Italian Modernities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Into Italy, into the Modern

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 1-22

3. Liberal Modernity

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 23-55

4. Catholic Modernities: Epics of a Christian Nation

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 57-90

5. Gramsci and the Italian Road to Socialist Modernity

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 91-118

6. Fascist Modernity

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 119-148

7. Frictions of Modernity: World War II as Historical Juncture

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 149-177

8. Competing Modernities: Postwar Italy and the Struggle over a Divided Past

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 179-208

9. Fragile Modernities: Critique, Crisis, and Emancipatory Politics

   • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

   Pages 209-245

10. After Modernity? Nationhood in the Post-Cold War Era

    • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

    Pages 247-269

11. What If We Were Never Modern?

    • Rosario Forlenza, Bjørn Thomassen

    Pages 271-281

12. Back Matter

    Pages 283-296

    PDF

This book argues that Italy represents a privileged entry point into the comparative analysis of ideologies and experiences of modernity. The book compares how thinkers and politicians belonging to different ideological clusters - Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Chistian Democracy - came to formulate multiple and often antagonistic visions of Italy's road to the modern. By revisiting Italian political history from the late nineteenth century until the present with a focus on transition periods, Italian Modernities explores how competing historical narratives influenced shifting understandings of Italian nationhood, thus foregrounding the active role of memory politics in the formulation of multiple modernities.

• Italy
• Italian studies
• memory politics
• modernity
• nationhood
• democracy
• liminality
• political history
• transition
• Communism
• Fascism
• Liberalism

“The authors have taken on a daunting task: they do not confine themselves to a narrow analysis of various ‘narratives of modernity,’ but in effect present these narratives as vehicles for explaining all of modern Italian history. … this book is most useful as an introduction to the intellectual and political history of modern Italy. Forlenza and Thomassen do an excellent job of explaining major theorists and key junctures in the country’s twentieth-century development.” (Joshua Arthurs, American Historical Review, Vol. 123 (04), October, 2018)



“Through the prism of modernity, this book seeks to provide an engaged narrative of the history of united Italy … The authors, Rosario Forlenza and Bjørn Thomassen, have extended their scope to include political and literary approaches that were defeated, or left unfinished. In doing so, they allow the reader to reflect on the words, expectations and reflections of contemporaries.” (Claudia Baldoli, English Historical Review HER, September, 2018)

“It provides the reader with an overview of the development of the concept of modernity in Italy, bringing together the ideas of some of Italy’s most important intellectuals. … Italian Modernities represents a rich account of the evolution of the concept of modernity in Italy, bringing together and re-elaborating canonical authors in Italian theory.” (Enrico Zammarchi, Italian Studies, Vol. 73 (02), March, 2018)

“Forlenza and Thomassen have produced a thoroughly useful overview of modern Italian history, structured around different conceptions of modernity that are likely to remain controversial in the future. Their book will be invaluable for students and specialists in Italian history and culture, together with specialists in development who may want to look at Italy in broader comparative studies. They show beyond doubt that we all have a great deal to gain from properly multidisciplinary perspectives.” (Bruce Haddock, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol. 22 (5), November, 2017)

“This wide-ranging volume offers a broad analysis of how competing ideologies within modern Italy ‘formulated multiple and often antagonistic visions of modernity’ … a valuable addition to modern Italian political history, and, given the breadth of its coverage, has particular potential to be used as a set text for undergraduate courses on Italian politics and political thinking.” (Selena Daly, Modern Italy, Vol. 23 (01), September, 2017)

“Forlenza and Thomassen have recounted the main themes running through modern Italian history from post-unification to the present, summarizing admirably the most important intellectual debates, and showing how every current of thinkers effectively created an original tradition of thought, at once specifically Italian and modern. … Forlenza and Thomassen’s study is an important contribution, which will be of immense benefit to both historians and social and political analysts of modern and contemporary Italy.” (Enrico Dal Lago, European History Quarterly, Vol. 47 (4), 2017)

“Italian Modernities, in title and content, poses an important challenge to assumptions that not only bedevil scholarship on Italy but also play a devastating role in Italy’s treatment in the geopolitical arena.  By complicating what we mean by “modern,” the authors gently but firmly upset the easy assumptions that have substituted for thought and that have perpetuated prejudices both within and outside Italy’s borders.  Grounded in meticulous historical and ethnological research, Italian Modernities deserves as wide an audience as its scholarship is deep.” (Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University)

• Columbia University, New York, USA

  Rosario Forlenza

• Roskilde, Denmark

  Bjørn Thomassen

Policies and ethics