explores the role of Mediterranean imaginaries in one of the preeminent tropes of Italian history: the formation or 'making of' Italians. While previous scholarship on the construction of Italian identity has often focused too narrowly on the territorial notion of the nation-state, and over-identified Italy with its capital, Rome, this book highlights the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. From this perspective, this book re-interprets key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, and thereby challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete. Ultimately, it argues that Mediterranean imaginaries acted as counterweights to the solidification of a 'national' Italian identity, and still constitute alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.
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Brian J Griffith: Alright, so welcome everyone, my name is Brian J Griffith and i'll be the host of today's virtual book talk event.
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Brian J Griffith: So just for introduction to myself, I am the inaugural nugen and Jacqueline Weber postdoctoral scholar and European history at uc Los Angeles during the academic years.
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Brian J Griffith: 2022 2021 and also next year 2021 to 2022 this book talk is the third in a series of book talks that I am hosting in conjunction with a course that i'm currently teaching here at UCLA titled interwar crisis Europe 1918 to 1939.
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Brian J Griffith: Our next and final virtual book talk event will be on Wednesday June 2 from 12pm to 1pm Pacific standard time.
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Brian J Griffith: And that will focus on Edward to be Western ins recently published monograph drunk on genocide.
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Brian J Griffith: Alcohol and mass murder in Nazi Germany published by cornell university press in cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial museum.
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Brian J Griffith: So if you'd like to register for that last book talk, you can take a look at my course website which i'm entering in right here.
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Brian J Griffith: That has the registration portal there for you, if you're interested in joining us on June, the second i'd also like to acknowledge this book talk series co sponsors and collaborators.
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Brian J Griffith: Which are UCLA is Center for European and Russian studies, you can find them on both Facebook and Twitter under the handle UCLA C E RS.
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Brian J Griffith: UCLA CRS and also for this particular book talk event the EC Bhutto Italiana the coup de de Los Angeles, which is the Italian cultural Institute of Los Angeles, so thank you.
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Brian J Griffith: to both of our co sponsors and collaborators for this particular meeting.
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Brian J Griffith: A few words on the meeting format and procedures so i'm going to begin by providing a brief introduction for today's speaker, which of course.
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Brian J Griffith: will be followed by a 30 minute presentation on Dr phil goes recently published book The subject of today's meeting the fishing net.
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Brian J Griffith: And the spider world after claudia's presentation will make time for some Q amp a during the remaining about a half an hour, so if you're joining us here on zoom which, like the last book talk is in fact the only place, you can be joining us right now live.
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Brian J Griffith: I would encourage you to to participate in the Q amp a session, and if you have a question that you'd like to ask during that last half an hour.
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Brian J Griffith: You can do you can indicate your desire to to deliver that question in two different ways, you can either write up the entire question in the chat dialogue here on zoom.
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Brian J Griffith: And I will take that as your desire for me to read that for you, if you would rather appear on camera and ask your question yourself, you can just indicate your desire to do so and i'll call on you in the proper order.
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Brian J Griffith: Finally, as a courtesy to our speaker and also to the attendees i'd like to kindly request that you mute your microphones until it's your turn to speak okay so for the introduction for Dr Claudio phobe go, so it is my pleasure to introduce you to today's speaker.
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Brian J Griffith: Dr Claudia.
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Brian J Griffith: Dr flow glue is an intellectual historian of modern Italy with a special emphasis on the two decades have been used to mussolini's fascist dictatorship.
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Brian J Griffith: Claudio earned his doctorate in modern European history, right here at uc Los Angeles, where I am a postdoctoral scholar now.
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Brian J Griffith: In 1995 and shortly thereafter, was appointed as the assistant professor at the Ohio State University Dr phil GU is currently an associate professor of Italian studies at uc Santa Barbara.
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Brian J Griffith: Claudio has been the recipient recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including an Alexander on humbled foundation grant of genre on a fellowship at the European University Institute and physically Italy.
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Brian J Griffith: And also Sony in foundation fellowship among many, many others.
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Brian J Griffith: Dr photos research has appeared in many prestigious journals and edited volumes, including the journal for contemporary history.
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Brian J Griffith: The journal for modern European history history in theory modernism maternity saudia explore to graph via and many, many, many more worth mentioning, I had to cut the list short, there were so many.
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Brian J Griffith: Of these journals that he's published in Claudio is also the author of a number of edited volumes and monographs including his first monograph.
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Brian J Griffith: The historic imaginary the politics of history and Fascist Italy published by the University of Toronto press in 2003.
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Brian J Griffith: probing the ethics of Holocaust culture which he co edited with both conch diner and Todd President published by Harvard University press in 2016.
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Brian J Griffith: And, of course, the topic for today's book talk event the fishing net and the spider web Mediterranean imaginary and the making of Italians published late last year by palgrave MacMillan.
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Brian J Griffith: If you haven't already had a chance to purchase a copy of the book, we do have a special discount code that we can share with you here, if you click on.
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Brian J Griffith: The link that I just linked to in the chat dialog and use the the event photo 2021 discount code, you will be given a 30% 30% discount on your purchase.
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Brian J Griffith: Just on a personal note, before we begin with the presentation and the Q amp a.
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Brian J Griffith: I just wanted to acknowledge that Dr phil gould was indeed my PhD mentor while I was studying at uc Santa Barbara between 2012 and 2020 and so it's really truly a pleasure.
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Brian J Griffith: To introduce you to and to be able to host this event for Dr Claudia fogo so Claudia i'll hand it over to you now.
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Claudio Fogu: Well, thank you, Brian.
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Claudio Fogu: Thank you for the presentation and.
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Claudio Fogu: I think you can only imagine what it double excitement and enzyme it i'm experience in by presenting in front hosted by my mentee.
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Claudio Fogu: In my Alma mater which was my Alma mater for 10 years I did undergraduate and graduate studies there so.
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Claudio Fogu: This is really a momentous and I have to recognize that it's taken me quite a while to to try to bring.
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Claudio Fogu: Together 20 years of thoughts and research which, which is what went into the production of this very slim book and very expensive book that.
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Claudio Fogu: Even with the discount I won't blame any of you to just escape horrified from that price, and if you really, really are interested in reading it please contact me I might find a way.
