Silvana Patriarca - Italian Neopatriotism - Debating National Identity in The 1990s

Modern Italy (2001), 6(1), 21–34
Italian neopatriotism: debating national

identity in the 1990s
SILVANA PATRIARCA
Summary
This article discusses some of the distinguishin g features of the debate over
national identity that took place in Italy in the 1990s. Reacting against the
threats of the Lega Nord and in response to the new ideological and
political landscape of the post-Cold War order, a number of Italian
intellectual s rediscovered the value of patriotism . Searching for the origins
of the Italians’ allegedly weak sense of national identity, some questioned
the Resistance and the party system that originate d from it. While this
historical revisionism has been the object of well-deserved criticism, there
is another type of thematizatio n of identity which has received less
attention: it deploys the old notion of an ‘Italian character’, which appears
frequently in the press and the media. The article shows that this discourse,
too, is a way of articulatin g patriotism , and then re ects on the meaning
that this recon guration of ideologie s and identities acquires in the new
context, both domestic and international .
For the past decade, debate has raged concerning Italy’s national identity.
Several factors have come together to shape this soul-searching : the spread of
the Lega Nord; the unveiling of the system of generalized political corruption
known as Tangentopoli; the experience of a coalition government which in-
cluded a ‘post-Fascist’ party almost 50 years after the liberation from the Nazis
and Fascists; the transformation of the party system combined with striking
political continuities . Internationa l developments, too, have helped focus atten-
tion on issues of nation and national identity. Rapidly advancing European
integration and the increasing globalizatio n of the economy have contributed, in
Italy as elsewhere, to the urgency of re ecting on the consequences of the
waning of national sovereignty as it has been known so far. On the other hand,
the re-emergence of nationalism and the making of new national states in
Eastern Europe following the end of the Cold War have brought back the spectre
of national disintegratio n and civil war.
The interest in national identity comes after a period—in fact almost the
whole duration of the Cold War—when the language of national identity and
nationalism in Italy were more or less the discursive monopoly of the extreme
Silvana Patriarca, University of Florida, Department of History, 4131 Turlington Hall, PO Box 117320, Gainesville
FL 32611. E-mail: spatriar@history.u .edu and sp55@columbia.edu
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DOI: 10.1080/1353294012004554 2
22 S. PATRIARCA
right. Scholarship ignored the issue, and popular culture developed other
interests: as Felice Liperi has observed, in popular songs of the 1950s the theme
of patria all but disappeared, replaced by the praise of mamma.1 The Italian
cinema, of course, produced a number of representations of ‘Italian-ness’
(ranging from the self- attering image of the bravo italiano to the cynical and
opportunis t individua l of commedia all’italiana), but that was only to a limited
extent a self-conscious work of ‘identity framing’.2 And if in the 1980s the
theme of Italy as one’s country and the question of what makes it unique began
to re-emerge in the mass media and popular culture,3 it was only in the 1990s
that the problematic of patria and national identity exploded fully in academic
and political discourse. One can even notice an element of exhilaration taking
hold of some commentators as they felt legitimized to deal with a theme and a
vocabulary which had been absent from their language for such a long time.4
If it were just a few intellectuals talking to each other, we would perhaps be
justi ed in paying the matter little attention. However, these intellectuals not
only write books (and publishers, too, are capitalizing on this new interest: Il
Mulino, for example, launched a series called ‘L’identità italiana’ with volumes
devoted to gures, events and objects which are allegedly seminal for Italian
identity) , but they publish regularly in major newspapers which, in spite of their
relatively limited circulation, contribute to shaping what we call ‘public opin-
ion’. Indeed, I would argue that, with their frequent intervention s on this issue
in the press and on television, not to mention their linkages to political parties,
these intellectuals contribute to shaping common ideas and outlooks, in other
words, common sense.
This, of course, is not the rst time that Italians have engaged in this
self-re ective activity: other moments of social and political transition in Italian
history from the Risorgimento onwards have produced a considerable literature
on the issue of what distinguishes —or, better damns—the Italians. There is
indeed a whole repertoire of representations—some old and stereotypical, others
more recent, some the product of the political struggle, other derived from the
social sciences—of a so-called Italian ‘national character’. Indeed more than
just a repertoire, there exists a very entangled discourse of Italian character
which points to a complex web of self-perceptions and socio-politica l relation-
ships. Both Italians and non-Italians have contributed to this discourse over the
years.
The debate about national identity in the 1990s was in many ways a re-play
of this discourse on national character. This does not mean that what was
witnessed was merely a rehash of old material. The debate contained some new
components—notably a revisionist account of the Resistance—and even the
more traditional ones were proposed in new ways. Both old and new components
have been put to use in the current political context. How this has been done is
the subject of this article, part of a larger project on the politics of the discourse
of national character in Italy in some major moments of political transition
between the Risorgimento and the 1990s. Recent studies of the changing
language of politics in the current political transition have not paid attention to
this type of discourse, concentrating instead on the language of conventional
political actors (parties and their leaders).5 Since the linkage between public
intellectuals and the political class in Italy is quite close it is, nevertheless,
important to pay attention to the activities of the former, particularly in a period
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ITALIAN NEOPATRIOTISM 23
such as the current one in which a great deal is at stake, both ideologically and
politically.
Rediscovering the nation

