Democrazia e sfera pubblica in Italia

This paper explores the issue of the Italians’ relationship to democracy against the theoretical background of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the modern public sphere. After introducing the basic tenets of Habermas’s theory of democracy as founded on public opinion, open to dialog and exercising reason, the paper examines the state of the Italian public sphere in the wake of the Berlusconi era. The paper summarizes several perspectives by prominent Italianists on the different aspects of the Italian public sphere and draws conclusions about the limits and potential of the Italians’ commitment to democracy.&nbsp

Ecstatic Crowds, Addicted Dictators, Intoxicating Politics: Reflections on Rausch and Fascist Italy

Can the concept of ecstasy explain some of the rationale of dictatorships, and more specifically of fascism? And can the concept of ecstasy be connected to manipulation? These are the two central questions I would like to raise and explore in this paper, although there are also other questions that will emerge in my discussion which I hope will help clarify the relationship between ecstasy and manipulatio

Of Tears and Tarantulas: Folk Religiosity, de Martino’s Ethnology, and the Italian South

This paper discusses the Italian ethnographer Ernesto de Martino’s investigation of ritual crying in Southern Italy, bringing to the fore the role ethnology was called to play as a new twentieth-century discipline that emerged from the forced encounter between powerful “advanced” nations and societies “without history.”  Ethnology sought to analyze the impact of cultural norms on a world increasingly polarized between the inevitable march towards rational modernity and the appeal of a magical pre-modern time.  For de Martino, in particular, ethnological research on popular religiosity and ritual crying exposed the peculiarities of Italy’s uneven development in the post-war years and became a means through which to rethink the Italian South

Of Tears and Tarantulas: Folk Religiosity, de Martino’s Ethnology, and the Italian South

This paper discusses the Italian ethnographer Ernesto de Martino’s investigation of ritual crying in Southern Italy, bringing to the fore the role ethnology was called to play as a new twentieth-century discipline that emerged from the forced encounter between powerful “advanced” nations and societies “without history.”  Ethnology sought to analyze the impact of cultural norms on a world increasingly polarized between the inevitable march towards rational modernity and the appeal of a magical pre-modern time.  For de Martino, in particular, ethnological research on popular religiosity and ritual crying exposed the peculiarities of Italy’s uneven development in the post-war years and became a means through which to rethink the Italian South

Fascist spectacle: the aesthetics of power in Mussolini's Italy

This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history.Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature

Introduction to Volume 5, Issue 2

Introduction to Volume 5, Issue 2

The Persistence of the Sacred

Introduction to CIS 5.1.The authors consider the role of the sacred in Italy from the Middle Ages to the present day, particularly in relation to religion (above all Catholicism) as well as to the currents of modern critical thought