The Risorgimento is but one example of the resurrectional tropes that have shaped Italian modernity. Images of re-naissance and resurgence are deeply rooted in Italian national narrative. Italy is the birthplace of a series of re-births of a wider European relevance, including the Renaissance. The perennial affirming of a forever resurgent Italy has for centuries emphasized a historical continuity which embodied the paradox of building anew what is supposed to exist inherently. Italy ‘seems born to bring dead things alive’, as Niccolò Machiavelli wrote.
This has remained so up until the present. Italian schools still present children with a rollercoaster historical narrative that starts with Roman antiquity and swings through phases of decadence and resurgence. Where does this obsession with resurrection come from? In what ways has the Risorgimento shaped images of nation, identity and memory, retrospectively or prospectively, in modern Italian history?
The case-specific Italian debate will serve to identify more general, European patterns in the discursive/symbolic invocation and the utilization of the past in political interpretations of the present and elaborations of future, alternative visions and projects.