The new debate on national identity was initially strongly shaped by the fear of
national disintegration generated by the rise of the Lega Nord with its threats of
secession, and by the actual disintegratio n of neighbourin g Yugoslavia. In that
context, and perhaps unsurprisingly , most Italian intellectuals took the side of the
nation-state and rediscovered the value of a ‘good’ patriotism. This occurred
across the political spectrum even though it was not translated into the political
platform of any new party. After the dramatic electoral success of the Lega Nord
in 1992 and the collapse of Yugoslavia, Italian intellectuals mobilized rather
rapidly in support of the unity of Italy. Debates and conferences were organized
in several northern cities and a steady stream of publication s devoted to the issue
began to appear. In December 1992 a conference on national identity was held
in Brescia (i.e. in one of the cities where the Lega Nord had polled well) and
academics lectured high school teachers about the need to strengthen the national
dimension in the history curriculum.6 In September 1993 the Giunta centrale per
gli studi storici (Central Committee for Historical Studies), chaired by the
historian and Republican senator Giovanni Spadolini, and the University of
Trieste held a conference in that border city which placed the Italian historical
profession in the forefront of the defence of the nation. In a paper presented at
the conference, Renzo De Felice, who always liked to describe himself as a
‘pure’ and ‘scienti c’ historian, expounded on the value of the nation, which he
described as the soul of democracy, at a time when forces of all kinds conspired
to destroy it.7 The following year the new journal of geopolitics , LiMes,
organized a conference in Venice entitled ‘What Italy is good for’ (Perché serve
l’Italia), which gathered intellectuals, politicians and churchmen who, like the
founders of the journal itself, intended to respond energetically to the threats to
national unity.8
In 1993 Gian Enrico Rusconi, a political scientist with a keen interest in
history, adopted Habermas’ concept of ‘patriotism of the constitution ’ in his Se
cessiamo di essere una nazione to mount a defence of the idea of the nation and
of patriotism as ‘resources for democracy’.9 In 1995, Maurizio Viroli constructed
the genealogy of a good patriotism. Claiming the existence of a strong link
between love of liberty and love of country in the discourse of classical
republicanism between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Viroli juxta-
posed this to the cultural form of nationalism with no interest in liberty that
emerged in the late eighteenth century.10 The following year historian Silvio
Lanaro defended the rationality of the nation-state (of western origin) as a shield
against both the anti-democratic tendencies of ‘micro- nationalisms ’ and the
alienating features of a global economy and supranational institutions .11
Several others felt the need to defend the historical value of the nation, despite
its admitted defects. In 1994 Ruggiero Romano published Paese Italia. Venti
secoli d’identità in which he rejected the ‘inferiority complexes which poison
[Italians’] consciousnes s of being Italian’ and stressed the long history and
profound cultural unity of Italy in spite of its fairly recent history as political
unit. 12 In the same year Luciano Cafagna reasserted the common culture of the
24 S. PATRIARCA
elites of the country and the integration of North and South in his Nord e Sud.
Non fare a pezzi l’unità d’Italia.13 In these works, contrary to their usual habit,
historians openly declared their preferences, using history to legitimate their
convictions by showing the deep reasons behind national unity and the nation-
state.
But to an even larger extent debating national identity in the Italy of the 1990s
meant re ecting on the reasons for its alleged weakness, and this meant also
interrogating history, the Italian past. ‘Why we went from Cavour to Bossi’
reads the title of a collection of essays published in 1997.14 ‘What went wrong?’
has been, in other terms, the recurrent question: what has impeded the making
of a more uni ed or united nation? This of course was not exactly a new
question in Italy, but it was one that acquired a new urgency in the 1990s. And
while Italian historians of different political convictions and specialists of
different periods have generally been unable to resist the opportunit y to ponder
on the recurrent patterns and indeed the overall meaning of Italian history from
its origins to the present (and we will return to these later), it is modern and
especially contemporary historians who have held a particularly prominent place
in this exercise. Several chose to revisit the trajectory of national history from
uni cation to the present. For example, in Italia addio? Unità e disunità dal
1860 a oggi, Aurelio Lepre looked at the politics behind the persistent division
of Italy into North and South, while Giuseppe Galasso in Italia nazione dif cile,
confessing his ‘civic sadness’, pointed out how the Lega Nord had proposed a
traditional image of the South that historical development had made obsolete;
Zef ro Ciuffoletti in his Stato senza nazione pointed to the ‘myth’ of Italy
cultivated by the Risorgimento elites which never really translated into a
reality. 15
This kind of revisiting did not generate controversy nor did it produce any
particularly new interpretation. Rather, it was the attempt to explain the alleged
weakness of national identity by revisiting the history of what is now called
(improperly) the ‘First Republic’ and its founding moment, the Resistance, that
generated controversy. In his Se cessiamo di essere una nazione, Gian Enrico
Rusconi claimed that the Resistance could not and did not work well as the
constituent moment of the Italian Republic because of the profound political
divisions among its members, divisions which continued and actually increased
in the post-war period. At the same time, Rusconi argued for the need to elevate
the ‘Constitutio n born from the Resistance’ to a kind of mythical role in order
to build a healthy, democratic patriotism .16 Soon afterwards, Ernesto Galli della
Loggia, drawing on the historical reconstruction s of Renzo De Felice, launched
his thesis of the ‘death of fatherland’, i.e. the fatal weakening of the sense of
nation which had allegedly occurred rst with the collapse of state institution s
after the signing of the armistice of 8 September 1943, and had continued with
the weak legitimizatio n of the post-war regime and the American-led moderniza-
tion of the 1950s and 1960s. Convinced of the existence of a close linkage
between the ‘absence of the nation’ in Italy and the present ‘crisis of the state’,
Galli della Loggia did not, however, in contrast to Rusconi, advocate a
patriotism of the Constitution .17 He limited himself to pointing out the factors
that had contributed to what he called the ‘gigantic work of de-nationalization ’
which occurred in the post-war period. In 1996, in a revised and ampli ed
version of his essay, Galli della Loggia further developed his revisionist stance.
This new version contained more speci c denunciation s of the anti-national

