Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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In the postwar period, joining the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) and the

European Economic Community (1957) was part of a national strategy. At the

international level, this secured legitimacy, status and credibility for a country which had

come out of the war as a loser. Internally, European membership contributed to the

consolidation of the newborn Italian democracy and strengthened the solidity of the

Republic against the risk of a breakdown of democratic processes. The choice was not

without its own risks, as Italy was the only founding member of the Community with

such serious problems of poverty and illiteracy and with pronounced regional disparities

between the North and the South (see Southern Question). Ultimately, however,

integration did produce more benefits than costs.

Being—in terms of population—a large founding member of the European

Community, Italy gained the same formal status as the most important members, such as

France and Germany, in terms of voting power and numerical presence within the

European institutions. Yet the Italian influence on European policies remained limited.

Indeed, even under the best circumstances Italy merely played the role of mediator and

not of leader (Sbragia, 1992). Governmental instability and poor administrative resources

also severely constrained the capability of Italian negotiators to make a profound impact

on the trajectory of European integration. Italy as a country had a poor record of

implementation of European decisions, decidely at odds with the Euro-enthusiasm of

both Italian public opinion and policy makers. In fact, European integration had always

been strongly supported by Italians and even the Italian Communist Party (PCI), after an

initial period of opposition to the European Community, came to share in the general

enthusiasm for Europeanism. The pro-European attitude was only mildly challenged by

the Berlusconi government in 1994. All the same, it seems paradoxical that Italy often

agreed to European decisions which later were difficult to implement, although Italian

politicians were always able to capitalize on an Italian consensus which could be taken

for granted. The latter, in fact, proved to be a positive political investment of goodwill

and reputation at the table of European decisions, and Italian policy makers were able to

cash in the return on this investment when asking their European partners for more

leniency on pressing domestic problems, such as the closure of steel plants (see Ilva),

excessive milk production and state aids to ailing industries (Giuliani, 1996).

Notwithstanding the deficit in implementation and the difficulties in playing a

purposive role in European affairs, Italy was able to defend the national interest in crucial

episodes of European integration. Italy was at the margins of the Franco-German scheme

leading to the European Coal and Steel Community, but De Gasperi obtained subsidies

for the Sardinian mines, access to Algerian iron ore and, most crucially, free movement

of workers. In a country where the ‘Piano Vanoni’ (Vanoni Plan) assumed that 800,000

workers would leave Italy each year, free movement of labour within the Community was

indispensable. Hence this fundamental concession was a typical Italian mark on the shape

of European integration. Italy was also instrumental in the creation of the European

Social Fund and the European Investment Bank, two instruments of the Community

designed to tackle the problems of unemployment and regional disparities, and Italian

industry also gained from the progressive establishment of the single market. By contrast,

Italian interests in the Common Agricultural Policy yielded to those of central and

northern countries: fruit and vegetables, the typical Italian products, were far less

protected by the Common Agricultural Policy than cereals and meat.

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European monetary policy positively transformed the Italian state. In December 1978

the Andreotti government decided to join the European Monetary System in spite of the

glaring gulf between the Italian rate of inflation and the European average. This decision

inaugurated the policy of tying Italy’s hands in advance to European rules, which proved

to have an impressive disciplinary force. The provisions regarding the single currency,

enshrined in the Treaty on the European Union signed at Maastricht, came to be the most

powerful mechanism for discipline on Italian public finance in the 1990s. In conjunction

with domestic political upheavals, they also transformed the Italian state by assigning

more political power to the Treasury, the Bank of Italy and the technocrats in

government, while curbing the power of the partitocrazia (rule by the parties).

Nevertheless, in the late 1990s, as Italy prepared to join the Economic and Monetary

Union, the problems relating to the welfare state, the taxation system and, most

importantly, socioeconomic disparities across regions seemed likely to be exacerbated

(Radaelli and Bruni, 1998). If, in the postwar era, the European Union had been able to

provide an ‘external constraint’ on Italian economic policy, at this point the structural

problems of the Italian economy remained solely in the hands of Italians.

Further reading

Dyson, K. and Featherstone, K. (1996) ‘Italy and EMU as a “Vincolo Esterno”: Empowering the

Technocrats, Transforming the State’, South European Society and Politics 1 (2):272–99 (an

accurate analysis of the political impact of the European external constraint).

Giuliani, M. (1996) ‘Italy’, in D. Rometsch and W. Wessels (eds), The EU and Member States.

Towards Institutional Fusion?, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 105–33.

Hine, D. (1993) Governing Italy: The Politics of Bargained Pluralism, Oxford: Clarendon (see ch.

10 on the European Community dimension of Italian government, a plain introduction to the

main issues).

Radaelli, C. and Bruni, M. (1998) ‘Beyond Charlemagne’s Europe: A Sub-National Examination of

Italy Within EMU’, Regional and Federal Studies 8 (2).

Sbragia, A. (1992) ‘Italy—EEC: An Undervalued Partnership’, Relazioni Internazionali 2 (June):

78–86.

CLAUDIO M. RADAELLI

L’Europeo

Originally a large format news and culture weekly, L’Europeo first appeared in

November 1945 and was edited for its first ten years by Arrigo Benedetti. Largely under

his influence, it cultivated an elegant but sober look, being well-written and illustrated

with impeccable care and taste. Directed mainly at a middle-class and family readership

but slightly more culturally elevated than its popular rival, Epoca, it was politically

centrist but was also one of the few magazines at the time willing to openly have dialogue

with the Communist Party. Focussing for the most part on news and current affairs, the

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magazine achieved some impressive scoops, one of the most memorable being Tommaso

Besozzi’s investigative report on the death of Salvatore Giuliano, which convincingly

disproved official accounts of how the bandit had died. Some of the great names of

Italian journalism passed through its pages, including Giorgio Bocca and Enzo Biagi as

well as writers like Oriana Fallaci and photographers such as Federico Scianna (see

photography) and Oliviero Toscani. Under pressure from falling sales during the late

1970s, the magazine changed to a small format in 1981. By the early 1990s it had

managed to regain some ground but it was eventually forced to close in 1995.

GINO MOLITERNO

Evola, Giulio Cesare Andrea (Julius)

b. 19 May 1898, Rome; d. 11 June 1974, Rome

Philosopher, writer and painter

Evola was the principal figure in the not overcrowded cultural world of the post-1945

extreme Right. Of aristocratic descent, Evola began his creative life as a futurist painter

under Marinetti’s influence. An encounter with dadaism marked both his paintings and

his poetic production (1916–22) from which he embarked on a parallel exploration of the

world of Eastern thought and the decadence of the modern West. His racial theories

brought him popularity in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and the offer (declined) of a

personal Chair in Racism at the University of Rome in 1939.

In postwar Italy, Evola’s mandarin contempt for democracy and equality—symptoms

of the ideological and political ruin in which modern man was now living—made him a

natural reference point for the violent groups of the neofascist Right (see fascism and

neo-fascism). His numerous and arcane writings featured on their reading lists for

militants, and he was hailed by Giorgio Almirante, leader of the MSI (Movimento

Sociale Italiano, or Italian Social Movement) as ‘our Marcuse (only better)’.

Further reading

Evola, J. (1996) Revolt against the Modern World, trans. G. Stucco, Rochester, VT: Inner

Traditions International (extended exposition, originally published in 1934, of Evola’s basic

doctrines).

Ferraresi, F. (1987) ‘Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction and the Radical Right’, Archives

européennes de sociologie 28 (1):107–51 (discussion of Evola’s intellectual origins, main

themes and postwar influence).

DAVID MOSS

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extraparliamentary Left

As a significant political force, the extraparliamentary Left in Italy covered the period

1969–76. However, its intellectual inspirations predate 1969 and its political legacies can

be traced beyond the mid-1970s. An unstable collage of distinct political traditions and

experiences, its impact was both benign and destructive. On one hand, the pressures

exercised by its militants helped to demolish some of the most archaic and authoritarian

features of schools and workplaces: its groups played a vital role in the cultural

revolution of 1968–9 in which Italy struggled, with partial success, to modernize its

politics and institutions and to absorb the social consequences of the economic miracle.

On the other hand, pursuit of the mirage of revolution eventually alienated many

prospective future leaders from all political involvement and led some of the more

disillusioned rank and file members into terrorism once mass protest had subsided and

the extraparliamentary groups themselves had disintegrated.

