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Formations,Locationsand Reproductionsof Fascist
Fantasiest
Liz Constable
Universityof California,Davis
those flaccid, enormousNeapolitan matronsin their bathing suits; they are black,
slimy and diluted like seals on the sand, with their darting and boiling litters
spread around them" (118). It comes as no surprise that Blum deems such
superficial redirection, ratherthan substantiverearticulation,of Marinetti's ideas
a somewhat dubious "ideological foundation for the restructuringof the social
organization of gender," and scarcely a promising renegotiationof the impact of
existing private and public boundarieson women's lives (124).
Mabel Berezin's cultural-sociological study, Making the Fascist Self: The
Political Culture of Interwar Italy, gives a central place to the private/public
boundaryby defining fascism primarily in opposition to liberal democracy, and
more specifically, as a denial of the public/private distinction which liberal
democracy makes central to its workings. Approaching fascism in terms of
citizenship, state, nation, and the fascist constructionof the self, her theoretical
approachdiffers significantly from that of Spackmanand Blum, since she retains
a somewhat under-articulated notion of ideology as world view-rather than
structuringillusion-and, as a result, ends up trying to resist the contradictions
embodied in Italian fascism without apparentlyexplaining if there is any valid
methodological reason for doing so. Fascism, she writes, "as a political ideology
and cultural programappears less protean if one redefines it as the fusion of the
public and private self in the state" (27). An answer of sorts can be found in one
of the overarching theoretical premises of Berezin's study, which sets out to
demonstratethat "Representationsof ideological power do not equal realities of
power" (27). This statement, articulated in various forms at many points
throughout the text, bespeaks Berezin's wariness of what she perceives
(inaccurately, I would argue) as the incursions of so-called "postmodern
approaches to the study of politics" (27). It takes the philosophical rigor and
matter-of-factness of a Judith Butler to point out the ways in which the label
postmodern rarely functions as a label by which one identifies theoretical or
methodologicalprinciples,but rather,is the sign of "paternalisticdisdain"towards
any theory of politics which implies a critique of the subjectand a challenging of
the referentiality of language.5 As Richard Gilman observes about the term
"decadence,"postmodernism is primarily an "onlooker's term," and one which
conjuresup frequentlymuddledassumptionsthat there is only discourse, and, just
as alarmingly from the perspective of normative political philosophy, that
representationsreplace reality.6 Indeed, Berezin's adamancy in eschewing the
validity of what she calls a "semioticand discursive analysis" of fascism not only
suggests a problematic misunderstanding of Foucauldian notions of discourse
(32). Much more prejudicially,in her study of Italian fascism's attempt to fuse
public and private space through reappiopriatingthe forms of Catholic liturgy in
public ritual, Berezin allows her rejection of discursive analysis to fuse with
fascism's self-representation as an emotive, experiential, and supposedly
"natural," (i.e., non-rhetorical) set of political and cultural practices. Indeed,
Berezin says as much when she comments that she wants to approachfascism on
its own terms (5, 9), because "Italianfascism rejecteddiscursiveprose or linearity.
It repudiatedthe word and the text" (29).
66 South
Central
Review
Repudiation being precisely the strategy whereby any foundational position
producesthe very exclusions which constitutethe contingent, ratherthan absolute,
authorityof its folundations,
it is no surprisethatBerezin'sstudydoesnottakeinto
accountthe insidious workings of the "rhetoricof anti-rhetoric"-as Paolo Valesio
terms the ideological belief that meaning can be articulated without rhetorical
choices7-either within Italian fascism or, implicitly, in her own methodological
approach, and this even though she entitles her study, Making the Fascist Self.
The price paid is rather high, and as we will see, makes for somewhat
unsurprising conclusions about the relationship between representations and
realities of fascist selves.
Berezin starts her study by isolating the piazza and the church as two public
spaces exploited by Italian fascism as locations for the forging of new identities
based on the merging of the private self into a national, fascist, public, and
collective self. She structuresher book aroundthree case studies: the analysis of
annual commemorations of the March on Rome between 1923 and 1938; an
analysis of the way fascist rituals structured everyday life in Verona through
infiltrating patterns of daily life and through the repeated, as distinct from the
extraordinary,social experience of ritual;and finally, an ittempt to explore what
Italian fascism meant to its adherents through comparing the letters home of
fascist rank-and-file soldiers with the official encomiastic obituarybiographies.