aspects of the Resistance. There were in particular denunciations of the role of
the left-wing partisans in suppressing rival formations in the border region of
Friuli in order to favour Tito’s plans.18 Galli della Loggia reaf rmed that neither
the idea of the Resistance nor of the Constitutio n could serve to re-cement the
sense of the nation among Italians and he maintained that the anti-Fascist
ideology was a thing of the past, a chapter which the end of the Cold War should
de nitively have closed. In fact La morte della patria suggests that if one wants
to rebuild a sense of national identity one must abandon the so-called vulgata
resistenziale, i.e. the (allegedly hegemonic) anti-Fascist account of the Resist-
ance.
In spite of their different evaluations and politics, both Rusconi’s and Galli
della Loggia’s contribution s brought the theme of patriotism to the fore of a
debate that was political and not merely academic. In contrast to the other more
conventiona l works, these had more explicit ideological and political implica-
tions, were controversial (admittedly Galli della Loggia’s much more than
Rusconi’s, especially the book version of the essay), and gathered substantial
media attention. Major newspapers such as La Stampa and Corriere della Sera
immediately brought the positions of these authors before a wider public,
offering Rusconi and Galli della Loggia, respectively, a platform for the
expression of their views.19
Not surprisingly , Rusconi’s critical revisiting of the Resistance (but not his
conclusions ) found the approval of Renzo De Felice who, in a 1995 interview,
explicitly declared that the most important political task of the present was that
of ‘reconstitutin g the spiritual unity of the nation’.20 This task implied a critical
reconsideration of the events of 1943–5 which would not only recognize the
presence of patriotic motives and ideals among the supporters of the Fascist
Italian Social Republic (RSI) but would also place the ‘Italian people’ at the
centre of the collective drama of those years. This is exactly what De Felice had
set out to do in the last volume of his monumental biography of Mussolini which
contains a long chapter entitled, signi cantly, ‘The tragedy [dramma] of the
Italian people between Fascists and partisans’. The recasting of the founding
moment of the Republic in terms of tragedy establishe d an equivalence between
ghters on the opposite sides of the con ict,21 an equivalence that De Felice
restated even more clearly in his controversia l interview with Pasquale Chessa,
Rosso e Nero. There he also claimed that only by coming to terms with their
past, beyond the existing ideological reconstruction s of it, could the Italian
people hope to overcome the identity crisis in which they increasingly found
themselves.
Thanks to intense media coverage, the theses of what critics refer to as
‘anti-anti-Fascist ’ or ‘post-Fascist’ historiograph y were fully spelled out and
made known to a public of non-specialists . They generated responses in the
intellectua l community. Students of Italian history and culture pointed out the
instrumental and political nature of this kind of incursion into the recent past in
the absence of a full and detailed historical reconstruction of it—a reconstruction
which is still in its infancy. Several scholars and intellectuals with left-leaning
convictions denounced this historical revisionism (which has also dealt with
notorious episodes such as the ‘Triangle of death’) for being driven by a political
agenda which sought to delegitimate the First Republic and the parties of the left
26 S. PATRIARCA
in particular, and to legitimate the inclusion of so-called ‘post-Fascist’ forces in

governing coalitions.22
The scope of this historical revisionism, however, goes beyond this immediate
and contingent political goal. Neopatriots have been articulating a new ideologi-
cal stance for a moderate public opinion which the end of the Cold War has left
bereft of ideological anchors and exposed to diverse elements that threaten the
reality of the nation as it has been known so far.23 Even if secession is no longer
a threat (and one may doubt that it ever was), there are good reasons to think
that neopatriotis m as an ideological formation is here to stay. There is an
interesting discursive convergence between the ‘Italian people’ whose ‘tragedy’
De Felice placed at the centre of his historical investigatio n of 1943–5 and the
favourite political subject invoked by Forza Italia’s leader, i.e. la gente, ‘people’
(as distinct from il popolo—‘the people’). But the post-Communist left also has
rediscovered the value of a proud and united Italian people.24 With class
ideologies on the wane since the fall of the Wall and in the globalized economy,
‘peoples’ and ‘nations’ are re-emerging in the consciousnes s of many intellectu-
als as the important ‘independent variables’ which make all the difference in an
increasingly homogenized and market-driven world.
This view can nd even stronger support if we examine another component
of the debate on national identity, namely the problematic of ‘national character’.
The notions of national character and national identity have different origins and
meanings, identity having entered the social and political vocabulary only
recently, yet in the current Italian situation they are deployed in a remarkably
similar way.25 While the revisionists ’ questioning of the Resistance touches the
democratic sensibilitie s of many Italians, the framing of the debate on identity
in terms of national character is less controversial because it relies on outlooks
and self-perceptions shared by intellectuals (and even ordinary people) on all
sides of the political spectrum. In the rest of this article, I will turn my attention
to the main characteristics of this component of the debate on national identity
in order to show that it too has political and ideological relevance and that it is
also a component, albeit less unambiguous , of Italian neopatriotism .
The politics of national character

Since the Risorgimento at least, debating national character in Italy has meant
debating a uniqueness fraught with liabilities. It involves primarily describing
the collective behaviours, mentalities, habits or, to use a contemporary ex-
pression, the culture of the Italians, and in particular to denounce their numerous
‘vices’. These have been variously de ned in different historical moments and
by different observers. Lack of ‘civic spirit’ and of a ‘sense of the state’ gured
prominently in the analyses of the 1990s. This may seem obvious: after all, a
corruption system of the size of Tangentopoli raises legitimate questions about
the state of public morality.
However, one need not explain the behaviours unveiled by the scandal by
mobilizing ideas of national character and national vices. The fact that intellec-
tuals have resorted to this vocabulary itself needs to be accounted for. In other
words, while nobody could deny the existence of some speci c traits in Italian
society and history, naming a set of behaviours as ‘national character’ (or
identity, culture, mentality—terms which appear to be used interchangeably ) is

an entirely different matter.26
Nowadays, discussion of national character is common currency in the Italian
press and it has been so for quite some time. Major editorialists in newspapers
across the political spectrum often refer to the Italian character as an explanation
for the many evils of the Italian state. Several versions exist of this type of
discourse. 27 Indro Montanelli and Roberto Gervaso, conservative journalists and
writers of popular history books, typify one version. Montanelli has a regular
column in the Corriere della Sera in which he answers readers’ letters. He likes
to maintain that Mussolini is the epitome of all the Italians’ defects28 and
describes the Italians as ‘anarchic sheep, allergic to any rule of civic coexis-
tence’, ‘individualists ’ who are ‘afraid only of the stick and of the shepherd’s
dog’, ‘champions of exibility and transformism’.29 At the same time, his prose
exudes complacency and the positive component of the Italian stereotype (their
inventiveness and genius). Right-of-centre newspapers such as Il Messaggero
and the short-lived La Voce (edited by Montanelli), as well as weekly magazines
such as Panorama, exhibit feature articles on national character along these
lines. 30
One precursor of this conservative discourse was Giuseppe Prezzolini who
denounced the basic ‘anarchism’ of the Italians as early as 1918 in his
Codice della vita italiana where he also pointed out their ‘untrustworthiness ,
servility, exaggerated individualism , the habit of fraud and corruption’.31 These
words were uttered by a nationalist who was placing great hopes in the
strengthenin g and nationalizing work of the war. But the essentialism of this
version may justify both support of the status quo—since one cannot expect
much change from an unchanging character—and appeals for a strong govern-
ment—which would be capable of dealing with the Italians’ essential anarchism.
Nor is it a coincidence that Mussolini showed contempt for the Italians in
a similar way when frustrated by his inability to change them according to
his tastes. 32
Then there is a discourse which tends to be practised by journalists and
intellectuals with more progressive political convictions such as Giorgio Bocca
and Beniamino Placido.33 In this version, the vices of the Italians in part overlap
with those exposed by the conservative discourse (political opportunism , corrup-
tion, familism), but there are also different ones (provincialism , for example).
Proponents of this version tend to be believers in a wholesome modernity which
seems constantly to elude Italy and they are distraught over the inability of the
Italians to become truly modern. Generally they have not yet given up, and in
enlightene d fashion believe that it may still be possible to teach Italians
something so that they too will become modern. Hence their public denuncia-
tions of the Italian character and their pleas for a true modernization, a regular
feature in Bocca’s column entitled ‘L’antitaliano’ published in the weekly
magazine L’Espresso and in editorials in La Repubblica.34
The proponents of this version have recently discovered an illustriou s precur-
sor in the poet Giacomo Leopardi whose posthumous essay Discorso sopra lo
stato presente dei costumi degli italiani—reprinted several times by four
different publishers since the late 1980s—has been read quite anachronisticall y
as a faithful portrayal of what remains wrong with today’s Italy.35 In contrast to
the cynicism and complacency shaping attitudes on the right, the prevailing
28 S. PATRIARCA
attitude on the left is one of angst and extreme disappointment —in the elites
primarily, but extending further, to the whole people.
In spite of their differences, there is a certain convergence between the two
discourses: beside some common targets, they are brought together by the very
posture of the intellectual as self-appointed expert on, and judge of, the mores
of a whole people. This is the intellectual busy with the work of building his (the
intellectual in question is almost always male) nation.36 This important feature
of the discourse reveals the common ground that it shares with Italian patriotism .
In the Risorgimento, patriots contrasted the current inferiority of their country
with their acute conviction of its past (and future) greatness. They too pointed
out the vices of their fellow Italians in order to call them to national regeneration
in their attempt to restore Italy’s proper place in the world of nations. Vincenzo
Gioberti, the main proponent of a moderate liberal patriotism in the 1840s and
the author of the most popular patriotic text of the nineteenth century, Del
primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843), offers an example of this rhetoric,
and so does Cesare Balbo’s Le speranze d’Italia (1844), adding the rhetorical
question ‘Will I perhaps be said not to love my country if I see and admit her
vices?’ 37 In post-uni cation Italy patriotic intellectuals debated the issue of the
faulty character of their compatriots and what was needed to be done in order
to make them worthy citizens of the new nation. That Italians were badly in need
of a ‘lofty character’ was the famous remark, often misquoted ever since, by
Massimo d’Azeglio.38
The discourse of national character both now and then implies a comparison,
whether implicit or explicit, with other nations, a comparison in which Italians
are found at fault. As Alessandro Cavalli has noticed, this may be an ‘invidious
comparison’ not devoid of ambivalences since at times it is accompanied by a
consideration of the ‘defects’ of the more modern or ‘civilized’ countries to
which Italy is compared. And from a sociological standpoint , it is not unique: as
Cavalli again has perceptively observed, it is ‘probably typical of all intellectual
strata of peripheral or semi-peripheral countries who look at the centre (or at
what they consider the centre) and search for their reference models outside their
borders’.39 Studies of the representations of national character in Central and
Eastern European countries yield interesting similarities in terms of negative
self-stereotyping. 40
While this feature of the discourse has been noted before, another feature is
generally neglected, namely the fact that debating national character also
involves an incessant interrogation of the Italian past in order to nd out what
‘went wrong’. This is especially visible in the publication s on national character/
identity that appeared in the 1990s. Signi cantly they evoked a past that goes far
back in time: it is not just the last 50 years, the time-span of the rst Republic,
that matters in these analyses, and not even the time-span of the national state
(150 years), but rather the structures of the longue durée.
For example, a specialist in ancient Rome, Aldo Schiavone, joined the debate
on identity in 1998 by questioning the focus on the post-Second World War
Republic and calling attention to a much earlier period. After observing the
incomplete ‘Italic’ identity formed in Roman times, he rehearsed the historio-
graphical wisdom on the early modern decline of the peninsula and the
pernicious in uence of the Counter-Reformation. That was the crucial moment,
in his view, which left an indelible imprint on the Italian mentality, marking it
with the ‘primacy of intention over personal responsibility ’, a ‘culture of

