{"title":"Seeking <i>normalità</i> in Alberto Moravia’s <i>Il conformista</i>: Towards an Italian history of the homosexual fascist in postwar memory","authors":"Katherine Lempres","doi":"10.1177/00145858231199439","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the figure of the homosexual fascist, the ‘homo-fascist,’ in postwar cultural memory through the lens of Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel Il conformista ( The Conformist). Il conformista exemplifies the place of the homo-fascist narrative in crafting postwar cultural discourses around fascism, especially in the Italian case. Beginning from a close reading of the text combined with analysis of its historical context, the article deconstructs the narrative's interpretive logic to identify the many politically convenient fictions the homo-fascist offered within the growing project of postwar memory. These fictions, as embodied in the homo-fascist, facilitated the dual condemnation and excusal of fascism as the pathological weakness of the separate few, not the collective many. This analysis illuminates the often-overlooked historical role that narratives of homosexuality have played in the fluid construction of cultural, political, and social memories of fascism and its adherents. Viewing Il conformista within a specifically Italian vein of the narrative distinct from the German, moreover, critically reorients the text within Italy's individual and politically potent relationship to its Fascist past. Understanding the homo-fascist through Il conformista, therefore, enlightens not only the history of the homo-fascist figure, but also the histories of modern Italy, postwar memory culture, and sexual politics.","PeriodicalId":12355,"journal":{"name":"Forum Italicum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Forum Italicum","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231199439","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article analyzes the figure of the homosexual fascist, the ‘homo-fascist,’ in postwar cultural memory through the lens of Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel Il conformista ( The Conformist). Il conformista exemplifies the place of the homo-fascist narrative in crafting postwar cultural discourses around fascism, especially in the Italian case. Beginning from a close reading of the text combined with analysis of its historical context, the article deconstructs the narrative's interpretive logic to identify the many politically convenient fictions the homo-fascist offered within the growing project of postwar memory. These fictions, as embodied in the homo-fascist, facilitated the dual condemnation and excusal of fascism as the pathological weakness of the separate few, not the collective many. This analysis illuminates the often-overlooked historical role that narratives of homosexuality have played in the fluid construction of cultural, political, and social memories of fascism and its adherents. Viewing Il conformista within a specifically Italian vein of the narrative distinct from the German, moreover, critically reorients the text within Italy's individual and politically potent relationship to its Fascist past. Understanding the homo-fascist through Il conformista, therefore, enlightens not only the history of the homo-fascist figure, but also the histories of modern Italy, postwar memory culture, and sexual politics.