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Claudio Fogu: To get it to you um so I want to begin with the usual little apology of well, thank you, thank you, Brian of course for organizing this, this is really.
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Claudio Fogu: A tribute to you and to your organizing abilities, but also, I am very touched by by by this, and your invitation.
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Claudio Fogu: I want to apologize for just putting one single picture up right behind me a picture that tells 1000 stories but i'm not gonna even tell you about the picture, because I don't have the time otherwise to tell you about the book so i'm going to just go right into the book and.
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Claudio Fogu: I hope to be able to keep within the 30 minutes but it's going to be a challenge and I would like to start immediately from the title, the fishing net and the spider Web.
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Claudio Fogu: To metaphors that refer to two forms or mattrick says or models I use interchangeably this words in the book of Mediterranean imaginary so is formation.
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Claudio Fogu: My book traces back to the ancient Mediterranean the first the fishing net to the arcade period that the new pro dells of the entry Mediterranean world premiere green Jordan and Dominique purcell.
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Claudio Fogu: identify with the generalized connectivity of Mediterranean emporia between the eighth and the third century BC.
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Claudio Fogu: And the ladder the spider web that I traced to the territory realization of the Mediterranean Sea under Roman imperium perfectly captured by the term modern nostrum.
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Claudio Fogu: Focusing on the role played by the islands and coastlines of the flood Gray area contemporary Naples and its maritime hinterland, in particular.
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Claudio Fogu: I argue in this book that what today we call Italy South was the initial Center of production for both of these imaginary and remained for centuries, what ordinance purcell called the bio geographical Center of the Mediterranean continent.
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Claudio Fogu: In this few initial sentences i'm aware of having already packed a series of terms concepts that already scream for explanation.
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Claudio Fogu: Where do these metaphors come from and what is a Mediterranean imaginary or better what is an imaginary two core and a Mediterranean continent.
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Claudio Fogu: Are you serious is that another metaphor, are you proposing a new Meta geographical notion i'm sure that john Agnew was staring at me right now will probably come up with that question.
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Claudio Fogu: soon enough to answer these questions head on, would require that I spend all of my time on them, leaving you wondering what the book is actually about.
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Claudio Fogu: So i'd like to come to them in the course of illustrating the story that this book tells.
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Claudio Fogu: And since we are in the land of Hollywood let me introduce it with a series of pitches designed to speak to the different academic audiences, for which the book was intended.
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Claudio Fogu: For the Mediterranean studies crowd the fishing net and the spider web is a Mediterranean history of eatery in which the history of the Mediterranean.
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Claudio Fogu: meets history in the Mediterranean, the two categories that Jordan and purcell in their magisterial the correctly see have theorized.
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Claudio Fogu: For the Italian is the public the fishing net and the spider web is the sequel to Nelson most the view from the wazoo views.
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Claudio Fogu: Seeking to tell the cultural history of the Italian peninsula from its unification to the present from the point of view of the Mediterranean Sea.
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Claudio Fogu: And even more to the south point of view of the Vesuvius last but not least.
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Claudio Fogu: On a more purely historic graphical plane in the fishing net and the spider web the superhero of Italian cultural history, the southern question finally needs the other superhero the making of Italians and I really love this kind of type of pitch if I, if I may say so.
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Claudio Fogu: This three pitches, however, also summarize the three main stages of the history, I tell which as i've already hinted at starts in the eighth century BC.
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Claudio Fogu: He with the the arrival of a band of brothers or cousins from the Atlantic island of you were on to the island called Ischia but they found the first Atlantic important in the so called West which they called PT cruiser.
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Claudio Fogu: But wait Why go all the way to Ischia and not stopping Sicily or Calabria, or any of the coastal areas of southern eater is well known to.
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Claudio Fogu: Previous travelers from the Eastern Mediterranean, or even Capri in we all have which could be found on the way to escape why pushing all the way to that island and why then stop there.
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Claudio Fogu: The answer I give to this question is that those millennials we would call them later on, Greeks were searching for a partnership with the iron masters of the Mediterranean world.
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Claudio Fogu: The Iranians, which we would call later, a trash can so we navigated the central areas of Italy and it's coastlines, as well as the islands of elba Corsica and Seguin.
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Claudio Fogu: The realism of a famous based in karate and now fragile they did 730 and 20 BC.
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Claudio Fogu: and preserve the Museum of PT cruiser nice guy tells us the story of a scene critic maritime civilization that had nothing to do with a stylist pottery we know as Greek.
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Claudio Fogu: Because it specifically rejected the identity and logic of the police and operated according to the four network dynamics that historians, I read malkin as identified as conservative of the archaic Mediterranean world.
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Claudio Fogu: First, a ship to shore spatial orientation that transformed the arid the sea itself into a hinterland, and even coastal areas into islands SPD cozy did with kumar and potentially.
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Claudio Fogu: And many a second a many to many pattern of interaction that populated the Mediterranean world of innumerable others rather than an us versus them or a single other.
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Claudio Fogu: Third, a synthetic or a single artistic modality of cultural identities formation that created middle grounds in which not only were products, customs and CARDS hybridised but color night.
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Claudio Fogu: colonizers and local populations also achieved what post colonial scholars today call realisation.
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Claudio Fogu: Finally, a fractal logic of Transfiguration between material and cultural mental conditions in which every part of the network behaved in network ways, resulting in what mannequin calls as more world.
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Claudio Fogu: That is in multi directional decentralized non hierarchical boundless and proliferating accessible expensive an interactive system of self organization.
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Claudio Fogu: This is what I call the fishing net matrix of the Mediterranean, imagine established by islanders who projected their mentality on to the construction of the multicultural trading space that forged and simultaneously responded to promptings from a maritime matrix of belonging.
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Claudio Fogu: This matrix operated outside the logic of rootedness in territory language, traditions and self sameness for it lived in the experience of risky but unfettered mobility.
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Claudio Fogu: Along get crisscrossing of south to north and west to east sea routes which connected over 1000 coastal colonies and city states around the entire perimeter of the Mediterranean, of the okay Mediterranean.
