Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
This article focuses on Enrico Brizzi’s L’inattesa piega degli eventi [The Unexpected Turn of Events, 2008], La nostra guerra [Our War, 2009], and Lorenzo Pellegrini e le donne [Lorenzo Pellegrini and the Women, 2012], a trilogy of alternative history novels that imagines what would have happened to the Italian empire if Italy had not allied with Germany during the Second World War. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on contemporaneity (2009), I analyze how this trilogy represents Fascism and its colonial legacy in relation to the history of politics and soccer in Italy. I also compare Brizzi’s trilogy to Mario Farneti’s alternative history novels—Occidente [Occident, 2001], Attacco all’Occidente [Attack on the Occident, 2005], and Nuovo impero di Occidente [New Empire of the Occident, 2006]—which propose a celebratory rather than mocking depiction of Fascism and its imperialist agenda. This reading is useful to understand Brizzi’s interpretation of the Italian political history after WWII and his attempt to decolonize the Italian imagination by using science fiction, a literary genre that was important for the promotion of the Italian colonial enterprise. The article also argues that Brizzi’s and Farneti’s different visions of Italy’s alternative past embody what John Foot has termed “Italy’s divided memory” and its constitutive ambivalence regarding the legacy of Fascism (2009).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Brioni, Simone Dr., "Fantahistorical vs. Fantafascist Epic: “Contemporary” Alternative Italian Colonial Histories" (2015). Department of English Faculty Publications. 14.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/eng-articles/14
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Italian Literature Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons