparison of vote percentages is made by always referring to a set of seven (families of) parties, obviously modifying the choice of single parties when the offering changed, but keeping the same format for each pair of elections analysed together. The diachronic comparison over a politically relevant time span – as well as analysis at the level of geopolitical areas – gives us a useful framework rich in information. In Italy electoral behaviour in regional and national elections continues to show, albeit gradually and with some vacillations, a marked differentiation.