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Claudio Fogu: And, rather than fish this Mediterranean fishing net caught islands, large or small entangled I pray Mediterranean islands, played a vital role of activating tightening promoting the sea routes that traversed the fishing and.
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Claudio Fogu: My first contention, then, is that this fishing that Mediterranean had its own Mediterranean that is a middle ground where these dynamics found tightened expression.
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Claudio Fogu: This was the flood gran middle ground is more world centered on the coastal emporia of team, and they are police and the islands of PT cruiser pro cheetah and Capri.
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Claudio Fogu: Yet, as we well know, this fishing net Mediterranean was not to last beyond the third century BC it would be first weekend by the rivalry between Greek polly's in the metropole in the mainland Greece and finally replaced by the logic of Roman in Paris.
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Claudio Fogu: The territorial ization of the Mediterranean into their what the Roman.
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Claudio Fogu: scald Mary nostrum established the spider web metrics of a new Mediterranean imaginary born of the fact that not only all roads lead to Rome.
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Claudio Fogu: As the saying goes, but all Roman roads lead to the seaports and then extended into sea routes under the control of the Roman at.
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Claudio Fogu: This spider web matrix had, of course, it's symbolic centering wrong but RON had its own double in the island of Capri the residents of emperor's indifferent, and a middle ground and probably the closest then any provincial traveler ever came to the Center of the empire.
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Claudio Fogu: Capri in fact stood right in front of the two harbors potentially and museum that came to constitute the commercial and military centers of the Roman spider Web.
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Claudio Fogu: The actual fulcrum of Roman imperium turn out to reside there for in the same middle ground in which the fishing net metrics was born centuries earlier.
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Claudio Fogu: The flow grand fields and diamonds and this double exposure I argue had long lasting consequences in the history of Naples, in the middle in the Mediterranean, as well as the Mediterranean is three have eaten.
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Claudio Fogu: The first part of my tail ends, therefore, with showing the enduring oscillation between important and imperium fishing net and spider webs form of social, economic and cultural networking.
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Claudio Fogu: That mark the life of the Italian peninsula as a whole and of itself and islands, in particular from antiquity do it so called unification.
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Claudio Fogu: thereby making it part and parcel of a Mediterranean continent that will go unnamed was as real as those landmasses we define with that term.
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Claudio Fogu: And Meta geographical space of interactions where islands functions as capitals of integrated magic micro regions that will go without borders where it's real and integrated as any nation states.
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Claudio Fogu: Are.
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Claudio Fogu: For the communities of islanders and coastal dwellers that belong to them.
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Claudio Fogu: Just like the disintegration of the Mario nostrum in the fifth century.
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Claudio Fogu: Ad will continue to inspire political actors, like the Byzantine Ottoman and Spanish empires towards projects of limited or total Mediterranean imperium.
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Claudio Fogu: So the fishing net metrics continued it's fractal reproduction in the decentralized networks of the target maritime publix.
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Claudio Fogu: And in the Mediterranean projection of the Kingdom of Naples which inherited the contours of the ancient Magnum gracia as well as the double legacy of important and impair you.
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Claudio Fogu: A kingdom whose commercial economy and cultural syncretism was so marked by the ideal of belonging to the Mediterranean continent.
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Claudio Fogu: That he not only renamed itself kingdom of the to see series in 1821 thereby affirming its kind of aspiration to.
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Claudio Fogu: be an island Kingdom but, in the same year it approved the most ambitious engineering project of that century.
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Claudio Fogu: The deacon of a canal that would have connected that realistic and uranium and practically detach the peninsula part of the Kingdom from the landed body of Europe.
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Claudio Fogu: to reclaim its role as the middle ground of the Mediterranean content refusing therefore towards a play point and he'll to the encroaching image of the target booked.
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Claudio Fogu: By the first part of my story is therefore one that marks the Italian peninsula as belonging to the Mediterranean and instantiate its so called the south as the enduring middle ground of this liquid continent.
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Claudio Fogu: The second part, partially overlaps with the first one, because precisely at the moment when the Kingdom of Naples exerted its maximum Mediterranean projection.
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Claudio Fogu: In the century between the MID 18th century and the MID 19th century as Nelson more and many others have shown this Mediterranean middle ground was also constructed as Europe South in the age of the grand tour.
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Claudio Fogu: And this was no innocent Meta geographical contrast the golden age of Naples, in which the capital of the Kingdom gay full swing to it's important imaginary.
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Claudio Fogu: rising to the rank of third commercial fleet in the Mediterranean was there for also the aging, which the European gates of the Enlightenment.
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Claudio Fogu: identified the Italian south as a liminal space between Europe, Africa and Asia.
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Claudio Fogu: And this Lehman ality as post colonial theories like me novel and Jana have shown us was the mark of a new form of colonial ality that would soon coalescing what they call married unionism.
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Claudio Fogu: A paradigm that by the early 19th century in parallel with orientalism constructed, the Italian south as europe's internal other.
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Claudio Fogu: A backward and civilized primitive and finally savage land and people soon to become identified as a race.
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Claudio Fogu: That would have all been justified the way in which it was first conquered by Gary bodies thousand 1860.
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Claudio Fogu: Then delivered soon after to another King descending from the northern region of Piedmont, and finally treated by the newly born Italian state as the first African territory conquered by a European kingdom anticipating but a few years, the scramble for Africa.
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Claudio Fogu: From this Mediterranean perspective i'd reinterpret the so called Italian result you mental as the formation of the first European empire state.
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Claudio Fogu: and new form of imagined community based on the bio politics of territorial ization and expansion Italy, of course, was not made it all, as you said, in 1860.
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Claudio Fogu: Nor in 1866 nor in 1870 and so on and so forth, and the end of the making of Italians, which basically meant severing the south from its many to ring and belonging and turn in southerners into northerners.
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Claudio Fogu: I spent considerable time in the book detailing how the result, the main two and part three so judgmental culture, served to suppress sense any strands of connective cultural and imaginary tissue.
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Claudio Fogu: Between the peninsula and its maritime existence, but the fundamental point of my story is to show the role that the Mediterranean rapidly came to play in the making of Italians from the last decade of the 19th century, to the present.
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Claudio Fogu: This is the part of my story in which spider web and fishing net imaginary.
