Friday, April 15, 2016
Assembly C (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
“Mussolini’s Winescapes” will examine the parallels between the physical environment and identity-construction in Fascist Italy via the analytical lens of viti-viniculture (table and wine grape production). In seeking to develop an encouraging socio-environmental context for the appearance of the “Fascist man” (l’uomo fascista), Mussolini’s dictatorship pursued a policy of “integral reclamation” (bonifica integrale) which combined agricultural (or environmental), cultural (or ethnic), and human (or physical health) reclamation campaigns during the 1930s. Viti-viniculture, unlike any other interwar industry or resource, witnessed regime-sponsored programs and activities which spanned all three of the above-mentioned initiatives. This presentation, therefore, will focus on the establishment of Italy’s “typical wines” (vini tipici) during the early 1930s and the parallels this program of agricultural protectionism shared with the dictatorship’s broader bonifica objectives. In particular, I will analyze the ways in which the emergence of what I am calling Fascist Italy’s “winescapes,” which occurred regionally, contributed to the regime’s objective of developing a feeling of collective belonging in Italy using the peninsula’s varying regional heritages. I will explore the ways in which Il Duce’s regime hoped to display Italy’s enological and regional folkways as a singular patrimony, shared equally by all Italians. By “visiting their country”[1] at grape- and wine-themed popular festivals and exhibitions, domestic consumers, regime officials hoped, would come to recognize themselves as Italians.
[1] D. Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 208.