Within her focus on ritual practice, Berezin defines five genres of ritual:
commemoration,celebration, demonstration,symposia, and inauguration. As a
cultural sociologist, she articulatesher rejectionof semiotic analysis by pointing
out that when dealing with culturalpractices, an analysis of the text would elide
the distinction between observerand participantas separateinterpretingentities,
and that such approaches conceptualize ritual as an object rather than as a
repetitive action which "produces morphologies of meaning based in the
familiarity that repeatedexposure to ritual forms generates"-for example, group
solidarity (246). But then, somewhat bewilderingly, she argues that textual
analysis gives short shrift to form in its focus on content. She writes, "An analysis
of fascist ritual that simply read the text of the available representation, or
describedit as the sacralizationof public space in the name of the regime, would
fail to capture the meaning of the ritual to its participantsbroadly defined, and
would skim the surfaceof the official meanings of the event" (32).
In their imperative to resist official meanings of events, Berezin's arguments
make a good deal of sense, although even at this stage, a distinct tension and
incoherence emerges between such intended resistance and her determinationto
approach fascism on its own terms. We can locate the tension as one which
manifests itself in two differentdimensions of the reception and/or interpretation
of fascism. First, Berezin's methodological focus on reception and uptake as a
sociological phenomenon ("Howthe citizens of fascist Italy received the regime's
cultural message" [34]) is highly problematic,for in seeking to uncover, in the
battle-front letters of fascist heroes, "the best available articulations of an
authentic and spontaneousfascist consciousness"(198), she overlooks the ways in
which fascist rank-and-file soldiers are interpellatedby the very fascist rhetoric
Liz Constable 67
which she hopes to be peeling away. Lettersfrom the front, writtento mothersand
wives, constitutea genre in themselves, and one which is more than likely to adopt
the terms of official rhetoric to describe what Berezin describes as "fascism as a
felt experience" (198). Indeed, not unexpectedly, in the comparison of official
obituaries and personal letters, Berezin herself ends up concluding-contrary to
her objectives-that when "read against each other, they [obituaries and the
letters] saggest a fascist reality that melded with the representationof that reality"
in their emphasis on the glorification of noble sacrifices in the name of fascism
(199). Where the letters to parents underscorethe fascist commitmentto family,
the letters to wives reflect "a sense of public duty as fascist citizen and private duty
as husbandand father"(222): no surprisesthere.
Just as troubling in Berezin's analysis is her perspective on her own
interpretationand reception of the rhetoric of fascism. As we have indicated,
although her methodologicalpremises prompther to sidesteptextual analysis, this
is difficult since her materials are inevitably constitutedby contemporarypublic
discourses-journalistic reports, official documents, and propagandistliterature.
Again and again, she confionts the need for the very type of semiotic analysis she
mistrusts,be it the "iconographyof emotion," or the narrativizingof ritual events
(72). Pointing quite legitimately to the discrepancy between the amplificatory
language of newspapei reportsof fascist ritualsand the actual events, Berezin then
writes, somewhat perplexingly, that "By simply analyzing the rhetorical
constructionsof these events, we accept the regime's propaganda"(96; emphasis
added). Were Berezin to comment that an un-analytic, or uncritical, reading of
fascist rhetoric would be tantamountto an endorsement of its propaganda, her
statemtentwould make more sense. But, no. Instead, she writes that an analysis of
rhetoricalconstructionsbetraysideological complicity. If I seem to be belaboring
this point in my own review of Berezin's study, it is because her uncritical
dismissal of rhetoric's constitutive role in semiosis (not simply an ornamental,
expendable option as she understands it) leaves her own work very frequently
uncritically accepting fascism's purportedlynon-rhetorical self-representation,
even when she seeks precisely to resist this. For in her conunent above on the
misguidedness implicit in analyses of rhetoric, it is surely the very granting of
significance to rhetoric, and not its analysis, which Berezin intends to target.
When she turns to study the people's adunate, huge political rallies launched in
1935 (the year the regime invadedEthiopia), as a celebrationof fascism's colonial
and imperialist objective, Berezin writes the following: "The adunate defy
discursive description. They were spectacles of force that depended on the
massing of bodies in the public piazza. They were also pure communities of
feeling in which individualItalianbodies abandonedtheir sense of separateselves
and fused with the regime"(135). Pure communitiesoffeeling? Fusion of the self
with the collectivity? Events which, like the horizon of the sublime, leave
language disarmed? Berezin's own rhetorichere is difficult to reconcile with her
earlier resistance, when she comnrentson a newspaperreport of the first annual
commemoration of the March on Rome on October 23, 1923. Here, after
signaling that the report-from a paper with Fascist sympathies, II Resto del
68 South Review
Central
Carlino-is misleading since it uses "the language of feeling to create an
iconographyof emotion"(72), Berezinrewritesthe reportin whatshe refersto as
"starkanalyticprose"to pointto the tensionbetween"representations of power
and realities of powerthat any studyof politicsand culturemust address"(73,
emphasisadded).
