Histories, Myths and Decolonial Interventions

A Planetary Resistance

Arti Nirmal, Sayan Dey, Arti Nirmal, Sayan Dey

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000592382
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores postcolonial myths and histories within colonially structured narratives which persist and are carried in culture, language, and history in various parts of the world.

It analyzes constructions of identities, stereotypes, and mythical fantasies in postcolonial society. Exploring a wide range of themes including the appropriation and use of language, myths of decolonialization, and nationalism, and the colonial influence on systems of academic knowledge, the book focuses on how these myths reinforce, subvert, and appropriate colonial binaries for the articulation of the postcolonial self. With essays which study narratives of emigrants in Argentina, the colonial mythology in the Dodecanese in Italy, and the mythico-narratives of island insularity in contemporary Sri Lanka among others, this volume emphasizes the role of indigenous studies in building a postcolonial consciousness.

This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of post-colonial studies, cultural studies, literature, history, political science, and sociology.

Part 1 MARCHING MEMORIES Histories, Myths, and Fantasies

1 THE “GOOD ITALIAN” FABLE AND THE CASE OF THE DODECANESE

Luca Castiglioni

DOI: 10.4324/9781003099017-3

Introduction – Forgetting the Empire

Imperialism was a crucial element in Fascist propaganda: the destiny of the “Italian Race” rested in the imperial project over the Mediterranean and Africa. The creation of Italian lebensraum would restore Italy to its imagined former glory and spread the Fascist Revolution to the world (Rodogno 2003, 69–72). The need for an Imperial dimension was driven with force in the Italian mindset, with several grandiose events, shows, and expositions that were meant to educate the Italians to think in imperial terms (Deplano 2018), to be dominators, to understand and structure their racial identity in a new society (De Napoli 2009).

The invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–1936 was the crowning achievement of the regime’s imperial policy, the pinnacle of the “consensus for Mussolini in Italy” (De Felice 1974, 758). In this war, Italian armed forces acted in complete disregard of any convention, with brutality beyond compare. The use of gas weapons, the bombing of hospitals, and the massacre of civilians were justified by the alleged “racial inferiority of the Ethiopians” (Borruso 2020, 21). The war became a media event, the first “Fascist” conflict, led and executed by the “New Italians” (Del Boca 1979, 1982, 77–127). Alongside the pacification of Libya in the 1920s and 1930s, these acts would be wholly removed from Italian public conscience, hardly ever publicly discussed until recently. The seminal work of historians like Rochat, Del Boca, and others in the 1970s has brought the darkest pages of the Italian colonial past to light by proving the direct responsibilities of Italian armed forces in the brutalities perpetrated in Ethiopia and Libya (Rochat 1973; Del Boca 1979; Labanca 2012, 173–206). These responsibilities were never prosecuted in an “Italian Nurnberg” because of the need to align Italy in the new block system of the Cold War, which demanded a quick normalization after 1945 (Focardi 2016, 121–51, Santarelli 2004).

The final collapse of the Italian armed forces in 1943 brought the Italian empire to an abrupt end. The state’s failure and its pre-fascist institutions left the country and its people to their own devices, even rationalizing their recent history. This did not help public memory coming to terms with Italy’s responsibilities toward its colonial past.

This condition of arrested consciousness led to creating a series of romanticized, self-absolving narratives: most of them relying on the self-apologetic “Good Italian” myth. Italians idealized themselves on two distinct levels when it came to their experience abroad: selfless colonizers and good-hearted, reluctant occupiers. The images of Italians as “road builders,” “modernizers,” “bringers of electricity,” and liberators of slaves were already used before Fascism in a new “declination of the White Man’s Burden” (Wong 2006, 79–112). These same sets of images have been used later, in democratic times, to mark the difference between the Fascist heritage in the colonies – one of brutal repressions – and the Italian heritage in the colonies, represented by alleged social and material improvements. This construct effectively isolates the boisterous imagery used by Fascism and supports the idea of the Italians as exporters of honest labor, a sensitive subject for a nation of emigrants. Only recently, such a narrative has been systematically debunked (Labanca 2001).

