2 - Italy and the Universality of Repression
Summary
Criminal Positivism and Penal Utopia
In the last chapter, I argued that the perceived necessity to imagine new forms of repression preceded the science of criminals. I also suggested that, despite their intersection zones, before the First World War the science of sanctions and the science of criminals evolved on somewhat parallel tracks. I would like now to develop this latter point before turning to the ways in which the two ‘sciences’ were made to relate in view of the design of new penal institutions.
In Italian historiography, penal positivism and criminal anthropology have long been treated as topics that, because their importance expands well beyond their own specific fields, should be viewed as proper cultural artefacts characteristic of Italy in the last few decades of the nineteenth century. In particular, Lombrosianism has been viewed as one of the main Italian cultural exports of the period, an aspect that has fostered a significant number of studies, by both Italian and non-Italian historians. In Italy, Renzo Villa acknowledged this aspect when speaking of the way in which Lombroso, ‘the most translated Italian scientist of his time’, was, at the peak of his international fame, cherished as a ‘glory of Italy’ and how his public extended well beyond the academia. And Delia Frigessi, in a fundamental work of science history devoted to the criminology of Cesare Lombroso, introduced her analysis with remarks on his international notoriety.
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- Information
- Crime and the Fascist State, 1850–1940 , pp. 41 - 68Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014