Marzia Maccaferri | Queen Mary, University of London (original) (raw)

Special Issue by Marzia Maccaferri

Modern Italy, 2022

n March 2018, Italian voters sent a shockwave through the European Union. One in two Italians vot... more n March 2018, Italian voters sent a shockwave through the European Union. One in two Italians voted for parties ranging from the anti-establishment Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), which accrued the most votes in the election, to the neo-fascist Fratelli d'Italia (FdI). A small number of votes went still further right, to the openly fascist groups CasaPound and Forza Nuova. For the first time since the 1990s, the far-right Lega surpassed Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia in their (allegedly) ‘moderate’ centre-right alliance. Nor was this political trend confined to Italy. Protest and anti-system voting throughout traditional Western democracies, and especially in Europe, is actually a much more complex phenomenon that has exposed a new homogeneous and anti-establishment electorate. EU-led austerity measures, along with the refugee emergency, clearly played a role in the concerns of many Italians and Europeans in general, and trust in EU institutions dropped dramatically (Baldini and Giglioli Reference Baldini and Giglioli2020). The new cabinet that resulted from this election was pitched by international media as the first quintessential populist government in a European country with a well-established democratic tradition. The new Italian leadership embarked on a xenophobic mission, mounting an extremist agenda while claiming to follow the ‘will of the people’ and represent ‘millions of unemployed people’ (Maglione Reference Maglione2021).

Was Italy (again) becoming a global source of inspiration for xenophobic right-wing extremists? Or, echoing Marco Tarchi's razor-sharp definition, was Italy displaying the latest chapter in its role as the ‘promised land of populism’ (Reference Tarchi2015)? Were these ‘forces’ new in Italian (and global) history? Where do anti-system and anti-establishment movements come from? Is populism a sort of epistemic no-man's-land, caught between analytical consideration and normative judgements (Tarragoni, Reference Tarragoni2021) or, on the contrary, do we need to go back to socio-historical and politico-cultural analysis to avoid handling populism and neo-fascism ‘intuitively’?

This was the political context when, in November 2019, we organised the ASMI Annual Conference at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in London entitled ‘Italy: promised land of populism?’, on which this journal issue is based, and these were some of the research questions we posed to conference participants. The essays collected in this special issue stem from a number of the papers presented in London, and thus should not be considered to represent the current state of research on the topic in Italian history and theory, politics and studies on populism, or in Italian studies.

Within the framework of utilising the theme of foreign policy and international relations as a pr... more Within the framework of utilising the theme of foreign policy and international relations as a prism by means of which to read British intellectual discourse, this article will analyse the intellectual debate - understood here in the sense of cultural actors engaged in public and/or political debates developed in journals or newspapers - on the British international position during the 1980s. On the one hand, it addresses how the long-standing themes of decline and unilateralism had been revived and developed facing the challenges posed by the «second Cold War». On the other, it focuses on the discourse raised by Leftist intellectuals. Here the emphasis is on the journal «Marxism Today» and themes like the nature of Thatcherism and the Falklands factor, and their impact on the renewal of the Left. By concentrating on the link between foreign policy and intellectual discourse the article illustrates how the new generation of British intellectuals was able to redefine its public role within a new national discourse.

Chapters by Marzia Maccaferri

Europe and the East Historical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989, 2023

Paraphrasing the title of one of the latest works by Stuart Hall (The West and the Rest: Discours... more Paraphrasing the title of one of the latest works by Stuart Hall (The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power, 1992), this chapter will question the role played by the ‘rediscovery’ of Eastern Europe’ elaborated by British Left-wing intellectuals during the final years of the Cold War. Although the idea of Eastern Europe and the East-West opposition predates the Cold War, the powerful image condensed in the ‘iron curtain’ image geo-culturally marked a political bisection as well as an ideological dichotomy which separated what used to be backwardness vs. civilisation and which, after the Second World War, became autocracy vs. democracy and socialism vs. capitalism. In the 1980s, the idea of Central and Eastern Europe was rediscovered by intellectuals in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as a cultural and identitary answer to the re-emergence of the second Cold War and soon imported to Western Europe through the Left-wing and Marxist intellectuals’ network. Within this process, the re-semioticisation of the idea of Europe as a geo-cultural unity went along with the re-thinking of Western post-Fordist socialism, and the binary oppositions between Eastern and Western Europe were invested (again) with cultural rather than ideological significance and presumption of precedence and hierarchy. Against this background, I will consider the case of the British Left-wing intellectuals, focusing on the discourse developed in the journal Marxism Today and following the path of two of its most influential intellectuals: the journal’s editor Stuart Hall and the historian Eric Hobsbawm.