Out of these elements emerges the Good Italian soldier of the Second World War: exemplified by the kind-hearted, obedient, and straightforward Italian farmer, this construct wanted to mark a distinction between the Italian people and the regime, in line with the leitmotif of the “Italians as victims of the regime, rather than part of it” (Schlemmer 2009).

These fables and their supporters still look at Greece and the Dodecanese as a favorable setting. This chapter will attempt to explain the workings of this unyielding narrative and its consequences.

“Italiani Brava Gente” – The Greek Setting

The Good Italian myth: there is no more seminal and rooted self-representation in Italy, a literary topos elevated to collective national delusion (Del Boca 2008, 48–49). It’s mostly a defensive argument put up by Italian authorities and public voices to show how different the Italians were from their former allies, the Germans, during the Second World War (Focardi 2016). Still, its socio-cultural ramifications today extend far beyond its original purpose.

Greece is the cradle of many myths, and the Good Italian myth found there a place to thrive, to the point that the strength of this idea has hampered the ability of serious studies to reach out of the academic world and into the general audience (Fonzi 2019). The whole Italian participation in the Second World War was redefined in the light of this myth: key topoi are the alleged Italian good-hearted protection of the Jewish communities (Chrisafis et al. 2008) and the subject populations in the occupied territories (Lindemann 2007). The impact of the massacres suffered by Italian units by the hand of the Germans in Greece in 1943 (Venturi 2001; Aga Rossi and Giusti 2011; Insolvibile 2010) reinforced the Bad German-Good Italian bionomy, supporting the Good Italian topos.

Interestingly, the Italian army struggled with the notion of the Good Italian too: divisional commands emanated educational directives for the troops meant to “eradicate the notion of the Good Italian.” The Italian army had no need “of good guys,” of the “three times good, kind and sweet” soldier (Corselli 1929, 1271–72).¹

The events of Domenikon² or the Larissa concentration camp (Santarelli 2004, 293–96, Melato 2013), the massacres and torture carried out by the Italian army against resistance fighters, and the systematic theft of Greek resources to starve the resistance (Fonzi 2019, 172–86) have only recently become relatively common knowledge in Italy. Other events of the Italian occupation of Greece remain almost unknown in Italy. At the same time, they are naturally an integral part of the national historical narrative in Greece. This misalignment between two complementary sets of facts is hurting the ability of the two historical schools to talk to each other constructively. Besides the general inability of most Italian historians to access Greek sources, one of the most hampering factors is the consideration that the Good Italian myth can’t really be put to rest (Fonzi 2017, 240, 254–59).

Discussing the relationship between Italy and Greece offers an extra layer of difficulty: the traditional perception of cultural and historical affinity between them. Both the countries are relatively new national states that gained unity through similar processes of insurrection. Both self-identified their roots in antiquity (Liakos 1995; Mouritsen 2009). On a more pragmatic level, the presence and influence of Venetian and Genoese communities in Greece shaped parts of the country, as much as Greek communities shaped parts of southern Italy. The Ionian Islands, Crete, Patras hosted influential Italian gatherings until the Second World War. Numerous Greek-speaking communities inhabited the southern regions of Italy until the early modern age, some of which still survive as enclaves today. These elements intertwine, creating a “shared ancient Mediterranean identity” between Italians and Greeks (Coppola 2013, 24–52).

This affinity between Greeks and Italians coalesces into the μια φάτσα, μιαράτσα construct, which is an integral part of any Italian experience of Greece.³ But how could such a construct survive the brutality of the Italian occupation? Greece, alongside Yugoslavia, was the most vocal accuser of Italian atrocities, but despite overwhelming evidence (Office National Hellenique des Criminels de Guerre 1946), no trial ever went through. The survival of this narrative of the Italo-Greek affinity in some communities is surprising and difficult to explain: regional differences in the intensity of repression and the pity for disbanded Italian soldiers after the army’s collapse seem to have kept this topos alive despite the reality of the occupation (Clementi 2013, 317–27).