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Claudio Fogu: assume very significant socio cultural formations that go from the immigrant nation described by March way to our day to to set the surges theory of the Mediterranean brace or the way to marinate is my far.
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Claudio Fogu: The futurist and the noon CEOs human endeavor which I analyze is mutually reinforcing forms of important providing and not positive pole to the dominant forms of media to ring and imperium often found in the same protagonists.
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Claudio Fogu: From the notion of Latin nita propagandize by the racialized the rhetorics of the unknown seal.
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Claudio Fogu: To the accordion and pass scalia myth of the proletarian nation whose natural and rank for vital space of expansion was any Italian mother nostrum.
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Claudio Fogu: That would have also solve the southern question by creating a south to the south of the South, that is, the the invasion of Libya.
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Claudio Fogu: To, of course, the future is poetics of aggressive and perennial avant garde expansion all forms of modern is nationalisms, as immediate genteel a defined them which merged into the cauldron of what I call fascist modernism Mediterranean is, I apologize That was my first book.
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Claudio Fogu: While my book brings the story of the key role played by Mediterranean imaginary in the making of Italian this Italy and Italians, all the way to the present.
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Claudio Fogu: Then we can focus the last few minutes of the stock on my interpretation of fascism as a political form of Mediterranean ISM.
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Claudio Fogu: whereby this term, I mean not only the aspects of Mediterranean imperium but the ideological ratification of the oscillation between imperium and important that characterize the formation of the Mediterranean imaginary I look at in the preceding chapters.
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Claudio Fogu: Long before Mussolini said a single word about drawing and drawing inspiration from the noon says human endeavor in December.
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Claudio Fogu: He already pointed out to to the energy and time into of eternity that is its maritime expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean, through the ports of fuming then is there is there and corner and especially by.
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Claudio Fogu: As fascism principal foreign policy objective and, indeed, these oriental Mediterranean projection remain the most consistent inspiration, also for the actual foreign policy of the regime.
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Claudio Fogu: Over time, it involved a technique of relations between Libya, the Dominican is islands and their so called Africa oriental a and their military ization in view of a great show down with English.
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Claudio Fogu: Well into the 1930s was really nice work plan plans imagine the conflict with a single enemy, Great Britain and were aimed at blocking the five Straits of the Mediterranean, which now included, of course, also the Red Sea.
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Claudio Fogu: Gibraltar cecily Tunisia Dardanelles swears and Bob m&m in the Horn of Africa.
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Claudio Fogu: The myth of wrong was therefore built around the scaffolding of this imperium imaginary and he was the this ladder I argue that ended up playing a more determinant role in both ascendancy mass popularity and demise of fascists.
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Claudio Fogu: mussolini's projection of military imperium crumbled not only under the reality of World War Two and British military might in the Mediterranean, North Africa.
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Claudio Fogu: But, well before the beginning of the war in mussolini's fame faithful decision to build the largest fleet of submarine in the Mediterranean.
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Claudio Fogu: while refusing to build a single aircraft carrier because he saw argued, not only in public, but also with his generals italy's was itself a gigantic aircraft carrier jutted into the middle of the Mediterranean.
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Claudio Fogu: Except that when the British invention of the raider made the mighty submarine fleet in effective.
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Claudio Fogu: It was the imperium imaginary itself that blinded Mussolini, to the fact that the Italian warplanes did not have sufficient fuel capacity to reach to prosper, which was the linchpin of his word plants.
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Claudio Fogu: The imperium Paul of fascist Mediterranean ISM found further expression, of course, in the atrocious military pacification of Libya and the military occupation of Ethiopia.
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Claudio Fogu: As well as in the laborious racial discourse that attempted to consolidate surges theory of the Mediterranean grace, which had made Italians into its historical pinnacle and Nazi era aneurysm.
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Claudio Fogu: into an uneasy synthesis that Fabrizio they don't know has called the audio Mediterranean theory of race.
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Claudio Fogu: But my principal contention about fascist Mediterranean ISM is that it is not to be identified solely with the role that imperium metrics played.
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Claudio Fogu: In organizing the fascist imaginary and making it continuous as many cultural historians before me i've already highlighted, with the result you mental formation of the Italian empire state and the modernist nationalism that had coalesced around the invasion of Libya in 1912.
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Claudio Fogu: What characterizes fascist Mediterranean ISM is the continuity with the oscillation between spider web and fishing net forms of Mediterranean imaginary.
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Claudio Fogu: which were considered to have both the noon CNN futurist directorates and often found expression in the same cultural forms movements artifacts and protagonists.
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Claudio Fogu: typical of this isolation is the role that the Mediterranean came to play as imaginary inspiration to rescue modernist art and architecture from the accusation of Esther ophelia.
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Claudio Fogu: levied against it by the zealots of steel electorial since the early 1930s, the development of a Mediterranean theory and form of rationalist architecture.
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Claudio Fogu: by the likes of current on your rabbi in Florida standard if our store.
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Claudio Fogu: has been fruitfully analyzed and also rightly criticized for the rhetorics of Mediterranean enos which covered up the violent nature of colonial relations.
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Claudio Fogu: But the fact that the most powerful discourse on Mediterranean this had its fulcrum.
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Claudio Fogu: In the supposed to syncretism and fractal reproduction of a Mediterranean style architecture inspired by example found examples found in the colonies, rather than exported from the metropole.
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Claudio Fogu: speaks to the enduring legacy of a fishing net imaginary that I proposed found its best expression in the organization or whatever called here and elsewhere, the fascist state of exhibition.
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Claudio Fogu: fascist exhibition art was itself and not any of its styles, the maximum expression of fascist system ization of politics.
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Claudio Fogu: And the references to its Mediterranean origins bites protagonists are ubiquitous.
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Claudio Fogu: The Socratic aesthetics, of the most valuable etzioni in which sironi trampoline and Logan az collaborated side by side and.
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Claudio Fogu: For those who know fascist aesthetics know that they couldn't be more different personalities and.
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Claudio Fogu: kind of fellow fascist travelers but and fellow artists, then sironi bumbling along and easy collaborated side by side with 30 other artists was often referred to as having proven.
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Claudio Fogu: The Mediterranean imaginary sustaining the development of exhibition art as the true most powerful weapon to generate enthusiasts not near consensus for fascist accomplishments against the big.