Berezin'sowndifficultyin keepingrepresentations andrealitiesapartis notonly
attributableto her treatmentof receptionas a sociologicalphenomenon. Her
referenceto a "fascistconsciousness" emergingthroughthe soldiers'lettersis also
telling in this regard(198). In the final section,Berezin'sstudyof the obituaries
and lettersof fascistsoldiersincludesanalysisof severalphotos,includingone of
MicheleM., a formeraccountant,husbandand father,and fascist squadleader
who writesfromthe Greekfrontbetween1940and 1941. Berezincomnuents that
"Incontrastto imagesfrompopularculture,MicheleM.'s photograph... suggests
a mild-mannered personwho looks morelike a local businessmanthan a hard-
edged fascist" (223). Here, Berezin attributesan almost nineteenth-century
physiognomical, definitionof a "fascistprofile"to imagesfrom
or anthropological,
popularculture, yetand doesn'tnecessarilyendorseit. Later,however,when she
turns to study Letitia M., unmarriedschool-teacher,her commentaryis
particularly intriguing.As we havealreadyseen,unmarried womenhad"noplace
in eitherItalianor fascist culture,"the only social or culturalpowerlying with
womenwhoborechildren(241). Letitia'srole,as Berezincomments,is to takeon
the fascistideologicalcommitmentequivalentto a nun's spiritualmarriagewith
Christ:whereCatholicnuns becomebridesof Christ,Letitiaworkedas fascist
spiritualbride, literallyunmarriedyet spirituallyweddedto the regime, and
involved,on a moreconcretelevel, with the RuralHousewivesAssociationwho
redefinedwives'andmothers'rolesthroughfascistideology.Turningto the photo
of Letitia,Berezinadds,"Whatthe fascistlocal chief does not add and that the
picturesbearoutis that,by the standardsof 1940sItaly,Letitiais physicallyrather
unattractive.Her soul maybe beautiful,but her personis not.... In a culture
wheretherewas a clearlydefinedmarriagemarket,Letitiaseemsto havehadonly
herfascistorganizations to give herlife meaning"(237). Now,withoutdisputing
the attractiveness or unattractivenessof Letitiaor Berezin'sabilityto generalize
about the "standards[of beauty] of the 1940s" (both observationswhose
gratuitousness needlesme, nevertheless), the commentstrikesme,first,as another
inadvertentand clearlyunintentionalbuyinginto fascism's own ideology(that
thereis no life outsideof ordainedgenderroles). But it is also symptomatically
troublingin its presumption to know"thetruestory,"i.e., thatLetitiasupposedly
didn't have any othersourceof meaningfilnessin her life, a presumptuousness
whichis all the morestartlingsince,as Berezintells us, nota singlewrittenword
of Letitia's-be it letter,diary,or note-was keptby the fascist partychief, in
contrastto the letterswrittenby malefascistheroes.
In Berezin'sconclusion,she opensfor the first time, and somewhatbelatedly,
the crucial methodologicalcan of worms-worms which in fact have been
creeping throughher projectfrom its opening pages-when she quotes the
anthropologistKatherineVerdery,who calls the questionof receptionthe "is-
Liz Constable 69
NoTEs
t The following is a review essay of: MabelBerezin,
Making the Fascist Self: ThePolitical Culture
oflnterwarItaly. Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1997. xv + 267 pp. $45.00 (cloth);$18.95 (paper);
Cinzia SartiniBlum, The OtherModernism:F.T. Marinetti'sFuturistFiction ofPower. Berkeley
andLos Angeles:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1996. xii + 212 pp. $45.00 (cloth);$17:00 (paper);
Kate Lacey,Feminine Frequencies: Gender, GermanRadio, and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945.
Ann Arbor:The Universityof MichiganPress,1996. xiii + 299 pp. $49.50 (cloth);$24.95 (paper);and,
BarbaraSpackman,Fascist Virilities:Rhetoric,Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis:
Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1996. xvi + 187 pp. $47.95 (cloth);$18.95 (paper).