repentance’, ‘horror at change’, ‘ambivalence towards power’, ‘the image of the
state as enemy’ and so on.41 In contrast, the nineteenth century had little
in uence in shaping anything durable in Italy. History, according to Schiavone,
has not been able to produce a real nation in Italy, but it has shaped an Italian
character, and the sight of it is not easy on the eye.
There are plenty of other examples. Political scientist Umberto Cerroni in his
L’identità civile degli italiani has expounded on the entire span of Italian history
from the Middle Ages to the present, claiming that there are centuries-old
reasons behind the problematic traits of Italian identity and most of them have
to do with the belated process of state formation in the peninsula . From his
southern perspective, he has privileged the period between 1220 and 1350 as
crucial—when Frederick II was unable to unify the peninsula politically owing
to the power of the Church.42 From that belatedness all sorts of negative
consequences followed. Anthropologis t Carlo Tullio-Altan has also embarked on
this voyage into the past, questioning the origins of the structures and mentalities
which have impeded the development of a strong civic consciousnes s (spirito
pubblico) in the Italian peninsula. After considering the time-span of the national
state, more recently he has pointed to the ‘feudal weakness’ of the Italian past
as a whole. There he sees the origin of the lack of values such as those of
‘service’ and ‘respect for the principles of the social order’ that are fundamental
in making a civic spirit.43
Journalist Saverio Vertone, on the other hand, has gone back to Machiavelli
to nd the distinctive traits of Italian culture and society:
since we [Italians] have misunderstood Machiavelli, we have turned around modernity
thanks to Machiavellianism, thus producing a series of monsters which today we tend
to de ne as levantine and which, instead, are purely Italian, such as: individualism
without an individual conscience, nationalism without a national consciousness,
cleverness without intelligence, liberalism without the market, the market without
competition. 44
He crowns this series of paradoxes with the statement that Italian culture has
produced ‘a state without a nation’ and ‘a nation without a state’.45 One could
ll page after page with quotations of this type. Indeed, what is even more
interesting is that the compilers of authoritativ e surveys on the values of the
Italians—who should be held to a higher standard of proof—also tend to indulge
in similar speculation about the weight of the past in Italian public life and
formulate similar generalizations .46
Nobody could deny that these writings are grappling with real issues. But
whether one needs to go back to the Middle Ages or to the Roman period to nd
an explanation is more doubtful. It will never be possible to nd a conclusive
answer to these vexed questions of historical origins. But this may not be the
main goal nor the sole accomplishment of these writings. The very act of
searching for common past experiences posits the commonality of this past and
thus reasserts what all Italian people share. Needless to say, the invocation of the
common past is also a major item in the repertory of patriotism .
The most active spokesman for neopatriotism , namely Galli della Loggia,
provides an excellent illustration of this point. In his most recent work, L’identità
italiana, a slim volume published in 1998 and launching a series devoted to the
30 S. PATRIARCA
theme of Italian identity, this author looks at the whole span of Italian history
from its origins in the Roman period to the present to point out the main
historical trends that could explain the alleged peculiarity, or rather exceptional-
ism, of Italian identity. He maintains that the main problem of Italian modernity
is constitute d by the weakness of national identity, but now it is a history in the
longue durée which he relies upon to unveil the roots of this problem.47 Probably
because of his political dialogue with the Catholics he is less willing to
indict the Counter-Reformation for the ills of the Italians and he identi es the
origins of the present (or persistent) predicament in the strength of local
loyalties, the importance of the family, the long tradition of oligarchic govern-
ment and the historical ‘absence of the state’. (Strangely enough, the political
history of the twentieth century has now disappeared from sight to the point
that we are left to ask whether recent history matters at all in shaping behaviours
and mentalities.) What does this analysis accomplish? Undoubtedly, along
with the reassertion of some common views of the predicament of the Italian
state, there is the reassertion of the unity of the nation, even in its defects. The
author concludes the slim volume by very explicitly expressing his wish to see
Italians with a national identity ‘worthy of the name’, an achievement which he
believes requires the Italians to be reconciled with their past, their whole past.48
(This is a rather inconsisten t requirement for a self-proclaimed liberal to make
since that past includes the experience of Fascism and thus the negation of
liberty, but ideology, as we know, is not the eld of consistency and logical
thinking.)
As far as remedies are concerned, participants in today’s debate may vary in
their emphasis, but their recipes are also basically similar, and not too different
from those of the nineteenth-centur y patriots cited earlier: for example, they ask
for more emphasis on civic education and on national history in the curriculum,49
the revamping of national symbols such as the national anthem, and the
revisiting of the Italian lieux de mémoire (as exempli ed in the series published
by Il Mulino).50 Revisiting the past as longue durée is both diagnostic and
therapeutic: it should remind us of our common roots and prompt us to do better.
Not by accident, national history as a genre is experiencing a considerable
revival. As Remo Bodei has pointed out, we are witnessing a reassertion of the
old didactic role of history, in spite of its increasingly problematic status in the
contemporary world.51
The discourse on Italian character is not just the old ‘game’ of self-
denigration and anti-Italianis m practised by the Italians themselves.52 In the
present situation it is a component of the articulation of a neopatriotic stance.53
