Fascist Virilities

Fascist Virilities exposes the relation between rhetoric and ideology. Barbara Spackman looks at Italian fascism as a matter of discourse, with "virility" as the master code that articulates and melds its disparate elements. In her analysis, rhetoric binds together the elements of ideology, with "virility" as the key. To reveal how this works, Spackman traces the circulation of "virility" in the discourse of the Italian regime and in the rhetorical practices of Mussolini himself. She tracks the appearance of virility in two of the sources of fascist rhetoric, Gabriele D'Annunzio and F.T. Marinetti, in the writings of the futurist Valentine de Saint Point and the fascist feminist Teresa Labriola, and in the speeches of Mussolini. A critical and timely contribution to the current reappraisal of fascist ideology, this book will interest anyone concerned with the relations between gender, sexuality, and fascist discourse.

This cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship discusses the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. The work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past.

This is the first comprehensive account of the diversity and complexity of censorship practices in Italy under the Fascist dictatorship. Through archival material it shows how practices of censorship were used to effect regime change, to measure and to shape public opinion, behaviour and attitudes in the twenty years of Mussolini's dictatorship.

Femininity in the form of the donna-crisi, or “crisis-woman,” was a fixture of fascist propaganda in the early 1930s. A uniquely Italian representation of the modern woman, she was cosmopolitan, dangerously thin, and childless, the antithesis of the fascist feminine ideal – the flashpoint for a range of anxieties that included everything from the changing social roles of urban women to the slippage of stable racial boundaries between the Italian nation and its colonies. Using a rich assortment of scientific, medical, and popular literature, Natasha V. Chang’s The Crisis-Woman examines the donna-crisi’s position within the gendered body politics of fascist Italy. Challenging analyses of the era which treat modern and transgressive women as points of resistance to fascist power, Chang argues that the crisis-woman was an object of negativity within a gendered narrative of fascist modernity that pitted a sterile and decadent modernity against a healthy and fertile fascist one.

Showing how gender history contributes to existing understandings of the Second World War, this book offers detail and context on the national and transnational experiences of men and women during the war. Following a general introduction, the essays shed new light on the field and illustrate methods of working with a wide range of primary sources.

The history and ideologies of the Far Right in Britain have been well documented, but there has been little understanding of the movement's cultural foundations. This text explores the cultural history of fascism and the Far Right and mines a seam of intense interest for both academics and students, as well as for the general reader. The book demonstrates that British fascism is essentially not just a political movement, but one that has as its goal the establishment of an all-embracing fascist culture in Britain. The contributions cover film, theatre, music, literature, the visual arts and the mass media. Striking examples of the material that they examine include fascist marching songs, "Aryan music", the creation of Mosley as a "matinee idol", even "fascist science", the cult of the "New Fascist Man" and fascist "masculinity" and "feminity". The authors demonstrate the persistence of the Far Right cultural forms from Mosley's British Union of Fascists within the present National Front and British National Party.

This book explores the complex ways in which people lived and worked within the confines of Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy, variously embracing, appropriating, accommodating and avoiding the regime’s incursions into everyday life. The contributions highlight the experiences of ordinary Italians – midwives and schoolchildren, colonists and soldiers – over the course of the Fascist era, in settings ranging from the street to the farm, and from the kitchen to the police station. At the same time, this volume also provides a framework for understanding the Italian experience in relation to other totalitarian dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe and beyond.

Vital Subjects examines cultural production—literature, sociology and public health discourse, and early film—from the years between Unification and the end of the First World War (ca. 1860 and 1920) in order to explore how race and colonialism were integral to modern Italian national culture, rather than a marginal afterthought or a Fascist aberration.