2 giugno. Nascita, storia e memorie della Repubblica 4 L’Italia del 1946 vista dall’Europa, a cura di Patrizia Dogliani e Valeria Galimi. Viella , 2020

In diplomatic and historical contexts, appeasement refers to the foreign policy of Britain and Fr... more In diplomatic and historical contexts, appeasement refers to the foreign policy of Britain and France toward Nazi Germany during the late 1930s, which culminated in the Munich Pact (September 30, 1938), and is understood as making political or material concessions to avoid war by satisfying the demands brandished by an aggressive Adolf Hitler. This entry will first examine the roots and rise of appeasement and will then go on to detail the political, diplomatic, and scholarly reactions to the policy and its influence on foreign policy decisions up to the present.

Articles by Marzia Maccaferri

Politics, 2022

This article analyses the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving United King... more This article analyses the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving United Kingdom (UK) Eurosceptic discourse in the context of the UK's departure from the European Union (EU). It applies a mixed-method approach of content analysis and critical discourse analysis of newspaper reporting of the EU's handling of the pandemic vis-à-vis the UK during the first lockdown and the rollout of the vaccination programme. During the first lockdown, UK newspapers opted for muted politicisation and polarisation-they downplayed the success of strategies within the EU Member States, but attacked the EU. While during the vaccination rollout they shifted to vocal politicisation and vaccine nationalism which praised the UK, heavily criticised the EU and claimed the EU's Member States suffered as a result of EU incompetence. Against this backdrop the COVID-19 pandemic has put into motion a self-reinforcing discursive shift in which the UK's ability to go it alone not only justifies Brexit, but serves to prove that it will be a success.

Journal of Political Ideologies, 2022

This article addresses a significant gap in the literature on the Lega (Nord) by examining the re... more This article addresses a significant gap in the literature on the Lega (Nord) by examining the resemiotisation of the party's early discourse of 'performative anti-fascism' under Umberto Bossi into the current 'post-fascist' discursive strategy of Matteo Salvini's Lega.

European History Quarterly, 2022

This article reconstructs the encounter between environmentalism and the intellectual discourse o... more This article reconstructs the encounter between environmentalism and the intellectual discourse of the Left in Britain. It shows how environmentalism struggled to converse with British socialism and Marxism and why the final politicization of the environment took a quite long path to transition. Through the analysis of the discussions in The Ecologist, New Left Review, and Marxism Today the article documents their contributions to the 'greening' of wider political discourse, and the important place they had in rethinking the role of left-wing politics in the difficult years of the 1980s. While the concept of crisis played a central role in the assimilation of environmental argument and ecology into the complex ideological configuration of socialism and Marxism, it was however an external factor-Thatcherismthat forced the Left's intellectuals to come to terms with the changing of the political and imposed the idea that the preservation of the environment was a 'socialist principle'. The article contributes to two primary lines of historical inquiry: the field of modern British environmental history and the politics of the Labour Party's reformulation during the 1980s.

Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 2022

In this article, I tease out the different aspects of the appropriation of Gramsci's thinking by ... more In this article, I tease out the different aspects of the appropriation of Gramsci's thinking by Anglo-Marxism, from the 1960s onward, in the context of the British debate, in the field of political theory, regarding the “crisis of democracy.”

Journal of Language and Politics, 2022

The European project has always played a pivotal role in Italy's politics and Italian political d... more The European project has always played a pivotal role in Italy's politics and Italian political discourse. The European Union (EU) represented the primary vehicle through which to regain international legitimacy. From this perspective, the intensification in the last few years of the Eurosceptic and populist discourse of Matteo Salvini's Lega has marked a critical turning point. This article contributes to an understanding of such process from critical discursive and historical perspectives. Building on the concept of recontextualization as elaborated in CDS but also more generally appealing to conceptual history and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) frameworks, this study deconstructs the Lega's Euroscepticism diachronically, interpreting populism as a key discursive element of the Lega's Far Right ideology. We thus highlight how the Lega's Eurosceptic discourse and the recontextualisation of the European legitimisation process present a dramatic change and seem highly indicative of a new ideological and extraparty cleavage of 'sovereignism' .

Modern Italy, 2022

Considered by many scholars to be principally a catch-all or a useless concept, populism has rare... more Considered by many scholars to be principally a catch-all or a useless concept, populism has rarely gone hand-in-hand with historical reflection. Building upon ‘the need to return populism to history’, this article offers an overview of the reasons why populism as a concept and as a potential sequence of historical events seems to fit well in post-Second World War Italy, and aims to suggest areas for further research. At the intersection between conceptual history, democratic theory and discourse-historical analysis, the article explores the continuities and discontinuities of Italian populisms, focusing on the resemioticisation of the concept of civil society and its legacy within historical Italian Fascism, especially during the transition to the so-called Second Republic.

