Avant-garde modernism and Italian Fascism: cultural politics in the era of Mussolini

Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime

“…8 Similarly, the past 20 years have seen a reassessment of the relationship between Fascism and culture in both Italian and Anglo-American scholarship, and especially so from the 1990s onwards. Walter Adamson (1993Adamson ( , 2001, Mark Antliff (2002), Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2001), Emily Braun (2000), Roger Griffin (1998Griffin ( , 2007, Mario Isnenghi (1979), Aristotle Kallis (2014), Jeffrey Schnapp (2003Schnapp ( , 2004Schnapp ( , 2012, Marla Stone (1998) and Pier Giorgio Zunino (1985) have amply demonstrated the key role played by cultural apparatus in shaping the Italian way to totalitarianism and introduced a new critical vocabulary to discuss culture and fascism: cultural modernities, palingenetic rebirth, the third way, cultural representations as complementary to historical fact, Fascism as a 'discourse', the Fascist regime as the patron State, and the patterns of aesthetic pluralism. They have all contributed to furthering our understanding of the complex ideological positions occupied by intellectuals, of the importance attributed to the process of modernization of the country through forms of cultural production which were not exclusively propaganda, of the complex nature of the regime's formulation of the idea of modernity, and of the connections between cultural formations of the pre-and post-Fascist regime.…”

“…In point of fact, Fascism's attitude towards the arts was never one of repression, imposition or the election of one single 'official' style, but rather one of inclusion, diversity and even the encouragement of antagonistic aesthetic styles, as several scholars have argued (e.g. Malvano 1988a;Fagone 1982, 44;Schnapp 1993;Stone 1998;Adamson 2001;Cioli 2011). In general, the regime took pride in supporting 'good' art, with the aim of educating the masses and helping forge them into a new civilization, and also of promoting the achievements of Italy's 'national genius' (Bottai 1992, 76;Bottai 1943, 16, 85).…”

“…In his analysis, Fascism and modernism are not to be treated as separate categories but rather as propositions in constant dialogical flow, which can neither exist independently nor in opposition to each other (2002,165). According to Walter Adamson (1993), in fact, the artistic origins of Fascist modernity are to be traced back to the pre-WWI Florentine avant-garde, since they articulate the very same contradictions and oppositions, which would define the cultural politics of the dictatorship over the whole arc of its existence. In a more recent article, Adamson returns to the cultural dynamics of the dictatorship in order to assess which of the movements and their actors (again: Margherita Sarfatti and Novecento 7 ; Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Futurism 8 ; Mino Maccari and Strapaese) finally won in the competition for artistic hegemony.…”

“…2. The debate on Fascism and modernity has been discussed in detail elsewhere, but for a persuasive analysis of its cultural specificities concerning literature, the visual arts, cinema and the role of literary journals, see Adamson (1993), Ben-Ghiat (2001), Cioli (2011), Tarquini (2011). 3.…”

Alberto Moravia and Italian Fascism: Censorship, Racism andLe ambizioni sbagliate

“…A productive branch of recent scholarship has concerned itself with the question of Italian Fascism's relationship with culture, including literature, writers and readers (Griffin 1998;Adamson 2001;Ben-Ghiat 2001, pp. 46-69).…”