Before the revolution: pre-1968 origins

After 1945, a variety of voices in the communist tradition, inspired in particular by

Trotsky and Mao Zedong, continued to criticize the strategy and tactics of the PCI from

the Left. However, only in the 1960s did these isolated voices start to make an impact

outside a limited circle. The appearance of Quaderni Rossi (1961), Quaderni piacentini

(1962) and Classe operaia (1963) greatly expanded the systematic application of

renovated Marxist theory to features of contemporary Italian society and culture, and the

hitherto barely known works of the young Gramsci were scrutinized for political

guidance. Except for the tiny Partito Comunista d’Italia (marxisti-leninisti), whose

reverence for the Chinese and Albanian experiments in socialism was as profound as the

party’s cohesion was shallow, the gap between Marxist theory and revolutionary practice

remained great. The unexpected opportunity to try to close it was provided by the

student movement of 1967–8, immediately followed by the worker revolt across

northern and central Italy in the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969.

Revolution at hand? 1968–73

Between 1968 and 1970 the principal organizations of the extraparliamentary Left were

created, including Lotta Continua (Continuous Struggle), Potere Operaio (Worker

Power), Avanguardia Operaia (Worker Avantgarde) and il manifesto. With the exception

of the last (a group of intellectuals expelled from the PCI in 1969), each organization

remained strongly marked by the city in which it had originated, although each attracted

at least a few members in most major cities. Lotta Continua, the most iconoclastic and

least disciplined group, was a product mainly of Turin and the leadership of Adriano

Sofri, Luigi Bobbio and Guido Viale. Events at Fiat, particularly in the ungovernable

megafactory of Mirafiori, therefore tended to loom large in shaping its views on the state

of revolutionary progress in Italy generally. Potere Operaio, directed by Toni Negri,

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Franco Piperno and Oreste Scalzone, had an especially strong presence in the Veneto and

Rome, both largely non-industrial contexts which encouraged the group’s distinctive

combination of mandarin intellectual acrobatics and political sectarianism. Avanguardia

Operaia, among whose leaders Silverio Corvisieri stood out, had a grassroots presence in

the so-called CUB (Comitati unitari di base, or unified base committees) in factories

around Milan but found recruitment elsewhere difficult. As well as struggling for change

in workplaces, schools and universities, the extraparliamentary groups were active in

conflicts over housing which were especially marked in the northern cities swollen by

emigration from east and south Italy in the 1960s.

Local pressures and ideological differences made relations between the groups

unstable. Competition for the allegiance of a fairly limited number of activists (Milan, the

largest concentration, had an estimated 8,000 irregular participants in extreme Left

activities) was intense, especially among secondary school students who represented the

largest single category of members. With their broadsheets, cultural events, political

activism and self-defence against the extreme Right, the groups came to form exclusive,

often mutually hostile, local sub-cultures, increasingly detached from the world of the

working class whose interests they claimed to advance. Moreover, the leaders, sharing a

dissatisfaction with the insufficiently radical PCI but divided by endless disputes over

genuinely revolutionary strategy and tactics, also became estranged from the generally

younger grassroots activists, especially after the widespread industrial and educational

protest had peaked by 1975 and the prospects of socialist revolution or military reaction,

to be respectively accelerated and resisted by the extraparliamentary Left as its political

rationale, had both faded.

Towards violence, parliamentary politics and feminism: 1974–6

Adoption of an extraparliamentary identity inspired by Leninism forced all groups to

define their attitude to the antithesis of parliamentary democracy: political violence. Most

were deeply equivocal, talking up the need for violence but deploring specific violent

acts. As splinter groups (see Red Brigades) embarked in 1970 on campaigns of

deliberate destruction in the workplace and physical injury of political enemies, the

boundary between politics and violence became blurred and the tensions within each

group more severe. Minority groups in the major cities became open advocates of

political violence: the self-defence squads of Lotta Continua, trained to respond to the

now-waning extreme Right violence, provided recruits for terrorist organizations such as

Prima Linea (Front Line); members of Potere Operaio, which dissolved itself in 1973,

passed into Autonomia and supported low-level factory and neighbourhood violence.

Some of the leaders of Potere Operaio (Negri, Piperno, Scalzone) were later convicted of

direct involvement in terrorism. However, the overwhelming majority of the

extraparliamentary Left was opposed to violence and favoured a partial return to

parliamentary politics. An effort to organize a joint group cartel to contest the 1976

national elections achieved only very disappointing results (see Democrazia Proletaria)

which led directly to the dissolution of the largest remaining group, Lotta Continua.

Many activists then abandoned politics altogether. Some who did not joined the resurgent

Radical Party (see Marco Pannella) with its focus on civil rights such as divorce.

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Prominent female members, however, dissatisfied with their experiences as subordinates

in the male-dominated politics of the extraparliamentary Left, provided the leadership of

the distinctive Italian feminist movement (see feminism).

Further reading

Bobbio, L. (1979) Lotta Continua: storia di una organizzazione rivoluzionaria (Lotta Continua:

The History of a Revolutionary Organization), Rome: Savelli (history of LC by a prominent

Turin leader).

Corvisieri, S. (1979) Il mio viaggio nella sinistra (My Journey Through the Left), Rome: Editoriale

l’Espresso (perceptive account by leader of Avanguardia Operaia).

Lumley, R. (1990) States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1967 to 1978, London:

Verso (cultures and ideologies in the emergence of student and worker movements).

Tarrow, S. (1989) Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy 1965–1975, Oxford:

Clarendon Press (fundamental study of grassroots antiauthoritarian protest, secular and

religious).

Vettori, G. (1973) La sinistra extraparlamentare in Italia (The Extraparliamentary Left in Italy),

Rome: Newton Compton (history and documents of major groups).

DAVID MOSS

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Fabbri, Diego

b. 1911, Forlì; d. 1980, Riccione

Playwright

One of the few playwrights of the postwar years with a strong Catholic background and

inspiration, Fabbri created a body of work which revolved around the theme of the

relationship between God and men, and the values of faith. He was interested particularly

in the capacity of these values to give answers to human needs while at the same time

portraying human weaknesses and contradictions.

Fabbri started his career in theatre during the 1940s when he wrote a number of

‘intimist’ plays of a psychological nature. His major theatrical works, however, were

written during the 1950s and include Inquisizione (Inquisition) (1950) and Processo a

Gesù (The Trial of Christ) (1955) which are characterized by a more religious inspiration

and Il Seduttore (The Seducer) (1951) and La Bugiarda (The Deceitful Woman) (1956)

which focus more on social values and corruption.

From the early 1960s Fabbri also began to write for television, with successful

screenplays adapted from major European novels. Amongst the most popular were Le

inchieste del Commissario Maigret (Inspector Maigret’s Inquiries) (four series from 1964

to 1972), I fratelli Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov) (1969) and Il Segreto di Luca

(Luca’s Secret) (1969).

FEDERICA STURANI

Fabro, Luciano

b. 20 November 1936, Turin

Sculptor

Usually associated with arte povera, Fabro regards art as a process for heightening the

viewer’s awareness. The artwork is built as a site for seeing and sensing, not in order to

reduce something to a single image or solution. While interested in abstract elements,

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such as space, which can be seen in his constructed cubes and habitats, Fabro tends to use

figurative elements in a novel way. The Piedi (Feet) series of 1968–72 has a number of

bronze, glass and marble paws protruding from giant, silken trouser legs suspended above

them. Sisifo (Sisyphus) (1994) consists of a large onyx roller which has been rolled

across a bed of flour, suggestive of the mythological futile labours.

Fabro’s best-known works are the Italia series, produced since 1968. These are large,

upside down representations of the Italian peninsula, using a variety of materials such as

iron, leather, glass and fur, each making a comment on the nature of contemporary Italy.

MAX STAPLES

Falcone, Giovanni

b. 18 May 1939, Palermo; d. 23 May 1992, Capaci

Magistrate

Giovanni Falcone was the key member of a team of magistrates in Palermo (the

‘antimafia pool’, which was directed by Antonino Caponnetto and included the equally

respected Paolo Borsellino) whose investigations between 1983 and 1988 secured the

convictions of many mafia bosses.

Falcone’s unprecedented feat of obtaining firm evidence which could survive

courtroom contests and mafia pressure on judges, jurors and witnesses at every level of

the legal process rested principally on three novel elements: scrutiny of financial

transactions, confessions elicited from pentiti such as ex-boss Tommaso Buscetta, and

identification of the mafia as a centrally directed organization. An upbringing in a mafia-

saturated neighbourhood, the financial knowledge gained from his early work as a

magistrate in the bankruptcy court and a capacity for unrelenting attention to hard-won

detail in a pre-computerized judiciary, enabled Falcone to win the respect and

collaboration of mafia turncoats and to follow the intricate detail of the organization’s

business transactions far beyond Sicily. To overcome the rigid jurisdictional limits to

investigations, he created a network of collaborators among police and magistrates in

northern Italy, France and the USA which enabled him to track the movements of mafiosi

and money more accurately than any previous magistrate.