JCER - Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2021

This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle duri... more This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle during their campaigns for the European Parliament elections (January-May 2019). We focus on the Italian case as it is representative of a generalised shift in European public discourse towards an overt delegitimation of the European project and its re-imagination. In the Italian case, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle, which were in a Government coalition for fourteen months, have been instrumental in Italy's shift from a strong Europhile country to one of the most Eurosceptic. However, while Lega has definitely aligned itself with a strong right-wing populist agenda, Movimento 5 Stelle has promoted a populist technocratic vision of democracy. Our analysis shows that the articulation of Eurosceptic discourses from both parties by and large reflects the two stances above with Lega's messages (primarily produced by its leader Matteo Salvini) characterised by a 'hyperled' style of communication and stronger nativist elements (for example the appeal to an ethno-centric and 'sovereign' idea of Italy) than those of Movimento 5 Stelle, which instead relied on a 'horizontal' communicative style. However, our data also shows that the delegitimation of Europe in both parties occur along a similar domestication of European affairs into the national political agenda and the call for a reformed Europe along nationalistic logics which both parties claimed to champion.

Modern Italy, 2022

Europe and the East Historical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989, 2023

2 giugno. Nascita, storia e memorie della Repubblica 4 L’Italia del 1946 vista dall’Europa, a cura di Patrizia Dogliani e Valeria Galimi. Viella , 2020

Politics, 2022

Journal of Political Ideologies, 2022

European History Quarterly, 2022

Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 2022

Journal of Language and Politics, 2022

Modern Italy, 2022

JCER - Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2021

Italian Study Library Group Bulletin, 2019

Critical Discourse Studies , 2019

Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject in the Brit... more Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject in the British public debate, The relationship between Britain and Europe was mostly regarded as extremely cautious and parochially nationalist; however, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s opposition to the European Economic Community (ECC) was predominantly led by intelligentsias and maverick politicians, the present-day debate seems less intellectually-driven and academic in his language. This article draws attention to the role of traditional and online media in re-narrating the European question. Within this process, the re-semioticization of the role of Great Britain in the international scenario vis-à-vis the historical and cultural discourses of borders between the UK and the Continent play a pivotal function. Starting from here, the article considers, on the one hand, how the current re-narration of the European question is reproducing and reinterpreting historical arguments vis-à-vis old clichés. On the other, it deals primarily with the response to the profound transition taking place in the political landscape.

Internet Histories, 2018

The 5-star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) is a political party in Italy operating almost excl... more The 5-star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) is a political party in Italy operating almost exclusively online. It was officially established as a political movement in 2009, and quickly became the second most important political force in Italy. Unlike traditional political parties, the Movement operates almost exclusively online, without any headquarters and non-digital types of communication (until recently, candidates were forbidden to give interviews on TV or to the press); Beppe Grillo's blog (www.beppegrillo.it), used as an aggregator by early activists, is now the main “spokesperson” of the party; it is not just a tool of communication that replaces traditional party newspapers, but an integral part of the party's life and of its history. This research will first give an overview of the relation between the 5-Star Movement and the World Wide Web, particularly the blog. In second instance, through a deeper analysis of the blog posts from 2008 until the end of 2017, the paper will try to determine what is the main political discourse underlying the M5S on two key “ideological issues”: migration and the European Union, and how the party's positions have evolved over the years.

Modern Language Open, 2018

This contribution analyses the British perception of Red Bologna during the seventies and eightie... more This contribution analyses the British perception of Red Bologna during the seventies and eighties, when politicians in the UK thought of Bolognese Social-Democrats as an example of good government. Maccaferri investigates the way in which the British political debate and the intellectual public discourse (as seen in journals, pamphlets and books) 'imported', deconstructed, adapted and appropriated the Italian communist model. The aim is to cast light on an 'Italy Made in Britain' that was constructed in the prevalently left-wing British political debate between the mid-nineteen seventies and the late nineteen-eighties, namely until Italian Communism started to search for a new name and a new identity, and, indeed, it liquidated the model itself. This article considers the debate expressed in the pamphlet Red Bologna (eds Max Jäggi, Roger Müller, Sil Schmid, 1977), journals such as Power and Politics and The New Left review, and newspapers such as The Guardian and The Observer. Furthermore, it focusses on the resurgence of leftist intellectuals. It deals primarily with Marxism Today's Italian discourse. By focusing on such a view, Maccaferri reconstructs the way in which, whilst engaging with the Thatcherite period, the English political debate and intellectual discourse perceived and constructed a very different kind of Italy that was simultaneously revolutionary and communist in its ideology and 'moderate' and socialist – if not liberal – in its policies.