This articulation is part of a larger process of ideologica l recon guration taking
place in Italy as well as in other countries in the post-Cold War era. As the
new political environment tends to further weaken traditional ideologies
and modes of differentiation among parties, neopatriotis m constitutes a new
ideological formation which provides a terrain of self-de nition and self-
legitimation for political elites across the political spectrum. Neopatriotism
does not need to translate into the programme or platform of a speci c
political party to have political relevance. It is an ideological ingredient that may
be adapted to different programmes, although it is not devoid of its own
speci city.
Conclusions
It is of course always dif cult to gauge—let alone demonstrate—the effects of
a discourse, especially when one tries to engage in a history of the present in
which, by de nition, everything is uid and in movement. But we can at least
try to understand their meanings and possible implications by looking at their
contexts. Neopatriots may have good intentions , but neopatriotis m is deployed in
the context of an increasingly multi-ethnic society and in the post-Cold War
landscape in which alternative ideologies have lost the capacity to explain the
world and mobilize any signi cant mass of people. This should make us alert
and cautious. Discourses of national identity tend to reinforce separateness and
distinction, and to emphasize a common past which is necessarily exclusive of
those who were not born on the sacred soil or do not descend from those who
were. If it is true that the ideas of nation and patria are not in themselves on the
right, they are however a slippery terrain on which the right has a better hold.54
Although the Europeanism of the Italian political elites appears to be solid,
they cannot be considered immune from the lure of neopatriotic and even plainly
nationalist positions . Liberal and less liberal neopatriots writing in new journals
devoted to geopolitical issues such as LiMes claim that the changing inter-
national environment and the formation of supranationa l entities actually require
a strengthenin g of national identity.55 A stronger consciousnes s of ‘who we are
as a people’ is also advertised as an asset in the increasingly competitive
internationa l environment: not by chance have the estimated 60 million ‘Italiani
nel mondo’ (i.e. the communities of Italians residing abroad) been recently
rediscovered as a resource to be deployed in the era of globalization .56 Nor
should one forget, moreover, that the centre-right alliance includes a post-Fascist
party which cherishes the idea of a more assertive stance on foreign policy
(which it showed clearly in the brief experience of the Berlusconi government
when it tried to re-open the issue of the eastern border with former Yugoslavia
and attempted to create a ministry exclusively devoted to the ‘Italiani nel
mondo’).57
Even after the formation of the European Union and in the context of an
increasingly globalized world, nations are not destined to disappear in any
immediate future. Thus the recon guring of national identitie s in the new context
has become a crucial issue and an important task in several European countries.
How this recon guration is achieved matters, for it contributes to creating a new
common sense and new forms of identi cation. This is why the current debate
about national identity taking place in Italy deserves serious consideration . And
this is why we should study national identity more as a eld of ideological
struggle than as an ‘object’ which can be described and dissected like any other.
Notes
1. See Felice Liperi, ‘La patria cantata da destra e da sinistra’, LiMes. Rivista italiana di geopolitica, 4, 1994,
pp. 177–88, p. 180.
2. I borrow the notion of identity framing from Giorgio Grossi, Italia Italie. Immagine e identità nell’attualità
televisiva, Rai Nuova Eri, Rome, 1994, p. 77.
3. On changes in television see Grossi, Italia Italie, pp. 80 ff.; on popular culture see Liperi, ‘La patria
cantata’, p. 181.
4. Franco Cassano, Peninsula. L’Italia da ritrovare, Laterza, Rome–Bari, 1998 is a case in point.
5. See for example Patrick McCarthy, ‘Italy: a new language for a new politics?’, Journal of Modern Italian
Studies, 2, 3, 1997, pp. 337–57.
32 S. PATRIARCA
6. Papers presented at the conference were subsequentl y published in Gian Enrico Rusconi (ed.), Nazione,
etnia, cittadinanza in Italia e in Europa, La Scuola, Brescia, 1993. Several newspapers covered the events:
see for example Lucio Lami, ‘Una storia da riscrivere’, Il Giornale, 3 December 1992.
7. Renzo De Felice, ‘Democrazi a e stato nazionale’, in Giovanni Spadolini (ed.), Nazione e nazionalità in
Italia. Dall’alba del nostro secolo ai giorni nostri, Laterza, Rome–Bari, 1994, pp. 37–44.
8. Several of the contributions to that conference were published in issue 4, 1994, of LiMes. Rivista italiana
di geopolitica, entitled ‘A che serve l’Italia. Perchè siamo una nazione’.
9. Gian Enrico Rusconi, Se cessiamo di essere una nazione. Tra etnodemocrazi e regional i e cittadinanza
europea, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1993.
10. Maurizio Viroli, Per amore della patria. Patriottismo e nazionalismo nella storia, Laterza, Rome–Bari,
1995.
11. Silvio Lanaro, Patria. Circumnavigazion e di un’idea controversa, Marsilio, Venice, 1996.
12. Ruggiero Romano, Paese Italia. Venti secoli d’identità, Donzelli, Rome, 1994.
13. Luciano Cafagna, Nord e Sud. Non fare a pezzi l’unità d’Italia, Marsilio, Venice, 1994.
14. Il Risorgimento imperfetto. Perché da Cavour siamo arrivati a Bossi, Atlantide, Rome, 1997—which
contains articles previously published in the weekly Liberal.
15. Aurelio Lepre, Italia addio? Unità e disunità dal 1860 a oggi, Mondadori, Milan, 1994; Giuseppe Galasso,
Italia nazione dif cile. Contributo alla storia politica e culturale dell’Italia unita, Le Monnier, Florence,
1994; Zef ro Ciuffoletti, Stato senza nazione. Disegno di storia del Risorgimento e dell’unità d’Italia,
Morano, Naples, 1993. This author has also published with Giuseppe Mammarella, Il declino. Le origine
storiche della crisi italiana, Mondadori, Milan, 1996.
16. In doing this Rusconi relied on the most important history of the Italian Resistance to appear in recent
years: Claudio Pavone, Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella resistenza, Bollati
