Death of the Father

An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority

John Borneman

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781571813893
• eBook ISBN: 9780857457158
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: Social Sciences

The death of authority figures like fathers or leaders can be experienced as either liberation or loss. In the twentieth century, the authority of the father and of the leader became closely intertwined; constraints and affective attachments intensified in ways that had major effects on the organization of regimes of authority. This comparative volume examines the resulting crisis in symbolic identification, the national traumas that had crystallized around four state political forms: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and East European Communism. The defeat of Imperial and Fascist regimes in 1945 and the implosion of Communist regimes in 1989 were critical moments of rupture, of "death of the father." What was the experience of their ends, and what is the reconstruction of those ends in memory?

This volume represents is the beginning of a comparative social anthropology of caesurae: the end of traumatic political regimes, of their symbolic forms, political consequences, and probable futures.

CHAPTER 1

From Future to Past:
A Duce’s Trajectory

Maria Pia Di Bella

At the dawn of the twentieth century, groups of dashing young European men propelled themselves to the front of the political scene to play a role that would have been beyond their reach if genealogical rules had to be followed. Thus an era of effervescence started, breaking normative ties that seemed to be everlasting. Nowhere was this breach brought about in a more fruitful way and in more spheres of the intellectual, political, and artistic life than in Austria. Names such as Sigmund Freud, Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, and so forth, only point to the richness of the period in that country. But it was also in Austria, in 1914, that its emperor, Franz Joseph, whose long reign went from 1848 to 1916, declared war on Serbia, after the assassination of the emperor’s nephew (28 June), the archduke Frantz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo (Bosnia). For the old emperor understood that the two bodies of the Habsburg’s monarch (Kantorowicz 1957) were now permanently torn apart and that the Habsburg’s rule would probably end with him. The Great War he decided upon has also to be seen as a loud utterance of grief for his dying dynasty, a grief that took the lives of millions of young men. In this period of convulsions—before democracy was finally accepted as the best way to govern—men eager to establish new hereditary lines but with no pedigree came along, boasting that they would be their country’s saviors. After Lenin, but before Hitler, Benito Mussolini was one of them.

One of the most striking differences between the patriarchal monarchs who ruled Europe from the early modern period on and the dictators of the twentieth century, is the role ascribed to the ruler’s image. Sovereigns—if we follow Jean Bodin’s model (1986: iv:157–159)—were advised not to “communicate” directly with their subjects but only with their “intimates” who served them to relay their messages to the public. Thus, the sovereigns had to speak “little” to the crowd and to show themselves “rarely” to it. They had to follow the example of God, who revealed his word only via his messengers and his power only through the effects of his creation. The illegitimate successors of our century, on the contrary, had to build their legitimacy on their own image. The creation of their image—which combined visual and vocal skills—was the epicenter of their politics. Hence, they legitimized their accession to power through the use of images and symbols of their own bodies (Freedberg 1989; Gruzinski 1990). The representation of the created images was conferred to partisan artists. Later, it was spontaneously used on a larger scale by artists and citizens alike, as an icon embodying their personal and political aspirations. The dictators’ image policy did indeed enjoy success. But they forgot Jean Bodin’s warning: too much “communication” exposes the kings to the risk of ridicule, disrespect, and disobedience.

Here, we will highlight the way Mussolini wanted to present himself to the Italians in order to fulfill the role of a leader; we will present the multiple models and often contradictory strategies that he used for this purpose (Milza and Berstein 1980; Palla 1994). While doing so, we will keep in mind that Mussolini knew all along that he was usurping a function that he could assume only because he had created a combative party strong enough to uphold him and to mobilize people around him (Paris 1968). At the same time, his access to power was made possible thanks to King Vittorio Emanuele III, who, by accepting him as prime minister, granted him legitimacy (Valeri 1962). This old paternal figure maintained his privilege of representing the Italian state and nation, not allowing Mussolini to exercise this function exclusively by himself.