Journal of British Identities, 2017

Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject of scholarl... more Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject of scholarly interest, but in the British context this attention has often been restricted to the analysis of the diplomatic policies that accompanied the UK's reluctant approach to the process of European unification. According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse have been an essential condition for forging, shaping and (re)creating the idea of 'politics' and 'identity' in Britain during the post-WWII phase. After the Suez crisis and the first referendum about European membership (1975), the international roles of Britain changed dramatically (from world-imperial power and main actor in the Concert of Europe to middle-ranking European state), while the international scene as well as the European economic miracle forced intellectuals to rethink themes and categories by which public discourse perceived and interpreted Europe – perceived here as a historical as well as a political subject. This article draws attention to the debate on Europe in Britain from 1957 to the 1970s, fostered by intellectuals – understood as cultural actors engaged in public and/or political debates developed in journals or newspapers. It considers, on the one hand, how intellectuals narrated Europe as an autonomous cultural subject; on the other, it deals primarily with the response to the profound transition taking place in the intellectual environment. The article illustrates how British intellectuals pursued a new international role for Britain as a champion of freedom and as an example of democracy. In this discourse British identity and the idea of the European political project are central, and the contradictory debate about the role of Britain in Europe is a striking example of how national and European identities can interact and, eventually, collapse.

Modern Italy, 2016

This article explores the intellectual discourse of Il Mulino’s intellectual group in relation to... more This article explores the intellectual discourse of Il Mulino’s intellectual group in relation to the transformation of Italian politics during the period leading up to the centre-left governments. First, it investigates Il Mulino’s cultural project of overcoming the hegemony of idealism by endorsing the empiricist approach favoured by Anglo-American social sciences, while establishing a new role for intellectuals. Then, it focuses on the group’s political agenda aimed at rationalising Italy’s ‘imperfect two-party system’. We argue that, within the Italian intellectual-political scenario, Il Mulino’s intellectual discourse sought to establish a new relationship between culture and politics. It tried to do so both by anchoring Italian political culture to the liberal- and social-democratic European tradition and by contributing to the stabilisation of Italian democracy, while proposing a reduction in the number of political parties.

E-review. Rivisti degli Istituti Storici dell'Emilia Romagna in rete, Jun 2013

Return and Sharing memories è un progetto pilota che intende restituire al popolo etiope la memor... more Return and Sharing memories è un progetto pilota che intende restituire al popolo etiope la memoria storica dell’effimero impero italiano nel Corno d'Africa (1935-1941). Punto di partenza del progetto è duplicare le testimonianze fotografiche raccolte a Modena e donarne copia all’Università di Addis Abeba, mettendole a disposizione di ricercatori e studenti. L’obbiettivo è affrontare gli studi coloniali da una prospettiva diversa, attraverso la condivisione della memoria storica con gli ex-nemici, favorendo lo studio congiunto del passato che accomuna Etiopia e Italia.

http://www.tandfindia.com/books/details/9781138013858/

Between the end of WWII and the end of the Cold War, the international roles of France and Great ... more Between the end of WWII and the end of the Cold War, the international roles of France and Great Britain changed dramatically. Major international powers were now states much bigger than European nations in terms of population, wealth, military capacity. Analyzing the international political discourse developed by French and British intellectuals and the wider public debate they prompted during the Cold War, this book addresses how the public sphere reacted and adapted to rapidly changing historical circumstances, and how intellectuals responded to a new and challenging relationship between national and foreign policy within a global context.

MARTEDì 23 FEBBRAIO 2016 Reggio Emilia

The intellectual-power link has been constantly used to define the specificity of the Italian pol... more The intellectual-power link has been constantly used to define the specificity of the Italian political culture in response to the different stages in the historical constitution of the public sphere and to the different ways in which political power exercises its control. What we are dealing with when we reconstruct and historicize this relationship is either a matter of the history of ideas, concepts, agencies and meanings, their manifestations and institutionalizations, and rather an exercise in the history of intellectuals, understood as the study of a specific register of experience in relationship to social or political institutions and immediate ‘contexts’. In insisting on the historicity of ideas and conceptions and engaging with Max Weber’s focal reflection on the shaping of public opinion, this paper intends to comprehend the Italian intellectual discourse as a powerful component employed in the battles of political legitimation.
To this end I will explore the case of the Liberal- Social-democratic journals – focusing principally on Il Mulino (Bologna, from 1951) and his related publishing house and other ‘riviste politico-culturali’ – and outline how intellectual political discourse confronted to the challenge of democratic mass politics. In order to address fully the interconnections between what organizes and gives shape to a text, and the intellectual field intended as a dynamic site of exchanging cultural and political capital, I will engage with the themes of ‘ideological translation’ and ‘reference culture’ to understand the way in which ideas and political model, their representations and actors may travel across institutional and spatial boundaries and being able to ‘participate’ and ‘mediate’ the construction and reproduction of meaning and values.

