Amnis (Sep 2006)
Prise en otage des victimes et usages publics de l’histoire : le cas de la Résistance italienne
Abstract
For some time, antifascism in general and the period of the Italian Resistance in particular have been at the centre of an intense debate that is historiographical as well as political. Certain currents aim to question the foundations of the antifascist engagement in the 1940s in terms of, on one hand, the identity and political recognition that antifascism acquired in the post-war Italian governments, and on the other, a more general analysis which amounts to the rapport maintained by “organised” antifascism with the Soviet Union. As recently stated by Pier Giorgio Zunino, not without annoyance, “antifascism… here is the infamy of Italian history”. The refusal of antifascism is thus done in the name of anticommunism (Silvio Berlusconi’s numerous public declarations cast light on the contingent political terrain). The implicit bias of this position, already underlined by Norberto Bobbio, is that it puts fascism and antifascism on an equal footing. The contemporary reading of the war of resistance, analysed in terms of and in the name of the violence that it engendered, reinforces discourse on this supposed equivalence. In short, in the name of a presumed indistinctness of the victims – all sacrificed on the altar of deadly ideologies (fascist ideology as much as communist ideology) – current analyses of the Italian resistance evade fundamental problems linked to the role of violence in history. They thereby lead to an impasse on the implications of engagement in either of the opposing camps, in terms not just of imaginary sociopolitics, but also of ethics, objectives, and worldview. But more seriously still, such analyses take hostage all the deaths of the civil war and finish by accrediting a discourse that is in denial of their status as victims. Through an analysis of public use of the experience of the Italian Resistance, this contribution aims to return to the place, role and function currently attributed to the notion of victim in the history of the wars of the 20th century.
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