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Claudio Fogu: idea of film playing that role to exhibition spaces gave full expression to the important part of fascist Mediterranean ISM.
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Claudio Fogu: Beyond the general reference of ever fascist exhibition art to the fishing net matrixx one, the fear of the live antibody was a purely commercial.
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Claudio Fogu: A nature of exhibition fair the other, the most military remark was organized the Naples in 1940 and they are the fulcrum of my chapter interpretation of fascism.
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Claudio Fogu: The former was finance and organized by local fascist elites in by 1930 and lasted until 1939 to be resumed in the post war era.
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Claudio Fogu: It consisted in an annual international fair, open to all sorts of commercial enterprises and exhibitors from all over the Mediterranean, but also central northern Europe.
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Claudio Fogu: at its height it attracted 49 national exhibits an annual average of 4500 exhibitors and almost a million visitors per year.
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Claudio Fogu: In this respect, the fear to deliver and take a full commercial expression to mussolini's policy of in orient domain.
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Claudio Fogu: But it also clearly pushed it at both symbolic and practical levels towards the realization of an important imaginary that the organizers consistently and consciously connected to more local conditions.
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Claudio Fogu: That is, to a southern solution to the southern question through the resurgence of Italy south as a Mediterranean middle ground.
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Claudio Fogu: chief among the means by which the organizers aimed at giving economic forum to the ancient important metrics under Fascism was their commitment to reconceptualize the very institution of the fair.
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Claudio Fogu: As a response to both the autarkic doctoring of the regime and the destruction of the human value of exchange by financial capitalism, these are quotes from their writings the destruction of the ladder.
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Claudio Fogu: That is the human value of exchange, they argued and made prices, no longer responsive to supply and demand in the market, but to trusts and cartels there by destroying the human factor for the benefit of stocks.
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Claudio Fogu: The fair in their estimation had instead succeeded because it had always aimed at reciprocity.
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Claudio Fogu: This is why organizers had not been concerned by years in which the balance between operations of exports and imports and the fair had been negative.
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Claudio Fogu: For them, the greatest success of the fear of the live and there was in having attracted not only the whole oriented Mediterranean.
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Claudio Fogu: But also exhibitors and national exhibitions from the US, Brazil and Argentina, that is from that you can d'italia of mostly southern emigrants that had been the most spectacular expression of the important imaginary in the past results mental error.
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Claudio Fogu: I see that my time is up, so I will leave my interpretation of the most of the territory remodel for your questions in case you're curious, but before I conclude, let me hint at the end of my story.
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Claudio Fogu: With the demise of fascism, the dream of Mario nostrum was surely put to rest once and for all.
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Claudio Fogu: But the imperium metrics and especially the oscillation between imperium and important forms of Mediterranean imaginary have continued to assert their preeminent force on the making of Italians up to the present.
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Claudio Fogu: I trace their role in the important politics of he and I and its first president and founder and recommit day.
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Claudio Fogu: And in the development of a Mediterranean this practice or K through the globalization of maybe need to lead and Oscar winning Mediterranean flicks like Mediterannean in pastino to cinema paradiso etc.
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Claudio Fogu: But I also point to the Transfiguration of Mary nostril into what I call money and your own.
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Claudio Fogu: a sea of threatening aliens connected to the so called refugee crisis, the dramatic disappearance of bodies in the Mediterranean, over the last 20 years.
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Claudio Fogu: That while reversing the imperium direction of control has maintained and expanded to the whole of Europe, the territorial ization of the Mediterranean by literally extending European military control to a few miles off the coast of North Africa.
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Claudio Fogu: This is also where my book comes full cycle, however, with the metropolitan said that have inspired the Mediterranean historians.
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Claudio Fogu: Multinational laugh yeah ordinary purcell among historians, but especially the Mediterranean thinkers pretty.
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Claudio Fogu: Much value of each chapter rida Ian chambers and the recently departed and lamented Franco cassano.
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Claudio Fogu: whose commitment to push not only Italy, but Europe itself towards the imaginary pole of important has inspired my decision to render explicit in my metaphors of the fishing net and the spider Web.
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Claudio Fogu: Neither of which derive from my evidence, but are the fruit of my own imaginary elaboration the participation of this book to the construction of a critical Mediterranean imaginary Thank you.
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Brian J Griffith: Okay Thank you so much, Claudia for that fascinating and really thought provoking presentation, full of really incredible ideas and theoretical framework that's in fact what I admire most about your scholarship I feel.
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Brian J Griffith: brave enough to admit here today with everyone that your scholarship always has these kind of large scale macro scale ideas and theoretical frameworks that are really useful for thinking your way through these these these difficult and complex topics.
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Brian J Griffith: i'd like i'd actually like to invite everyone who may have a question to indicate your desire to either have your question read aloud by me or to appear on screen.
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Brian J Griffith: With Claudia if you'd like to ask it yourself so use the chat dialog either way to indicate your desire to intervene, I thought, maybe I could.
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Brian J Griffith: in lieu of they're not being aligned just yet a queue for questions, perhaps Claudio.
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Brian J Griffith: I could ask you one or two questions just out of my own bag of interests, so maybe we'll start like I know that you um you mentioned when we first started that there was a story.
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Brian J Griffith: Behind the image that appears behind you and I thought I might invite invite you to expand upon that if you'd like.
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Claudio Fogu: Thank you very much fried I swear I didn't pay, but I just wanted to put this statutes, because I I love the way that they can capsule the kind of.
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Claudio Fogu: The imaginary do they talk about these are two statues that were recovered on the island of project.
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Claudio Fogu: By you know if the captain of the boat and then put on on a niche somewhere on m street, and you know most inhabitants in project I don't have any idea of what they stand for, but if you look at my okay.
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Claudio Fogu: No, the other one this one, I see i'm not very good with my hands so here, this is a kind of the frontal representation of a youth.
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Claudio Fogu: That has a face, that is whiter in the face, that is, that is darker but they're exactly the same features, this would be the kind of representation that we would say.
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Claudio Fogu: In the Mediterranean has unified China that's the kind of approach you know sort of prototype balls.