"According to the recent Italian historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse ... more "According to the recent Italian historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse were a major condition for forging and recreating the idea of ‘nation’ and ‘identity’ in Italy during the post-WW2 Republican phase.
To historicize the relation between politics – here drawn on Schmitt’s concept of ‘the political’ – and intellectuals – here understood as people whose occupations deals with ideas and culture – in the newly formed Italian Republic this seminar will focus on the way in which Italian intellectuals and their public discourse (as exposed on journals and pamphlets) reacted, deconstructed, adapted and revised the ‘novelty’ of postWW2 scenario.

The 1950s and 1960s Italian history has been ‘sandwiched’ between the end of Fascism and the ‘long ’68’, on the one hand, and the Cultural Cold War on the other. Thus, the historical reconstruction of the Italian intellectual debate is dominated by two cultural ‘myths’ reflected in the figure of the intellectual: the engagé, serving the ‘cultural politics’ of the Left and ‘hegemonized’ by the work of Antonio Gramsci, versus the ‘uninvolved’ secluded in his egoistic ivory tower and represented by the Catholic culture. This (stereo)typization of the Italian cultural scenario, however, does not take into account of a profoundly different debate of the Fifties and Sixties-Italy represented by the liberal and democratic Left reviews with their roots in neo-enlightenment doctrine and a decided penchant for scientific thought and social sciences
Starting from here this seminar will attempt to integrate the culturalist perspectives into the classical way of treating the history of Italy. I also like to consider from the point of view of the history of Italian political culture how these two generations of intellectuals have been in fact a fertile tool for constructing an autonomous post-war identity.
"

Paraphrasing the title of one of the work by Stuart Hall (The West and the Rest: Discourse and Po... more Paraphrasing the title of one of the work by Stuart Hall (The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power, 1992), this paper will question the role played by the ‘rediscovery of Eastern Europe’ and its entangled discursive boundary with the European idea, elaborated by British Leftwing intellectuals during the final years of the Cold War.
Although the idea of Eastern Europe and the East-West opposition predates the Cold War, the powerful image condensed in the expression the ‘iron curtain’ geo-culturally marked a political bisection as well as an ideological dichotomy which separated what used to be backwardness vs. civilization and which after the WW2 became autocracy vs. democracy and socialism vs. capitalism. In the 1980s the idea of Central and Eastern Europe was rediscovered by intellectuals in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as a cultural and identitary answer to the re-emergence of the second Cold War and soon imported to Western Europe through the Leftwing and Marxist intellectuals’ network. Within this process, the re-semioticization of the idea of Europe as a geo-cultural unity went along the re-thinking of Western post-Fordist socialism and the binary oppositions between East and West Europe were invested (again) with cultural more than ideological significance and presumption of precedence and hierarchy.
Starting from here, I will consider the case of the British Leftwing intellectuals, focusing on the discourse developed in the journal Marxism Today* and following the path of two of its most influential intellectuals: MT’s editor Stuart Hall and the historian Eric Hobsbawm.

Between 1977 and 1991, the crisis of the Labour party, and the entire hyperbole of Thatcherism Ma... more Between 1977 and 1991, the crisis of the Labour party, and the entire hyperbole of Thatcherism Marxism Today certainly represented the most influential political journal in the British public debate. In the context of the British intellectual and political history, MT hold a remarkable role as the cultural arena for the introduction of the Euro-communism argument and for its constant attention to other European Left and Marxist critical debate, among other pivotal analytical categories taken from the European context as hegemony and new Gramscian studies. An important moment of this opening was the debate on the ‘Red Bologna’ and the other ‘Emilian administrations’, the PCI experience and the Italian Communist culture and civic attitude in general, which was understood as a political model as well as a civic model to be ‘imported’ for the Labour’s experience of Ken Livingstone at the Greater London Council. One of the ‘very rare chances’ that a party well-known for its own isolationism sought inspiration in an ‘overseas’ model. Ken Livingstone’s administration attempted to adapt the PCI form of decentralised governance for London, albeit the boroughs of London had far greater power in the UK context and could choose to support or ignore the GLC depending on their local political complexion
This paper intends to follow the main steps taken by MT in questioning and debating the experience of the Italian Communist party. It will consider, on the one hand, the debate regarding Eurocommunism and its links with the British Left; on the other, it will focus primarily on the discourse of ‘Red Bologna’ and the British understanding of the political system of Italy as presented in the journals and in the CPGB.