Boringhieri, Turin, 1991—a substantial study which reproposed , from a democratic leftist perspective, the
interpretation of the Resistance as, in part, a civil war.
17. Galli della Loggia, ‘La morte della patria. La crisi dell’idea di nazione dopo la seconda guerra mondiale’,
in Spadolini, Nazione e nazionalità in Italia, pp. 125–61, p. 157.
18. Ernesto Galli della Loggia, La morte della patria. La crisi dell’idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo
e Repubblica, Rome–Bari, Laterza, 1996, pp. 56–71.
19. The indexes of Corriere della Sera (now available in digital format) show that this newspaper has paid
a great deal of attention to the issue of Italian national identity since the early 1990s, particularly thanks
to the frequent interventions of Galli della Loggia and other contributors. La Stampa has tended to propose
the issue of national identity more in terms of feelings of belonging and of patriotism understood à la
Rusconi (who is one of its contributors) .
20. See the interview of Renzo De Felice by Giancarlo Bosetti and Pasquale Chessa, ‘La memoria divisa che
ci fa essere anomali’, in Norberto Bobbio, Renzo De Felice and Gian Enrico Rusconi, Italiani, amici
nemici, Donzelli, Rome, 1996, pp. 9–54, p. 51. For De Felice’s praise of Rusconi’s work see Mussolini
l’alleato 1940–1945, Einaudi, Turin, 1997, 2, p. 105; La guerra civile 1943–1945, Einaudi, Turin, 1997,
pp. 338–9, and Rosso e nero, ed. Pasquale Chessa, Baldini e Castoldi, Milan, 1995 (especially the
introduction).
21. De Felice, Mussolini l’alleato 1940–1945, 2; La guerra civile 1943–1945.
22. Among the most important contributions see in particular Norberto Bobbio, ‘Revisionismo nella storia
d’Italia’, in Bobbio et al., Italiani amici nemici, pp. 55–60 (orig. publ. in La Stampa, 4 September 1995);
Nicola Tranfaglia, Un passato scomodo. Fascismo e postfascismo, Laterza, Rome–Bari, 1996; Francesco
Barbagallo, ‘Stato, masse e partiti nell’Italia democratica’, in Agostino Giovagnol i (ed.), Interpretazioni
della Repubblica, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1998, pp. 63–70, p. 67; Giovanni de Luna, ‘La storia sempre nuova
dei quotidiani e la costruzione del senso comune’, Passato e presente, 16, 44, 1998, pp. 5–14; Giovanni
Gozzini, ‘L’identità introvabile’, Passato e presente, 17, 47, 1999, pp. 19–20; Simone Neri Serneri, ‘A past
to be thrown away? Politics and history in the Italian Resistance’, Contemporary European History, 4, 3,
1995, pp. 367–81. Among the non-Italian contributions see R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship.
Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretations of Mussolini and Fascism, Arnold, London, 1998; David
Ward, ‘Fifty years on: Resistance then, Resistance now’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 4, 1, 1999,
pp. 59–64.
23. Serneri, too, thinks that moderate public opinion is the main target of this ideological struggle—‘A past
to be thrown away?’, p. 374.
24. On the left, the strongest supporter of patriotism is probably the president of the Chamber of Deputies,
Luciano Violante: see a conversation between him and Stefano Rodotà entitled ‘Memoria, identità,
modernizzazione ’, MicroMega, 12, 1, 1997, pp. 34–48.
25. See Perry Anderson, ‘Fernand Braudel and national identity’, in Anderson, A Zone of Engagemen t, Verso,
London and New York, 1992, pp. 251–78.
26. I am indebted for this view to Andrew Lass, ‘ “What are we like?” National character and the aesthetic
of distinction in interwar Czechoslovakia ’, in Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery (eds), National Character
and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, New
Haven, 1995, pp. 39–64, p. 47.
27. Franco Cassano in ‘La differenza italiana ovvero l’altra faccia della luna’, Il Mulino, 48, 2, 1999,
pp. 221–6, refers to this type of talk as the ‘anti-Italianism’ of the Italians and distinguishes a ‘low’ and
a ‘high’ modality in it. He does not, however, take into consideration the politics of the discourse.
28. For an example see Il Corriere della Sera, 15 December 1999.
29. Montanelli, interviewed by Gervaso, ‘Gli italiani? Pecore anarchiche che non fanno una nazione’, Il
Messaggero, 30 March 1998. Montanelli is an extremely proli c writer and his letters have often been
collected and published as books: see, for example, Le stanze. Dialoghi con gli italiani, Rizzoli, Milan,
1998. In this and other publications he claims that after his adherence to Fascism until about 1937 he
embraced liberal and anti-Communist ideas. Needless to say he is an active supporter of anti-anti-Fascist
historiography.
30. For Il Messaggero, beside the Montanelli–Gervaso interview cited in note 29 see, in particular: ‘Che cos’è
l’Italia? Il cortile di un carcere durante l’ora d’aria’, 15 December 1997, and ‘Violante: “Italiani cinici. Ha
ragione Leopardi” ’, 25 March 1998; for La Voce see: ‘Vizi e virtú d’Italia’, 17 May 1994; for Panorama,
see: ‘Italiani e no’, 25 Aprile 1993; ‘Bella Italia, odiate sponde …’, 9 July 1994; ‘Stato nascente’, 9
December 1994; ‘Saremo mai un paese normale?’, 21 July 1995; ‘Leopardi e Gattopardi’, 15 July 1997;
‘L’Italia è sfatta ma ci sono gli italiani’, 28 May 1998.
31. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Codice della vita italiana, Biblioteca del Vascello, Roma, 1990, 2nd edn, 1993, p. 37.
Part of it was rst published in the nationalist Rivista di Milano, 1, 1918, pp. 4–8, and signed ‘Noi’.
Montanelli has recognized that Prezzolini has had a major in uence on his intellectual development .
32. On Mussolini’s attitude see Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia. Ascesa e declino del mito della nazione nel
ventesimo secolo, Mondadori, Milan, 1997, ch. 9.
33. Among Giorgio Bocca’s numerous essays see in particular Italiani strana gente, Mondadori, Milan, 1997.
Placido often writes in the culture and reviews section of La Repubblica.
34. I look at this version in some detail in my essay ‘National identity or national character? New vocabularies
and old paradigms’, in Albert Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg (eds), Making and Remaking Italy. The
Cultivation of National Identity Around the Risorgimento, Berg, New York and Oxford, 2001, pp. 299–
319.
35. Giacomo Leopardi, Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl’italiani, Marsilio, Venice, 1989;
Feltrinelli, Milan, 1991; Mondadori, Milan, 1993; Rizzoli, Milan, 1998. The text is also included as an