Mussolini therefore created new, imaginative ways to seduce his countrymen (Lepre 1995). When his power to do so ceased, in the face of the grim reality of World War II, he was executed by the Italian resistance. Nevertheless, the interest in Mussolini’s personage was passed on from one generation to the next, part of a permanent effort to solve the riddle of the Duce’s illegitimate presence in Italy’s past (De Felice 1995).

The Futurist Model

The genealogical rules that were followed in the Occidental world incorporated the idea of a “trinity” of fathers. As we know, this idea was successful enough to remain valid until the Great War. Its success in German society—exemplified in Joseph Roth’s magnificent novel The Radetzky March—persisted during the Nazi period, though the nexus between the great-grandfather and the grandfather, which represents the religious and the political spheres, was torn apart. The idea of a “trinity” of fathers, so important in the foundation mythology of the Roman Empire,¹ seems to fade completely also from the Italian horizon before the Great War, as angry young men, such as Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Luigi Russolo, followed by Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Fortunato Depero (Belli 1996), and Enrico Prampolini, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), proclaimed their movement, Futurism, with the ambition of totally disregarding the past.

More should be said about this artistic movement since many ideas, developed at an early stage by Marinetti and his friends, were integrated later on by Mussolini in the construction of his own image. These ideas appeared first in the Futurism manifesto, written by Marinetti and published on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro (20 February 1909; see also Marinetti 1983). The manifesto starts by saying that Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are behind us, that scent alone is enough for wild beasts, and that we should break out of the horrible shell of wisdom altogether. Eleven intentions follow a brief introduction:

1. We intend to sing the love of danger;

2. Courage, boldness and rebellion will be essential elements of our poetry;

3. We intend to exalt aggressive action, feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the somersault, the punch and the slap;

4. We affirm that the world’s splendour has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed, for a racing car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace;

5. We will hymn the man at the wheel;

6. The poet must spend himself with ardour, splendour and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervour of the primordial elements;

7. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty;

8. We stand on the last promontory at the end of centuries! Why should we look back? Time and space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed;

9. We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the anarchists’ destructive gesture, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and the contempt for women;

10. We will destroy the museums, libraries, will fight moralism, feminism, and every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice;

11. We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by revolt; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railways that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories; bridges; steamers; locomotives; planes. (Hulten 1986: 514–516)

After this list of self-asserted commandments, the Futurists explain the objective of their movement: freeing Italy from its foul gangrene of professors, archeologists, guides, and antiquarians, and from the museums that cover the country like so many graveyards. To do so, their country’s most potent forces should not be wasted in the futile worship of the past. Libraries should therefore be set on fire. Museums should be flooded with water where glorious old canvases would bob adrift. “The oldest of us, they said, is thirty years old; we have at least a decade to finish our work. When we are forty, they added, other younger and stronger men should throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts” (Hulten 1986: 515).

The Futurists concluded their manifesto by reiterating that “our fine, deceitful intelligence tells us that we are the sum and continuation of our ancestors.” To which they replied: “Perhaps! Let it be so! Who cares? We don’t want to hear it! Let nobody say those infamous words to us again! Lift up your heads! Erect on the summit of the world, again we hurl our challenge to the stars!” (Hulten 1986: 516).

From 1909, the date of the manifesto of the political Futurist Party, to 1918, Marinetti and his friends were busy on all fronts, artistic and political, publishing and republishing, in different languages, their numerous manifestos. Marinetti went to Libya as a journalist, to describe the hostilities between Italians and the Ottoman Empire, participated with his sympathizers in many demonstrations in favor of Italy’s entrance into the war, on the French and British side, and, in February 1915, was arrested in Rome, along with Mussolini. Finally, he went to war in July of the same year.