However, investigative success and the accompanying public renown exposed him to

both professional jealousies and to mafia revenge. The anti-mafia team was dismantled,

and Falcone—failing to win election to the judiciary’s governing body, the CSM—

moved to the Ministry of Justice in Rome. A mafia car bomb killed him as he made a

brief return to Palermo in 1992, and two months later his closest colleague, Paolo

Borsellino, was killed in similar fashion. In Sicily the murders provoked unprecedented

public demonstrations against the mafia and the political system that allowed it to thrive.

The brutal murders also created disorientation and defection within the organization over

the wisdom of challenging a long-tolerant state so directly. Within a few months the

mafia boss responsible for these and many other murders, Totò Riina, had been arrested

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after twenty-two years on the run and Falcone had become a powerful and enduring

symbol of the commitment of Sicilians themselves to the elimination of the mafia.

Further reading

Caponnetto, A. (1992) I mid giorni a Palermo (My Days in Palermo), Milan: Garzanti (the creation

of the anti-mafia team of judges described by its senior member).

Falcone, G. (1992) Men of Honour, trans. E. Farrelly, London: Fourth Estate (Falcone’s

interpretation of mafia).

La Licata, F. (1995) La storia di Giovanni Falcone (The Story of Giovanni Falcone), Milan:

Fabbri.

Stille, A. (1996) Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic,

London: Vintage (mafiosi, judges and politicians in Italy since 1980).

DAVID MOSS

Fallaci, Oriana

b. 30 June 1930, Florence

Writer and journalist

Fallaci’s childhood experience in the Florentine Resistance imprinted on her an

uncompromising commitment to heroic libertarian individualism. This runs through all

her work from her early reportages on Hollywood (1958) and the state of women around

the world to her massive novel about war-torn Beirut, InsciAllah (1990). It dominates her

accounts of the US space programme and the Vietnam War, with herself as the site of

conflict, as well as her interviews with world celebrities and political leaders. The

international success of her informatively titled Lettera a un bambino mai nato (Letter to

a Child Never Born) (1975), about the anguishing dilemmas of expectant motherhood in

an oppressive world, coincided with the mass feminism of the divorce and abortion

referendum debates, but was surpassed with Un uomo (A Man) (1979), a second-person

biography addressed to her dead companion the Greek freedom fighter, Alexandros

Panagoulis. Fallaci continued to exemplify the highest values of the Italian Resistance,

but intellectuals generally failed to do justice to her originality as a writer.

Further reading

Gatt-Rutter, J. (1996) Oriana Fallaci: The Rhetoric of Freedom, Oxford: Berg (a detailed

and in-depth study).

JOHN GATT-RUTTER

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Falso Movimento

Formed in 1977 by a group of Neapolitan teenagers, the Falso Movimento (False

Movement) company produced some of the most exciting experimental performances in

the late 1970s and early 1980s. They saw theatre as a meeting place for the various

interests of the group members (music, visual arts, cinema), and the loose structure of

their performances reflected the collective nature of their collaboration.

Their productions (for example, their reworking of Verdi’s Otello in 1982–3) typify a

further shift in Italian experimental theatre (after the mid-1970s development from

‘avantgarde’ to ‘post-avantgarde’ exemplified in the Magazzini Criminali) moving

towards what has been described as a new interest in spectacle (nuova spettacolarità) and

a greater emphasis on the expressive force of the constitutive elements or media in the

moment of performance. Mario Martone, the most prominent member of the group, went

on to direct cinema.

Further reading

Sinisi, S. (1983) Dalla parte dell’occhio (From the Eye’s Point of View), Rome: Kappa, 185–95 (a

detailed description of the group’s productions).

TIM FITZPATRICK

Famiglia Cristiana

With a steady readership of close to one million, Famiglia Cristiana (The Christian

Family) is the largest weekly magazine in Italy. With its reassuring mixture of popular

piety, feature articles, recipes, fashion and music reviews, an ‘agony column’ and lots of

glossy advertising, it has exerted a powerful influence on the Catholic laity since the mid-

1950s. However, since 1996 it has found itself in serious difficulty. Apart from a battle

inside the Society of Paulist Fathers, who own it, its support of the Ulivo alliance of the

PDS and the Popolari in the 1996 elections alienated some of its readers, including many

parish priests. At the end of 1996, the editor was summoned before both Cardinal

Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Ruini,

the Vicar of Rome and president of the Bishops’ Conference, and taken to task for

discussing topics such as communion for divorced persons, homosexuality, adultery,

masturbation and nudity. Despite putting up some strong resistance, the magazine now

faces direct censorship as a result of the takeover of the Paulist Society in Italy by a

Vatican-nominated delegate.