appendix to Franco Ferrucci, Nuovo discorso sugli italiani, Mondadori , Milan, 1993.
36. In the spring of 1994 exponents of both camps—Montanelli and Placido—collaborated on a 10-episode
TV series broadcast on RAI Tre called ‘Eppur si muove’ which was entirely devoted to analysis of the
Italian character. See also the book based on it: Beniamino Placido and Indro Montanelli, Eppur si muove.
Cambiano gli italiani, Rizzoli, Milan, 1995.
37. Cesare Balbo, Le speranze d’Italia, Utet, Turin, 1925 (1844), p. 186.
38. Examples of this postuni cation literature are Carlo Lozzi, Dell’ozio in Italia, Unione Tipogra co-editrice,
Turin, 1870–1; Augusto Alfani, Il carattere degli italiani, Barbera, Florence, 1876; Angelo Mazzoleni, Il
carattere nella vita italiana, Galli e Omodei, Milan, 1878. The quote from d’Azeglio is in I miei ricordi,
Barbera, Florence, 1867, p. 6.
39. Alessandro Cavalli, ‘Conclusione: gli italiani fra provincia ed Europa’, in La cultura degli italiani, Il
Mulino, Bologna, 1994, p. 161.
40. See Banac and Verdery, National Character and National Ideology.
41. Aldo Schiavone, Italiani senza Italia. Storia e identità, Einaudi, Turin, 1998, p. 84.
42. Umberto Cerroni, L’identità civile degli italiani, Mauri, Lecce, 1996, 2nd edn, 1997.
43. Carlo Tullio-Altan, Populismo e trasformismo. Saggio sulle ideologie politiche italiane, Feltrinelli, Milan,
1989; Ethnos e civiltà. Identità etniche e valori democratici, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1995. Ironically, the
conclusions he reaches in the latter are exactly the opposite of Robert Putnam’s famous study of the
performance of regional governmen t in Italy: pointing out the better performance of the North, Putnam
indicts the feudal past of southern Italy and praises the communes of the middle ages as the soil where
civic consciousnes s emerged: Making Democracy Work. Civic Tradition in Modern Italy, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1993.
44. Saverio Vertone (ed.), La cultura degli italiani, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994, p. 11.
45. Vertone, La cultura, p. 11.
46. See, for example, Gabriele Calvi (ed.), ‘Indagine sociale italiana. Rapporto 1986, ricerca promossa da
Eurisko’, in A. Gambino, Inventario italiano, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1987, pp. 31–2.
47. Ernesto Galli della Loggia, L’identità italiana, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1998, p. 163 (reviewed in this issue
of Modern Italy).
48. Galli della Loggia, L’identità italiana, p. 164. This stance closely follows De Felice’s attitude.
49. See for example Cerroni, L’identità civile, pp. 46–7; Tullio-Altan, Populismo e trasformismo, p. 347.
50. M. Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria, 3 vols, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1996–7.
51. Remo Bodei, Il noi diviso. Ethos e idee dell’Italia repubblican a, Einaudi, Turin, 1998, p. 154.
52. This is Franco Cassano’s expression in ‘La differenza italiana’.
53. I am not saying that all these writers are involved in nation-building . Aldo Schiavone, for example,
concludes his indictment of Italian character with the observation that the weakness of the national
34 S. PATRIARCA
consciousnes s could be a strength in an international context in which the principle of national sovereignty
is becoming less relevant in the organization of states.
54. I take issue here with Emilio Gentile’s view of the neutrality of patriotism and nationalism in La Grande
Italia, p. 4.
55. See, for example, the editorials ‘Buongiorno Italia’, LiMes. Rivista italiana di geopolitica, 4, 1994,
pp. 7–13, and ‘Italiani di tutto il mondo …’, LiMes, 1, 1998, pp. 7–11 (issue devoted to ‘L’Italia mondiale
nella s da delle nazioni’). This journal was founded in 1993 by Lucio Caracciolo and it appears to be
committed to relaunching Italy’s international role. Its collaborators include intellectuals of different
political convictions (both Galli della Loggia and Rusconi are on its advisory board).
56. See Piero Bassetti, ‘Il mondo in italiano’, LiMes. Rivista italiana di geopolitica, 4, 1998; and on the 1998
web site of the journal, in a section entitled ‘ItaliaMondiale’.
57. On Italian foreign policy in the 1990s, see O. Croci, ‘The Italian intervention in Somalia: A new Italian
foreign policy after the Cold War?’, in Carol Mershon and Gianfranco Pasquino (eds), Italian Politics.
Ending the First Republic, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1995, pp. 197–215; Pernilla M. Neal, ‘The new
foreign policy’, in Richard S. Katz and Piero Ignazi (eds), Italian Politics. The Year of the Tycoon,
Westview Press, Boulder, Col., 1996, pp. 159–68; Andrea Bianchi, ‘Italiani di tutto il mondo …’, LiMes.
Rivista italiana di geopolitica, 4, 1994, pp. 221–32.

Silvana Patriarca - Italian Neopatriotism - Debating National Identity in The 1990s

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Silvana Patriarca - Italian Neopatriotism - Debating National Identity in The 1990s

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Modern Italy (2001), 6(1), 21–34

Italian neopatriotism: debating national

Rediscovering the nation

This new version contained more speci c denunciation s of the anti-national

in particular, and to legitimate the inclusion of so-called ‘post-Fascist’ forces in

The politics of national character

identity, culture, mentality—terms which appear to be used interchangeably ) is

with the ‘primacy of intention over personal responsibility ’, a ‘culture of

You might also like

Silvana Patriarca - Italian Neopatriotism - Debating National Identity in The 1990s

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

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Silvana Patriarca - Italian Neopatriotism - Debating National Identity in The 1990s

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Modern Italy (2001), 6(1), 21–34

Italian neopatriotism: debating national

Rediscovering the nation

This new version contained more speci c denunciation s of the anti-national

in particular, and to legitimate the inclusion of so-called ‘post-Fascist’ forces in

The politics of national character

identity, culture, mentality—terms which appear to be used interchangeably ) is

with the ‘primacy of intention over personal responsibility ’, a ‘culture of

You might also like

This new version contained more speci c denunciation s of the anti-national