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Claudio Fogu: of light racialism in the Mediterranean, but actually in front, there is this other statue which now we know.
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Claudio Fogu: goes back to a normal, traditional story that we have no idea when it originated but it's being still being told.
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Claudio Fogu: And when I have collected these oral stories for ages, they are all stories goes like there was a beautiful project in woman who, when the Sarah sense.
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Claudio Fogu: imagery and i'm using the terms that are being used in the story invaded the island of proxy that she was chosen, of course, by the invaders as as as having to become a concubine of the past shot and that.
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Claudio Fogu: And she refused but allowed her son to play with the son of the pasha who had lost his mother and required to smile by playing with the project and son.
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Claudio Fogu: So the story is about the independence of project and women who actually is a tradition that is very strong on the island, the island is still known today for the fact that he had a maritime tradition that put actually women in charge of of the of the of the robot of the.
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Claudio Fogu: Of the family.
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Claudio Fogu: finances, but the important thing is that consistently, then the story goes that the Bourbons arrive at some point.
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Claudio Fogu: and try to recapture the island, the basha escapes and they make a mistake, they grab the son of the proxy Donna, leaving the son of the pasture the son of the passion of courses.
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Claudio Fogu: You know, is loved by this woman finally.
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Claudio Fogu: After a few years 200 miles from the island, I mean constantly this 200 high miles from the island.
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Claudio Fogu: The protein dense meet again with the pasture they exchange the two they receive as much gold from the exchange as anything and they come back and everybody's trying.
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Claudio Fogu: Now what is interesting is that a lot of notions change but there's always these 200 miles.
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Claudio Fogu: indicating this kind of projection way beyond anywhere fisherman the Community efficient men would go first and, secondly, the fact that Bourbons who are.
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Claudio Fogu: 18th century 19th century inhabitants and mockery of the 13th century completely.
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Claudio Fogu: at odds with each other, but they represent this sort of imaginary that embraces Arabs Turks.
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Claudio Fogu: And all of this space time continuum so to me it's a story that represents is kind of continuum of illusions of course of imaginary construction that, however, do have some sense in their construction and that's what I that's why I, like those images thanks for the question Brian.
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Brian J Griffith: yeah that's great thanks for that response so Martin brown here is in the chat dialog yes, the following, how do you interpret the Italian modernist architecture of as Nada.
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Claudio Fogu: wow Thank you Martin, in fact I don't because I focus almost exclusively on roads and and.
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Claudio Fogu: And three poly and I, you know I make amends for that, precisely because the number of books that have come out in the last.
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Claudio Fogu: few years and the interest in Asmara and also in architecture has made it very hard for me to comprehend everything.
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Claudio Fogu: But I I try to stay close to the kind of heroes of the story Florida Stan jodie foster who worked in both Libya and roads.
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Claudio Fogu: And rava so I i'd be very interested to see how my book now lands with the experts and whether they see that my categories might suggest a ways of interactive interacting more specific studies of media to read of architecture and the fascism.
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Brian J Griffith: A great next in line is Paul learner.
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Claudio Fogu: Well you'd like to ask her.
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Paul Lerner: hi Thank you Brian Claudio wow i'm i'm reeling because this is just such an ambitious and fascinating project, and I had glimpses of.
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Paul Lerner: This work at a much earlier stage and i'm really just kind of in awe of how the project is transformed in scope and chronological scope and intellectual scope so many congratulations now I haven't read the book yet at all so.
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Paul Lerner: i'm doing i'm really just posing a question here, based on my familiarity with your earlier work and what you presented here.
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Paul Lerner: i'm interested if you could discuss how your concept of the imaginary, which is the link between the two books.
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Paul Lerner: How that concept may have changed over over time if you're working with the same kind of theoretical construction here, or if that's evolved over time and, similarly, what this you know, forgive me if it's a bit of a generalist question, but what this perspective, how it.
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Paul Lerner: kind of changes the understanding of fascism that you put forward in your earlier in your earlier projects as being really kind of about certain minute I mean.
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Paul Lerner: there's it's very related On one level about certain manipulations of historical narrative and kind of symbolic Meta language but i'm wondering what you know how the kind of broader picture has or if it has evolved over over the time since you've been working on this book, thank you.
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Claudio Fogu: Well, thank you so much bolin high and it's a it's a special treat now to also find a dear colleague of mine in the first few years of my work poll.
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Claudio Fogu: asking that question because the first answer is, is it it's a tough one, and it has more to do with the fact that when I first use that word in my first book The word was current in.
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Claudio Fogu: In French and Italian scholarship where you don't need to explain ever what imaginary or is it just give it for granted and then.
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Claudio Fogu: What happens is that over this 1015 years more.
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Claudio Fogu: What I started looking is how books about the Managing audio and customer realities and of course iPad awry and so many other ways in which this word starts having.
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Claudio Fogu: A consultative and defining, but he never captured that kind of original sin of the Italian or the romance languages and that original sin, I actually attributed to the word best yeah to which is the best theory.
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Claudio Fogu: The medieval best theory that's where I think the Maginot do they kind of formulation of.
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Claudio Fogu: You know of animals that were half true and half and Aberrations of new characteristics, but they always had a referent in reality and so that they see audio could be just what you imagine this other world behind beyond to be.
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Claudio Fogu: And, in a way that has remained.
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Claudio Fogu: But it's more now than ever before the in the originally my historic imaginary was more about some structures that were rhetorical structures, if you remember the historic as a foundation of rhetorical codes.
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Claudio Fogu: Which signified presence in representation, but had that kind of sort of preordained now it's really the Transfiguration.
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Claudio Fogu: of forms of imaginary in which I recognize that my own fishing net and.
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Claudio Fogu: And spider web are part of that Transfiguration process and I guess in a certain sense, I need to really play.
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Claudio Fogu: You know plead guilty to the fact that there might be something that I am trying to articulate that it is partially a cultural area formed, maybe from Catholic.
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Claudio Fogu: rhetorics that points to the imaginary in the Mediterranean and that's the final answer to your question as almost interchangeable.
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Claudio Fogu: Mediterranean s and imaginary yes, are in a way, so intrinsically constructed that they if you think about the networking images.
