The masculine mystique: antimodernism and virility in fascist Italy

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the connections between the defense of a traditional concept of masculinity and the anti-modernist discourse which characterized the fascist regime. This nexus took shape in the campaign against urbanization and its concomitant exaltation of the peasant world, as well as in the critique of intellectuals and the anti-bourgeois campaign. Through a critique of the modern woman, fascism emphasized the hierarchical relationship between the sexes, which found its justification in the supposed immutability of the subaltern feminine role. Keywords: Fascismmasculinitymodernizationgender Notes The term antimodernism here conveys a complex combination of behaviors, representations and languages that express a more or less pronounced suspicion or even open hostility towards the social and cultural phenomena connected to the processes of modernization. In this sense the antimodernists par excellence were undoubtedly the men associated with the journal Il Selvaggio and the Strapaese movement; their identity as writers and artists, and their more or less hostile relations with other literary and philosophic circles have made fascist antimodernism a privileged object of research for literary and cultural history (Ben-Ghiat , Adamson ). The most attentive historians, however, have highlighted the verifiable superimpositions and contradictions in the various positions, considering the modernism – antimodernism polarity as a pair of relatively abstract extremes, or even as 'generic labels' not to be taken too literally: see Cannistraro (: 58). An important analysis on the relationship between antimodernism and fascist masculinity is provided by Wanrooij (: 379 – 439). For reasons of space I will not discuss here other important questions such as homophobia and the persecution of homosexuality. A more general (though concise) examination of masculinity during the fascist period is found in Bellassai (: 76 – 98). See also Passerini (: 99 – 109). For example, the young Italian men who at the turn of the century practiced mountaineering and organized group excursions that pre-emptorily excluded women were seeking relief from the distressing sensation of being 'no longer not so much men as robots laboriously pressed by the thousands of tentacles of marvelous machines'. Paolo Monelli, 'Tendopoli', Rivista mensile del Club Alpino Italiano, 10 (1914), cited in Papa (: 36). Mario Carli, L'italiano di Mussolini (1930) in Gazzola Stacchini (: 494 – 5). Italics in the original. On Carli, see Passerini (: 110 ff). For a contextualization of the fascist action squads within the postwar masculine crisis, see Wanrooij (: 210 ff). Mino Maccari, 'Squadrismo', Il Selvaggio 1(1), 13 July 1924: 1. Mino Maccari, 'Parla il Selvaggio – 4', Il Selvaggio, 1(12), 28 September 1924: 2. Zunino (: 309). For a fuller discussion of ruralism, see Isnenghi (). Soffici (: 22). On ruralist rhetoric, beginning with the 'Battle of grain' launched in 1925, see Falasca Zamponi (: 149 – 55). An important scholar of Mussolini's language has sustained that 'three registers of the Strapaese motif are present in Mussolini's speeches: there is the personal boast that he, too, is a son of the land, there is the allusion – through the praise of country people – of the differing behavior of city dwellers and factory workers; and there is the declaration that the level of authenticity of the Italian race is in direct relation to the rate of ruralism and fertility.' Simonini (: 116). Report of the federal secretary of Modena, 29 March 1935, cited in Colarizi (: 103). On the apocalyptic representation of the city in fascist rhetoric see also Horn (, ch. 5), 'The Sterile City' (for the relationship between urbanism and degeneration with particular regard to gender, see pp. 96 – 9). Regarding the USA, see Rotundo (: 258 – 9; 184 – 5 and 357, note 36). Cited in Gramsci (: 2128). Burzio's article on popular literature and in particular the Three Musketeers, was publishe