Trasformazioni discorsive e identità sociali: il caso dei //lazzari//
Francesco Benigno
Discorsive transformations and social identities: the «lazzari» case
Foreign visitors to Naples in the 18th Century gave accounts
of a certain kind of destitute homeless population
termed as «lazzari». Originally portrayed as the unruly and
dangerous scum of the city’s lowlife, the lazzari undergo a
transformation and are subsequently viewed as the prototype
for a particular Mediterranean identity: folk who get
along with little yet get the best out of life. In reviewing the
various changes of outlook that in time led to the crystallisation
of the «lazzaro» stereotype, the author attempts to
demonstrate how the lazzari or lazzaroni cannot be taken as
representing a specific social class that was twice seen to
play a political role (in 1647-48 and in 1789), but are rather
an expression of a political tradition that is responsible for a
number of «social» arguments and representations that finally
end up creating representations and «social» subjects.
Tempo, rivoluzione, costituzione: un bilancio storiografico
Paola Persano
The time of a revolution: a historiographic review
The concept of time in the historical representation of the
French Revolution has taken hold, at least since the end of
the seventies of the twentieth century, as a conceptual category
capable of describing the act of revolution as the ultimate
creative process of a modern political culture. The essay
offers an essentially introspective point of view, in that it
is based on the contemporaries’ experience and perception of
themselves. To this extent, the analysis of the regenerative
metaphors reveals features of a complex anthropology, in
which an opening towards the future and the pedagogical
concern for the citizens of tomorrow coexist with a sense of
history and historical memory in the making, despite all appeals
to do away with the past. The subsequent step where
politics have to give way to a constitution, which clearly introduces
the problem of how to ground a revolutionary constitution,
opens the door to the unavoidable complications
implicit in the dichotomy between innovation and conservation,
autonomy and heteronomy, freedom of choice from
forefathers and the constraints that are imposed on posterity.
Yet behind this canopy, there is nothing. An utter lack of
historiographical interest for the category of political generation,
and the absence in late-eighteenth century revolutionary
France of any conceptual history which, in the footsteps
of Koselleck’s later teachings, might view generation no
longer as a sociological notion or a criteria for historical/literary
classification, but finally as a concept in its own right,
an intermediate and complementary temporal structure
compared to the event based structures or the more extended
concept of history viewed in terms of historical periods.
The essay dedicates a fair amount of its analysis in attempting
to assess the meaning of this gap in historiography.
L'esercito e la conquista fascista del potere
Marco Mondini
The military and the Fascist rise to power
The failure to produce a general outline of the relations
between the military and the fascists, the actual connections
between the military command and paramilitary Fascist
squads, and the participation of regular officers in local fascist
groups, has for a long time left a gap in the historical
representation of Italy between 1918 and 1922. With the
typical lack of sensibility that has marked Italian historiography
for so long where the social and cultural aspects of
the military issue were concerned, the scant literature dedicated
to the army’s role following the Great War has scarcely
gone beyond a mere technical analysis of the system, a
description of its professional environment in its narrowest
sense or of its doctrine. The details concerning the involvement
of the regular military forces in the political struggle,
the strength of military public opinion, and the expectations,
of a psychological nature, instigated within the officer
corps following the Victory, have often been overlooked or
merely hinted at when referring to those few well known
memorandums or journals that broach the issue. It is however very difficult to reach a complete understanding of the
crisis that overtook Italy’s liberal movement without undertaking
a painstaking reconstruction of the process that led to
the parting of the ways between the political and military
powers, a consequence of the gradual political manipulation
of the armed forces, coupled with actions designed to throw
discredit on the liberal leadership amongst the rank and file,
that subsequently resulted in the military community essentially
joining forces with the Fascist movement.
Stregoneria e psicoanalisi
Oscar Di Simplicio
Witchcraft and psychoanalysis
Many historians have learnt the following from Emile
Durkeim: every time a historic phenomena is explained with
direct reference to a psychic condition we can be sure that
this explanation will turn out false, the cause of any social
event being rooted in previous social events and not in states
of individual consciousness. This being the case, how did it
come to pass that people in many parts of Europe, well
known in their communities as either neighbours or next of
kin, could be accused of witchcraft and burnt at the stake as
witches? How can we answer such a question without rooting
around among the passions of the subconscious? And
how can we not allow that there are aspects of human nature
that are long lasting, just as there are aspects of physiology
that are essential to it? If historians proclaim that the effects
of primal emotions, essential for human existence, cannot be
known, won’t they then be forced to use psychological models
based on common sense for their explanations? But common
sense underestimates the extent to which deep irrational
feelings imbedded in the subconscious may determine
human action – and it is therefore hard to see how any kind
of history of witchcraft or religion for that matter may produce
satisfactory results without exploring this dimension.
Tempo storico e semantica politica nella critica postcoloniale
Sandro Mezzadra
Historical time and political semantics in postcolonial literature
The article sets out to discuss the contribution that so
called postcolonial studies can offer to historiography. In
the context of the efforts dedicated to redefining the contours of the various disciplines that in recent years have particularly
concerned the category of world history, the postcolonial
critique has made it possible to introduce what
might be termed a «Kantian» shift, directly affecting, and
renovating, the modes of representation of time and space in
the «telling» of history. The author provides a number of
examples, with particular focus, as far as historic time is
concerned, on the developments of the Indian school of historiography
rooted in the subaltern studies. The review of
the space-time coordinates of modern history that the postcolonial
studies introduce also carry considerable influence
on the conceptualisation of those subjects that have experienced
modernity from a subordinate and antagonistic position:
the impossibility in a colonial context of pigeon-holing
the political and social movements of the «subaltern» populations
within the linear framework of the great historic narratives
(based on concepts such as citizenship and wage
labour) introduces methodological problems and raises theoretical
and political issues of great importance and with a
discussion of these aspects the article draws to a close.
Battesimi, anima, identità in età moderna
Ottavia Niccoli
Baptisms, soul, identity in the modern age.
Taking as its starting point two recent books by Marina
Caffiero and Adriano Prosperi, this essay discusses the role
played by baptism in the definition of personal, religious
and social identities in the modern age.
Gioacchino da Fiore - Zabbia legge Potestà
Marino Zabbia
Prigionieri - Bellabarba legge Colley
Marco Bellarba
L'attualità di Jaurès? - Dogliani legge Rioux
Patrizia Dogliani