Rising support for populism has disrupted political discourse in Britain and the Brexit vote has ... more Rising support for populism has disrupted political discourse in Britain and the Brexit vote has arguably marked a new phase for the British political system. Although Mudde (2014) has argued that the impact of populist parties has been exaggerated in European politics, it is undisputable that the Brexit victory is also a political victory for the foremost populist movement of Britain, Nigel Farage’s UKIP.
The Brexit option has paved the way for great discussions in the British (more appropriate would be to say ‘English’) public sphere and, responding to a growing interest in withdrawal from European Union (EU), the British traditional press and online media have reacted by increasing their coverage before the June 2016 referendum, and continue to intensify their attention to this day. Within this process, the re-semioticisation of the idea of Brexit as a discourse that pits ‘the people’ against ‘the élite’ occurred in both major British political parties has been taking shape along with the penetration of populist attitude into the traditional political space and the reshaping of the relations between populism, whether understood as discourse or as ideology, and the media.
Starting from here and drawing from Historical Discourse Analysis (Wodak et al. 2009; Krzyzanowski, 2010) and Critical studies (Mouffe 2005; Müller 2013), and built upon a historical approach, this paper will question the role of traditional and online media in narrating and re-narrating the Brexit discourse both before and after the referendum. Sources will be traditional British quality press, newspaper and magazines, and online media (BBC News, OpenEurope, The Huffington Post, OpenDemocracy, Channel4.com, Vice.com).
Does the discursive construction of Brexit parallel the widely held view of populism as a consequence of economic insecurity? Or, alternatively, can Brexit populist discourse be explained as a retro reaction by a once-predominant traditional political culture to progressive value changes? Which are the differences between Right populism and Left populism as depicted in the media? Do traditional media play a pivotal role in the discourse of populism? Does Brexit represent a new ‘cultural cleavage’ dividing Populists from Cosmopolitans, as Inglehart and Norris (2016) argue? Does ‘Brexit discourse’ represent a research hypothesis for a post-partisan populism?
These are some of the issues that this paper will tackle.

Responding to a growing interest in the potential withdrawal of Great Britain from the European U... more Responding to a growing interest in the potential withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union (EU), the British traditional press and on-line media have reacted by increasing their coverage. Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject in the British public debate, whose discourse on identity dates back to the Suez crisis and navigates the seasons of postWW2 UK. The relationship between Britain and Europe was mostly regarded as extremely cautious and parochially nationalist; however, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s opposition to the European Economic Community (ECC) was predominantly led by intelligentsias and maverick politicians (Enoch Powell, Douglas Jay, Michael Foot to name a few), the present-day debate seems less intellectually-driven and academic in his language, and more in touch with the public opinion.
The Brexit option has paved the way for great discussions in the British (more correct would be to use ‘English’) public sphere. This paper will draw attention to the role of traditional and online media in re-narrating the European question. The sources will be British quality press, newspaper and magazines (Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Express, Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Spectator, New Statesmen, Economist, Prospect), and online media (BBC News, OpenEurope, The Huffington Post, OpenDemocracy, Channel4.com, Vice.com).
Within this process, the re-semioticization of the role of Great Britain in the international scenario vis-à-vis the historical and cultural discourses of borders between the UK and the Continent play a pivotal function. Starting from here, I intend to consider, on the one hand, how the current re-narration of the European question is reproducing and reinterpreting historical arguments vis-à-vis old clichés. On the other, I will deal primarily with the response to the profound transition taking place in the political landscape. Does the Brexit debate shape a new form of British Euroscepticism based on a new sense of economic confidence? Does the new discursive construction of Europe consist in a confrontation between this new sense of confidence in the nation’s potentialities, and the pursuit of a new international role for Britain as a champion of freedom and as an example of democracy? How important is the discourse of historical categories as British ‘splendid isolation’ or ‘special relationship’, and ‘British cultural peculiarity’ or ‘political traditions?
These are some of the issues I will tackle in this paper.

According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse, on the o... more According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse, on the one hand, and think tanks’ role on the other have been an essential condition for forging, shaping and (re)creating foreign and security policy in Italy since the end of the Second World War. After the transition to Republican democracy and in the new international context of the age of superpowers, the discovery of foreign policy as a political and cultural ‘tool’ was a gradual and laborious development. Within this process, the IAI case study represents a stark example of how foreign policy analysis and intellectual discourse stood in a dynamic and mutually evolving relations.
To historicise this process, this paper investigates the cultural and intellectuals project upon which the IAI has been build, its origins, its political and international players, its continuity and discontinuity.
Utilizing archival and new primary sources, I intend to tackle the history of the IAI as a historical case-study for the IR think-tank model, and its relations with the debate on the role of experts and intellectuals occurred in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s.

Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject of scholarl... more Europe as an idea as well as a political and cultural project has been a vast subject of scholarly interest, but in the English context this attention has often been restricted to the analysis of the diplomatic policies that accompanied the UK’s reluctant approach to the process of European unification. According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse have been an essential condition for forging, shaping and (re)creating the idea of ‘politics’ and ‘identity’ in Britain during the post-WW2 phase. After the Suez crisis and the end of the Cold War, the international roles of Britain changed dramatically (from world-imperial power and main actors of the Concert of Europe to middle-ranking European states) and the ideological turning points on the international scene as well as the upspring of the European economic miracles forced intellectual discourses to rethink themes and categories by which public opinion perceived and interpreted Europe – understood here as a historical as well as a political subject. This paper draws attention to the intellectual debate on Europe in Britain from 1957 to the end of the Cold War. Intellectuals – understood here in the sense of cultural actors engaged in public and/or political debates developed on journals or newspapers – played a major role in fostering this process. Starting from here I intend will consider, on the one hand, how intellectuals narrated Europe as an autonomous cultural subject; on the other, I will deal primarily with the response to the profound transition taking place in the intellectual environment. I will illustrate how British intellectuals pursued a new international role for Britain as a champion of freedom and as an example of democracy. In this discourse European history and the European project are central, and the contradictory debate about the role of Britain in Europe is a striking example of how national and European narratives can interact and, eventually, collapse.

According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse have been... more According to the recent historiography, intellectuals and intellectual public discourse have been an essential condition for forging, shaping and (re)creating the idea of ‘nation’ and ‘identity’ in Italy from the nation-building period to the post-WW2 phase. A stark example of this process was the debate on the role and function of intellectuals as constructed by the post-WW2 Left-wing political culture in which the public and the political spheres have been essential defined by the ‘central’ role played by the intellectual discourse, by the question of ‘impegno’, and hegemonized by the work of Antonio Gramsci. After the transition to the Republican democracy and in the new international context of the age of Superpowers, internationalism and world politics for Italian Left-wing intellectuals the discovery of ‘foreign policy’ as a political and cultural ‘tool’ was nevertheless a gradual and laborious process.
To historicise this progression this paper will investigate the ways in which Italian Left-wing intellectual discourse (as exposed on journals, pamphlets and books and referred to people whose occupation deals with ideas) interpreted and deconstructed Italian newly-fledged foreign policy, and which categories they adapted and revised to shape their understanding.
By focusing on the international political discourse developed by intellectuals and the wider public debate they prompted this paper addresses how the Left reacted and adapted to rapidly changing historical circumstances. Thus, in setting up a framework within intellectual discourse and foreign policy from an historical perception I intend to ‘read’ the changing Italian left in a more global and transnational perspective.

Ties and interactions linking Italian history across English political scenarios have been the su... more Ties and interactions linking Italian history across English political scenarios have been the subject of scholarly interest, often emphasizing a romantic view of Italian culture, on the one hand, and sometimes stereotyping Italian politics on the other. Besides the PCI experience and the Italian Communist culture in general, especially the episode of Bologna and the other Emilian administrations, have been vastly debated in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s.
Starting from here this paper will investigate the way in which the British political debate and the intellectual public discourse (as exposed on journals, pamphlets and books) ‘imported’, deconstructed, adapted and appropriated the Italian communist model during the 1970s and 1980s. This paper will considers the debate expressed in pamphlet as Red Bologna (eds Max Jäggi, Roger Müller, Sil Schmid, 1977), journals as Power and Politics and The New Left review, newspaper as The Guardian and The Observer. Furthermore, it will focus on the resurgence of the Leftist intellectuals. It deals primarily with the Marxism Today Italian discourse and with the reception, use (and abuse) of the Gramscian paradigm in the intellectual debate during the late 1970s and 1980s.
By focusing on such view I intend to reconstruct the way in which, whilst engaging with the Thatcherite period, the British political debate and intellectual discourse perceived and constructed a different kind of Italy that was at the same time revolutionary and communist in its ideology and ‘moderate’ and liberal-democratic in its policy. Thus, in setting up a framework within British intellectual debate and Italian communist model my aim is to historicise the contemporary image of an Italian vanished Left culture and tradition, and to ‘read’ it through the English perspective.

Nel quadro dell’utilizzo del tema della politica estera come prisma per comprendere il discorso i... more Nel quadro dell’utilizzo del tema della politica estera come prisma per comprendere il discorso intellettuale – così come sviluppato su pubblicistica, riviste e stampa – in un decennio di ‘ripresa’ della disputa fra blocchi, il paper intende affrontare, da un lato, il dibattito riguardante la politica estera dei governi conservatori guidati da Margaret Thatcher (prima e dopo l’episodio delle Falkland/Malvinas); dall’altro si concentrerà sul discorso sviluppato dagli intellettuali Leftist. Qui il focus principale sarà la rivista «Marxism Today» e la recezione, l’uso (e l’abuso) in essa dei temi gramsciani adattati al confronto con la ‘rivoluzione’ thatcheriana.
Nel riconsiderare le trasformazioni dello scenario internazionale fra il 1979 e la fine della guerra fredda – questo l’arco cronologico qui individuato – il paper illustrerà come gli intellettuali furono capaci di ridisegnare il proprio ruolo pubblico all’interno di un nuovo discorso identitario nazionale.