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Claudio Fogu: The network in theory that marketing develops it's an his theory of imaginary in a certain sense, you can apply the same.
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Claudio Fogu: The many, too many the orientation, the Socratic the fractal that's precisely what imagine how imaginary works so it's not just the Mediterranean it's there is something very strong and I guess.
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Claudio Fogu: i'll leave you just with with that and because I think i'll stop there, but your second question was about instead you know what does this bring to our understanding of fascism, I think it's more about now the kind of legacy question.
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Claudio Fogu: than it was in the first in the first case I sort of launched out there, this kind of suggestions that the decade and the development of this historic.
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Claudio Fogu: unit of time during fascism, then transformed into fashion connected fascism to mass culture.
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Claudio Fogu: In general, to mass politics, and so we needed to understand fascism as internal to our system of reference, which could not just divide.
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Claudio Fogu: Things into dictatorships and democracies but that Fascism was a laboratory of extremely important.
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Claudio Fogu: processes that are took have a past war imagine or even at a large global scale, like the story imaginary was talking about.
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Claudio Fogu: This time i'm much more interested in kind of this legacy that predates fascism and really traverse it and tries to be to come concretely into a cultural form.
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Claudio Fogu: And continues, however, in an imaginary in in in Italy that can be.
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Claudio Fogu: should be more aware and so I end the book with the sentence that I think many have picked up it's a it's time to meditate around their eyes Europe that that's.
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Claudio Fogu: And that, of course, is my belief, for an important metrics to come back into an oscillation which I don't think can be eradicated, but that it is important to be kept alive and not.
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Claudio Fogu: constrained within even in fascism meathead its own important side.
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Brian J Griffith: Alright, thanks to Paul and Claudio for that there's questions and responses john Agnew has a question you rights quote.
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Brian J Griffith: I think your two models make considerable sense interpreting the whole Italian question is you define it.
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Brian J Griffith: I have a question about how, perhaps under fascism there wasn't an attempt failed in the end, to bring together the Mediterranean and European quote unquote continents.
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Brian J Griffith: Do you think that during fascism, there was an attempt to fuse the broader empire nation orientation to the Mediterranean with an ethnic, racial approach focused on the ERA dentist claims information and to the north, this is the focus of Roberto pattern gary's recent book.
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Claudio Fogu: It john i'm and i'm confronting this question and and recognize it and it's been posed to me, and I think the chapter on few may is the kind of key chapter for me that the connection I make between the inspiration of human.
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Claudio Fogu: We end the League of Human things I mean we just had a wonderful presentation by dominic.
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Claudio Fogu: On the book on her book on few men and in a way, and you know very much the other side, in which he looks at this imaginary construction is extremely formative, not just for the rituals of the regime for but for actually the foreign policy that then Mussolini.
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Claudio Fogu: There, so in that respect I think he sees he would see the Dalmatian more like part of this in largely nordion time into.
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Claudio Fogu: And that's the part that i'm that i'm thinking about john but i'm not sure about this, I mean this is very much, I think.
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Claudio Fogu: Phillip is also studied this questions from other points of view of a southern Europe as a conglomerate and it might have Phillip but mine hand who's here and so i'm thinking that there is a lot more that I can now look at Thank you so much for that it's a great indication.
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Brian J Griffith: Alright, so we have about five five or six minutes left so if anyone is still interested in asking a question, please do indicate your desire to do so in the chat dialog.
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Brian J Griffith: I do want to kind of indulge and other question if Claudia will allow me.
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Brian J Griffith: So you know where many of us here are telling us, and so we understand kind of some of the background contexts to your presentation and your book.
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Brian J Griffith: But there was one particular argument that you covered that I was aware of prior to the presentation, but that you, you mentioned it kind of in passing.
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Brian J Griffith: But I thought, maybe would be interesting to have you elaborate on, particularly for people who are meeting with us here today we don't have the kinds of sort of graphical background that you're assuming.
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Brian J Griffith: And that is the argument about Italian unification, as the first African territory conquered by a European power.
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Brian J Griffith: Now that's a really stop provoking, but I must admit, and I think you would as well, a rather provocative intention.
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Brian J Griffith: provocative argument and I thought, maybe you could expand upon that a little bit kind of providing some background context for what you mean by that, why is it is the Italian style.
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Brian J Griffith: being referred to as an African territory and then perhaps if if it's possible within a reasonable amount of time making a connection to mussolini's regime that's the inheritor of the making Italians project out of you know, the as we can you read the the southerners.
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Claudio Fogu: So um you know if this is the pleasure of living in California and having this wonderful audience that you know, had I.
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Claudio Fogu: Given this talk anywhere, you need to leave the first two questions would have been so.
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Claudio Fogu: How does your newborn born ik interpretation of the south fit with the recent scholarship Berber Berber Berber Berber i'm sorry i'm mocking, but I am I have to do it because.
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Claudio Fogu: By with this title of newborn bionic historians in Italy have excluded from conversations hundreds of scholars and they have box themselves into a kind of.
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Claudio Fogu: Minor result you mental criticism, without taking into serious consideration all of the evidence than many others around the world have brought.
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Claudio Fogu: To the interpretation of the research memento as the first imperial state formation.
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Claudio Fogu: In a in a netbook in which, after Benedict anderson's ends his analysis with the MID 19th century pushes into imperialism that.
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Claudio Fogu: sees the origin of the nation state, in the end of the 19th century, I see of the 18th century, I see the birth of the empire state.
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Claudio Fogu: into in the in the second half of the 19th century, and I think at least a perfect example of that it applies immediately the bio politics.
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Claudio Fogu: The southern question is is set immediately into motion from the very first day that that the envoy of of the King arrives and says, these are Bedouins there was the Bedouins.
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Claudio Fogu: There Africans, but it inherits everything that from the Monterey ski and 18th century has been lurking in the background, and then the africanisation is done by the pika.
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Claudio Fogu: pika laws that fight so called began tagil which today still we continue to call brigham tagil a civil war that actually produced over more dead.
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Claudio Fogu: than any of the resources mental fights well that began tagil is called this way, but he was treated with.
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Claudio Fogu: With the peasants having severed their heads and put on pipes at the entrance of villages, because that's the only language that savages understand.
