In her examination of the culture of Italian fascism, Mabel Berezin focuses on how Mussolini's regime consciously constructed a nonliberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism stresses form over content, she believes, and the regime tried to build its political support through the careful construction and manipulation of public spectacles or rituals such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities. The fascists believed they could rely on the motivating power of spectacle, and experiential symbols.

In contrast with the liberal democratic notion of separable public and private selves, Italian fascism attempted to merge the public and private selves in political spectacles, creating communities of feeling in public piazzas. Such communities were only temporary, Berezin explains, and fascist identity was only formed to the extent that it could be articulated in a language of pre-existing cultural identities. In the Italian case, those identities meant the popular culture of Roman Catholicism and the cult of motherhood.

Berezin hypothesizes that at particular historical moments certain social groups which perceive the division of public and private self as untenable on cultural grounds will gain political ascendance. Her hypothesis opens a new perspective on how fascism works.

About the Author

Mabel Berezin teaches Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

An excellent interdisciplinary work. Progressing from a commemorative period that made the 1922 March on Rome the centerpiece of rituals to a mobilization phase after 1934, which emphasized athletic and military bodies, Berezin delineates the phases in which rituals of the piazza passed from emphasizing the myth of national revolution to that creating the myths of the new Roman empire.... Berezin's work is a splendid addition to literature on fascist politicization of culture and civic life.

* Choice *

This excellent book explores how politics, culture, and identity intersected in interwar Italy so as to make the 'fascist project': a creation of the self and of new identities as citizens of fascist Italy.... This is a rich and rewarding book; the writing is engaging and the theory challenging. It is an important contribution to our understanding of fascism and of the making of modern identities.

* Virginia Quarterly *

Instantly accessible.... An admirable monograph based on a wide range of readings intelligently deployed. Historians will appreciate the factual content and will find the sociological insights stimulating.

* American Historical Review *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the 1998 J. David Greenstone Prize (Poli.



Book Information
ISBN 9780801484209
Author Mabel Berezin
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm