When Anti-fascism defeated anti-fascism. Interpretations of the Resistance in the Italian anti-fascist high culture, 1955-1965

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze how, between the late fifties and early sixties, a certain reading of the Resistance became hegemonic: an Antifascist reading, with an initial capital letter. The essence of the argument can be summarized as follows: in the fifties the conservative antifascist high culture deals very little with the Resistance, both because it believes that historical research needs some distance from its object and, above all, lest the memory of those years legitimize the Communist Party. The memories of the liberation struggle, therefore, end up being almost exclusively nurtured by the progressive antifascists: communists, socialists and «azionisti». When, after the end of the fifties, because of the mutation of the domestic political balance, the Resistance acquires a new centrality not only for the public opinion but also for the governing parties and political institutions, the conservative high culture pays the price of its silence and lack of interest, and the progressives reap the benefits of more than a decade of intellectual and organizational work.