In December 1918, about twenty organizations, called Political Futurist Fascists (Fasci politici futuristi) were founded. On 23 March 1919, Mussolini laid the foundation of the Italian Fighting Fascists (Fasci Italiani di combattimento), in which Marinetti participated (Milza 1999: 237–238). Though Marinetti underlined (in a collection of articles published as a book in 1924, under the title Futurismo e Fascismo), the predominant role of the Futurists in the fascist movement, he and his sympathizers decided nonetheless to quit the “Fasces of combat” (29 May 1920), for they disapproved of Mussolini’s appealing to the “fastidious remembrance of the old romanity” instead of the “greatness of Italy, [a] hundred times bigger” (Marinetti 1924: 243), his acceptance of the monarchy, and his desire to deal with the clergy. They wanted an Italian empire that would be “antisocialist, anticlerical, antitraditional, with all liberties and all progresses integrated in an absolute patriotism” (ibid.: 244). From that period on, Marinetti and his followers had no real political importance and he drifted apart from Mussolini. Yet they retained a certain mutual admiration for each other, and in March 1929 Marinetti was even nominated to be a member of the Italian Academy. Moreover, Mussolini never sanctioned Marinetti for his “negative” initiatives. For example, being intensely anti-German, in 1938 Marinetti openly opposed the racial laws and the formation of the Berlin-Rome Axis (De Felice 1988). In 1943, when Mussolini was deposed, Marinetti frequently visited him, either at the Villa Feltrinelli at Gargnano on Lake Garda, or elsewhere, and he supported unreservedly the “Social Republic of Salò” until his death, on 2 December 1944, in Bellagio (Lemaire 1995: 11–33).

Mussolini’s Use of Futurism

We find in Futurism four main ideas that Fascism appropriated, and these four ideas are clearly interdependent: the first and main idea is the complete rejection of tradition, the positing of a radical tabula rasa of the past, done in an iconoclastic way, by denying all heritage of the past. Since the past is eradicated, the present, and especially the future, find their place in their Weltanschauung: the Futurists sing the praises of all exterior signs of modernity and modernism, thus creating a cult of youth and machines. The “beauty of speed,” along with the love of danger, temerity, audacity, and rebellion, are the new attitudes young men should have. These attitudes find their natural outcome in a hymn to war: war to the excess is their credo, a war that would always allow them to pursue the recommended conduct (Lemaire 1995: 30–32).

Did Mussolini stage these Futurist ideas in his lifestyle, ideas that he seemed to share totally, at least until the end of the 1920s? According to Margherita Sarfatti,² who remains for contemporary historians one of the most reliable sources on Mussolini’s life, though until 1934 she was one of his official biographers and a fervent admirer, Mussolini frequently said, when he was questioned on his past: “You know, I never remember anything, the past does not interest me—does not exist for me—only the future exists” (Sarfatti, 1926: 15). Mussolini also claimed, as reported by Sarfatti: “The past is a point of transition of an unlimited line called progress. To pause on it means to regress; on the contrary, we have to proceed, to improve, to elevate ourselves, always, always more” (ibid.: 11). Sarfatti herself comments: “Mussolini lives so rapidly, that in the present he already anticipates the future with full evidence, what is more, he thinks he is already there. The events that are to come do exist, but when they happen, they do not interest him any more” (ibid.: 192). Margherita’s echoing admirative cheers must have certainly reproduced, in her many readers, the exact image Mussolini wanted to propagate.

It is important to emphasize that for the Futurists, the cult of youth and machines replaced the abolished cult of the past (Bidussa 1994). How did Mussolini handle this imperative? After all, he was born in 1883. At the time of the Black Shirts’ (camicie nere) March on Rome, on 28 October 1922, Mussolini was already thirty-nine years old. Since he was supposed to be on the brink of being “thrown in the wastebasket like a useless manuscript,” according to the Futurist manifesto, he decided to give the Italians a young, athletic, courageous image of himself. Mussolini “is never tired,” he used to reply if anyone ever dared to suggest he might be.³ Mussolini hated and dreaded the idea of old age: in fact, he never wished journalists to be precise about his real age, nor did he ever give birthday parties. On the contrary, he used to exhibit himself for photographs in different plastic attitudes to underline his ever-fresh vitality. From 1929 on, he used to gather journalists at Villa Torlonia to show them his athletic, youthful shape (Cervi 1992: 147).