Greece saw another narrative topos concerning the Italians: the Σ΄Αγαπώ Army, meaning the “I love you” army. Created by British propaganda to discredit and ridicule the pompousness of Mussolini’s claims of racial superiority, this narrative depicts the Italians as inept and uncommitted to the war, more interested in chasing girls than fighting for the Axis (Lecoeur 2009, 151–53).

The Italians in the Dodecanese – Image and Heritage

The Good Italian myth and its link to the One Face, One Race narrative is linked with the Italian occupation of Greece. Still, a third narrative set in play influenced the other two in that context: pre-war Italian colonial imagery and propaganda. The notions of Italian modernity and generosity were common elements of propaganda in the Italian possession of the Dodecanese, which would later influence a significant part of the narrative framework of the Good Italian in Greece. The Dodecanese fell under Italian control in 1912 and became an essential part of the Italian projection in the Mediterranean.

Few studies so far have spotted such a connection, usually investigating the Good Italian myth in the mainland and Ionian Greece and the memorial heritage in the Dodecanese as two distinct sets of narratives. Santarelli mentions the process of alleged Italianization of the Ionian Islands from the ONHCG⁴ perspective but draws no parallel with the existing Dodecanesian model (Santarelli 2004, 288–89). Paolo Fonzi’s most recent publication on the history of the Italian occupation of Greece leaves the Dodecanese at the margins of his core argument regarding Italian occupation policies (Fonzi 2019, 110–12).

The problem seems flipped on the Greek side: the solid national bias of some older but still referenced historical works read the whole history of the Dodecanese from a strictly irredentist perspective, and this led some authors to anachronistically use the category of resistance as a fil rouge to bring the Dodecanese into Greek nation-building narrative (Κυπριώτη 1988). The Dodecanesians of America and other expats penned their resentment against Italian polices through the Italian dominion, inciting their countrymen in the islands to resist Italian cultural influence. Still, these acts of awareness have been equated with acts of active resistance (Αθανασιάδης 1987; Τσαλαχούρης 1997). But what were the characteristics of the Italian domination in the Dodecanese? How does it affect local Greek narratives regarding the memory of the Italians?

The Dodecanese was under Italian control from 1912 until 1945, under a straightforward rule and in a relatively unique legal status within the Italian colonial system. Legally not a colony but a Possession, the islands’ inhabitants nonetheless lived in a very asymmetrical society with the Italians clearly above the Greeks, the Jews, and the Turks who lived in the islands.

The Italian occupation and administration of the Dodecanese Islands have been often described as an unexpected consequence of the Turkish–Italian War of 1911–1912, which saw an intense and diversified activity of consensus-building among the new Aegean⁵ subjects (Castelnovi 2007), through several material improvements that the Italian administration put in place in the islands until the Second World War.

Between 1912 and 1922, the Italian administration operated within the legal framework of a military occupation: acting in the name of Ottoman sovereignty, it maintained the Ottoman system, which was the basis for the policy of large autonomies for local communities implemented by the Italians until 1924 (Mondaini 1941, 809). Dodecanesian irredentism carried a global and robust voice, though: several publications lobbying for the cession of the islands to Greece were presented by the Greek mission at the Paris peace talks in 1919 (Zevros and Roussos 1919), but the 1920 treaty of Sevres saw Greece accepting Italian control over the Islands, in exchange for Italian support of the occupation of Smyrna. The Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish war made the question moot. The treaty of Lausanne of 1923 confirmed Italian control of the Dodecanese, and the Italian administration of the islands became more pervasive: projects and activities started to shape the possession in ways that would make it a unique example of intra-European colonial domination that would intrigue the British administration of Cyprus (Rappas 2014; Holland and Markides 2006, 189–212).

These islands in the southern Sporades enjoyed a special status in both the Ottoman Empire and the Italian empire, which offered special taxations and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 Marching Memories: Histories, Myths, and Fantasies
• Part 2 Everyday Decoloniality: Engagements and Experiences of Everyday Life
• Index