This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history. Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.

Winner of the 1998 Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association.

About the Author
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews
"An excellent contribution to the growing number of studies of Fascist political culture and public rituals." * American Journal of Sociology *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520226777
Author Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
Format Paperback
Page Count 314
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 20mm