Il Dolore del Duce: How Modern Italian Identity Confronts the Painful Memory of Mussolini and Fascism
Undergraduate: Amanda Sztein
Faculty Advisor: Lloyd Kramer
Department: Economics
¿¿¿Il Dolore del Duce¿¿¿ is investigation of how Mussolini¿¿¿s contributions to Italian politics, sports, culture, fashion, and infrastructure are incorporated into modern Italian identity. These five lenses of nationalism are combined to support the concept that national identities are built as much by forgetting and ignoring an unpleasant past as they are the remembrance of positive history. The use of nationalism to shape a cultural identity as well as the tension of what is preserved and erased from national memory can be seen though an examination of the efforts of Italian citizens to distance Italian identity from fascism after the end of World War II. This method of analysis is valuable in considerations of other dark periods in a nation¿¿¿s history, especially those after World War II. Though history books are supposed to represent factual history as opposed to memory, the many texts analyzed in this work find that the latter is apparent in Italian textbook passages about fascism and Mussolini. Despite Mussolini¿¿¿s large influence on vital aspects of the Italian city, culture and character, the effects of his fascist rule have been ignored and dismissed to promote the desired modern Italian identity. To protect its social capital, culture, character and nationalist integrity, modern Italian identity has forgotten, ignored and rewritten the inglorious products of fascism and Mussolini.