Mussolini’s past as a bersagliere during World War I was always emphasized to Italians.⁴ Until 1938, when visiting his old regiment, he used to run in the typical bersagliere way. From his army past, he also kept a liking for uniforms, which he wore on different occasions, and a sharp desire for military command and strategy. Though mechanical weapons and mechanical sports always attracted him, he was also fond of horse riding and fencing; in fact, he fought many duels before coming to power. His passion for guns and canons was well known, as was his penchant for rapid sports cars—he drove fast in a red Alfa Romeo—for planes that he used to pilot himself, and for motorcycles; he was, he believed, Italy’s first “centaur.” He also loved to be seen swimming, strolling on the beach, skiing, playing tennis, and, most of all, playing soccer, thus encouraging what was already a very popular sport in Italy (Cervi 1992: 144).

Mussolini also had very specific ideas about the image pictures should convey of himself; for this reason he used to examine all of them attentively, granting or refusing permission to print them (Malvano 1996). As stated previously, he privileged the young, athletic, courageous images of himself. But he also wanted his capacity as a ruler to be portrayed distinctly, either in his facial expressions—recall his compelling eyes and his determined jaw—or in his bodily bearing. He stressed his domineering capacities over Italians by symbolically always raising himself above them, on a podium, on a balcony, or, if these were not available, on a horse (Cervi 1992: 66).

Mussolini as Genitor

While many of the features that Mussolini integrated into his public image were clearly compatible with his Futurist background, there is a striking difference between Futurism and Fascism and between the two men who represented them, Marinetti and Mussolini. This main difference is important since it touches on the topic of paternity. In his 1909 manifesto, Marinetti says clearly that he wants to “glorify the contempt of women” and “demolish feminism.” He writes a special manifesto that he publishes again in 1924 (204–206): “Against Feminine Luxury.” But his attitude toward women is clearly revealed in his novel, Mafarka le futuriste, roman africain (1910), in which he pictures Mafarka as a sanguinary warrior capable of begetting an immortal son, Gazurmah, all by himself, regardless of all biological laws. Women, as residues of the past, are—in this Futurist scenario—totally eliminated by this (impossible) desire of male parthenogenesis.

Not so with Mussolini. Though we do not have any novel or theatre play of his, we know, thanks to Margherita Sarfatti, that he imagined many plots in 1919, whose topics we can now compare to Marinetti’s Mafarka. La lampada senza luce (The lamp without light) is the story of a father who does not wish to have a child from his wife since he already has one from a secret union and knows he is in weak health. But the maternal instinct of the woman is stronger, and finally she begets a blind female baby, who gives rise, among them, to bitter accusations and remorses while they suffer in the dark (Sarfatti 1926: 232). Si comincia, signori! (Let us start, gentlemen!) is a drama of jealousy and perhaps of incestous love, says Sarfatti. It is the story of an old street player who is attracted sexually to the young girl who accompanies him on his tours. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Theorizing Regime Ends by John Borneman
• Chapter 1. From Future to Past: A Duce's Trajectory
• Chapter 2. Gottvater, Landesvater, Familienvater: Identification and Authority in Germany
• Chapter 3. Two Deaths of Hirohito in Japan
• Chapter 4. The Undead: Nicolae Ceauşescu and Paternalist Politics in Romanian Society and Culture
• Chapter 5. The Peaceful Death of Tito and the Violent End of Yugoslavia
• Chapter 6. Doubtful Dead Fathers and Musical Corpses: What to do with the Dead Stalin, Lenin, and Tsar Nicholas?
• Notes on Contributors to the Death of the Father Project
• Index