The Politics of Italian National Identity

Edited by Gino Bedani and Bruce Haddock

pp viii296 November 2000 hardback
ISBN 0-7083-1622-0

book cover‘This collection of a dozen essays has a relatively restrained twin set of aspirations: firstly it wants to fill a gap in the literature, secondly it seeks to assist in the reappraisal of Italian political and cultural identity. The fact is however that it does both with elegance and aplomb. This is especially the case considering the diverse but intelligent, professional but accessible, nature of the contributions . . . insightful and wide-ranging . . . analyses.’ Journal of European Area Studies

‘All the essays published in the book are stimulating and interesting and give a good and complete picture, with all the relevant multidisciplinary implications, of the construction and state of Italian nationhood.’ European Journal of Cultural Studies

‘ . . . a rich and diverse volume, capable of true originality of thought and approaches. It also, and this is not the least of its advantages, a good read. Beyond the volume’s readability and the ease of style which characterizes most chapters, however, what forms the basis for the volume’s main contribution to the understanding of the politics of Italian national identity and to Italy, is its methodological diversity in combination with a dialogism that transforms it into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts . . . The volume’s success rests in part in having succeeded in mirroring, methodologically, the political and cultural reality it was attempting to capture.’ Regional & Federal Studies

‘This enormously valuable book encourages us to rethink the crude, common sense view the that Italians are just not, well, Italian enough. . . The ‘multidisciplinarity’ of the sub-title signifies the book’s variation in focus; an appropriate feature given the ubiquity of this discourses of the nation and national identity. The chapter take up perspectives from the history of political thought, cultural and media studies, aesthetics, linguistics and political history. This should make the book accessible to a broad range of interests . . . That these objectives are so consistently well balanced indicates the impressive quality of scholarship and the book's excellent editing.’ (Modern Italy)

Although Italy is historically one of Europe’s oldest political units, having been united by the Romans three centuries before the Christian era, it is also one of the youngest nation states. Italy’s rich and varied cultural heritage, its very strong regional identities and its recent history have combined to produce one of the least clearly configured ‘nations’.

The Politics of Italian National Identity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective examines the ways in which Italians have tried to construct their sense of nationhood since unification in 1861. This collection demonstrates the variety of ways in which national identity can be constructed, suggesting that there is no ‘essence’ of nationhood; the various essays look at what Gino Bedani and Bruce Haddock call the ‘self-understandings within Italian culture which are neglected in the ordinary business of daily life’ and which are constructed through historical interpretation, literature, history, politics, language, the media, even through images of beauty in cinema and fashion. The Politics of Italian National Identity not only fills a substantial gap in the academic literature, but also contributes to the widespread reappraisal of Italian political and cultural identity which has followed in the wake of the upheaval in Italian politics following 1992.

Gino Bedani is Professor of Italian at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of Vico Revisited (1989) and Politics and Ideology in the Italian Workers’ Movement (1995). Bruce Haddock is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society as well as the author of An Introduction to Political Thought (1980) and Vico’s Political Thought (1985).

Contents and contributors