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Claudio Fogu: This is the Piedmontese army in the south of Italy, now we know these things, but we treat them as sidekicks know this, the peak aloha served.
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Claudio Fogu: Every imperial nation that went into Africa with examples of how to tree savages.
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Claudio Fogu: that's where the codes of the of the Congolese of the armies of the Belgians started by inspiration from the peak a lot so i'm not making connections that are not also have very specific a story called ground, just like long browsers theories of the criminal.
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Claudio Fogu: Mind were adopted in the United States and ended up very, very with a trace that can be traced to the idea of the born criminal racists and and all the way to contemporary rationalization of crime.
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Claudio Fogu: So, in Italy, racial theory was designed first on southerners there's no doubt about that connection, and it was then exported to.
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Claudio Fogu: To the the identification of racist by color, but this was a second step that was much later after 1896 and after.
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Claudio Fogu: The Italian race theory needed to find a way to now read white Italians, because they had lost the war against the Ethiopians all my God at that point.
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Claudio Fogu: Italian seems to be remade into whites and the theory of the of the other Mediterranean race was developing that direction, but so that's very much my contention that it is there is a specific.
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Claudio Fogu: Bio politics of expansion of territorial ization that we need to do, called by their name.
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Claudio Fogu: And are very similar to the settler colonialism, that is, then, expanded everywhere else, the connection that you're asking me to fascism, is that I think fascism in so many ways.
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Claudio Fogu: inherits, however, a southern question that has already been symbolically solved by the invasion of Libya and by this new Mediterranean dream, so it doesn't, although it effectively deals with it by.
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Claudio Fogu: not talking about it and not allowing any talk about it, it also deals with it by shifting the discourse from South to Mediterranean now that's the the kind of playground, in which fascism will enact.
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Brian J Griffith: Indeed yeah, thank you for those replies and just and also to kind of highlight I think something that you said earlier in the presentation.
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Brian J Griffith: Not only shifting the southern miss from southern Italy, to the shores of North Africa, but also playing into the kind of Mediterranean expansionism which is of course a central component.
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Brian J Griffith: Of the argument of your book all right it's what we have time for just one last question, and it looks like it could be a short reply.
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Brian J Griffith: Because we want to be timely, so this is asked by Philip Menachem and it is, I would like to ask, Claudia how the tension between imperium and emporium have affected the Italian left.
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Claudio Fogu: Thank you, thank you Phillip This is very interesting because actually the.
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Claudio Fogu: The current and okay so left of course it's a big world and we all know, if we are in Italian politics but let's pretend that the Democratic Party of today is the inheritance of the left.
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Claudio Fogu: Incredibly, so and recollect that is the only scholar and a thinker in Italy that has given really deep thinking, I met with him in 2005 years old, and he was with me lunch in the Mediterranean studies program he was at the time, a young.
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Claudio Fogu: Non yet politician, he was a scholar, and he wrote this book Italia traveling Mediterannean Iraq so he's actually a somebody who comes from a more socialist background.
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Claudio Fogu: But certainly, I think that there is a there is an argument to make that a certain Christian Democratic Left, which was the Left that was.
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Claudio Fogu: Supporting my day and counted lucky era and this kind of original last test Graham shun copy cat communists sorry if i'm using all of this turn knowledge for others that might not be.
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Claudio Fogu: familiar with all this, but that's the Left that is more of an era la la and others were very much always concerned with the politics of Islam, long before Islam was anything of relevance.
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Claudio Fogu: In current discord and the relationship with the African, of all people Andreotti was a tremendous supporter of a kind of policy of with North Africa independence, even from NATO, so you found it strange because we are solid front, and that is not specifically left.
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Philip Minehan: See well, if I may, the the last sentence of your book that you quote to us tells me that possibly.
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Philip Minehan: there's a there is a version of of the the sort of tension between those two models that that is a part of you and your your your politics.
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Claudio Fogu: At something.
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Claudio Fogu: And that, in that sense that if i'm a if i'm the representative of that left I, yes, I am hoping to bring to translate the book in Italian and bring some some of the Italian you know makers and lead and others to read it, and maybe see that as an urgent project.
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Philip Minehan: But then, but then just to begin to try to clarify in my mind, is there a general matrix that includes these different differences that that the the Left and the Right and all sorts of political players within the modern Italy, they all have their versions of this.
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Claudio Fogu: I think what it is, is the thought of Franco cassano.
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Claudio Fogu: Southern thought it was translated in English into into southern southern thought and if I if I say buy a book by Franco cassano South southern thought before you ever think about by mine.
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Claudio Fogu: But that's because he expresses something that comes from different traditions and puts together a Center in common ground of.
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Claudio Fogu: Of discourses that I think were very influential in his region of full year and in a certain South leadership that you find in many cultural expressions today music, most of all.
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Claudio Fogu: And so I would say it's a cultural area of value of many in which the south recognizes itself much more in Mediterranean terms, then simply as South it begins to articulate that kind of thing so it's.
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Claudio Fogu: I would call it more than a left versus right it kind of southern contribution to the discussion.
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Philip Minehan: Okay, thanks, Claudia congratulations very exciting brilliant work.
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Claudio Fogu: Thank you, thank you so much.
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Brian J Griffith: Alright, so I think we're just about out of time for today's meeting I wanted to remind each of you, if you haven't had a chance to click on the link and if you're interested in purchasing purchasing the book at a 30% discount.
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Brian J Griffith: You can find that information in the chat dialogue which i've just paste it in there here is the books front cover you haven't seen it and.
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Brian J Griffith: I want to thank Dr Claudia food for your time, and for that thought provoking and really interesting presentation and for the book as well, which I think is something it's not going to live with a lot of us for the coming years, as we kind of chew on the ideas that you've given us.
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Brian J Griffith: To think about thanks for everyone, for attending and don't forget on June 2 we have the last of the book talks with Dr Edward westerman so thank you very much.
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Claudio Fogu: Before you go by and let me say.
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Claudio Fogu: hello to some some friends Catherine king, especially evaluate their partner Michaela Philip and john of course sing you among your and i'm very appreciative of your being here, thank you.
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Claudio Fogu: and
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Brian J Griffith: Your day to day.
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Claudio Fogu: bye bye.