Se il modello emiliano è stato, anzitutto, un’originale forma di economia sociale di mercato che ... more Se il modello emiliano è stato, anzitutto, un’originale forma di economia sociale di mercato che è riuscita a far interagire i diversi attori, anche quando antagonisti, dando luogo a un amalgama pragmatico di pratiche amministrative riformiste e culture politiche democratiche, è indubbio quanto una prospettiva privilegiata di analisi di questo fenomeno storico sia lo sviluppo urbanistico, le politiche di pianificazione e programmazione, nonché la più ampia e astratta idea di città che tale modello ha nel tempo plasmato.
Partendo dal peculiare retroterra culturale e politico dell’arch. Osvaldo Piacentini – estensore con Giuseppe Campos Venuti della riscrittura dei Prg delle principali città dell’Emilia Romagna, amico e stretto collaboratore di Giuseppe Dossetti, assieme ad Achille Ardigò estensore del Libro bianco per le amministrative di Bologna del 1956, protagonista con Beniamino Andreatta ed Ermanno Gorrieri del dibattito democristiano sulla programmazione economica della Regione – e dall’agire urbanistico espresso da Piacentini e dalla cooperativa da lui fondata, questa relazione intende “mettere alla prova” il modello emiliano nel suo confronto con la “sfida” della modernizzazione.
L’obiettivo è analizzare da un lato la genesi, le modalità di attuazione e l’effettività delle pratiche urbanistiche che hanno disegnato lo spazio e il territorio in cui ha agito il modello emiliano. Dall’altro, la programmazione urbanistica e la politica del territorio verranno intese come un aspetto della questione “ideologica” della gestione della trasformazione, come una faccia “plastica” dello stesso modello.
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In Search for ‘Normality’: Left-wing Intellectuals and Periodicals in the post-WW2 Italian Democr... more In Search for ‘Normality’:
Left-wing Intellectuals and Periodicals in the post-WW2 Italian Democracy (1945-1992)

The historical reconstruction of the post-WW2 Italian intellectual debate is dominated by two cultural ‘myths’ reflected in the figure (or stereotype?) of the intellectual: the engagé, serving the ‘cultural politics’ of the Left and ‘hegemonized’ by the work of Antonio Gramsci, versus the uninvolved in his egoistic ivory tower represented by the catholic culture. This stereotypization of the Italian cultural scenario, however, does not take into account of the debate of the liberal and democratic Left intellectuals. Between the “Italian road to Socialism” and the “Americanization” of the Italian political culture there was a pragmatic reformist approach with their roots in neo-enlightenment doctrine and a decided penchant for scientific thought and social sciences. All these approaches have been declined in the pages of Italian periodicals and cultural reviews: among them Il Mulino, Il Ponte, Quaderni Piacentini, Tempo Presente, Nord e Sud.
In setting up a framework within intellectual debate and periodical world this paper aims to investigate from the point of view of the history of Italian political culture how the Left-wing periodicals and the Italian periodical culture were in fact a fertile field for constructing and developing a new democratic, autonomous post-war national identity after the tragedy of Fascism.

Conceiving British cultural Marxism as a coherent and independent intellectual tradition is one o... more Conceiving British cultural Marxism as a coherent and independent intellectual tradition is one of the achievements of the most recent scholarship of both critical theory and intellectual history. British cultural Marxism emerged as a ‘system’ to create a social and political understanding of Britain, positioning ‘culture’ at its centre, and continuously struggling with the relationship between theory and practice.
One of the theatre for this discourse was the journal Marxism Today (MT). Between 1977 and 1991, MT represented one of the most influential intellectual journals, retrieving the inter- and early post-war tradition of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and drawing much of its inspiration from the ideologies and policies of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which was understood as a political as well as a civic model to be ‘imported’ for the Labour’s experience of Ken Livingstone at the Greater London Council (GLC). One of the ‘very rare chances’ – quoting Donal Sassoon – that a party well-known for its own isolationism sought inspiration in an ‘overseas’ model. This unexpected intellectual link revolved around Euro-communism, the so-called Italy’s ‘Red belt’ and especially the experiences in Bologna and Emilia-Romagna, but also from the works and ongoing reinterpretations of the legacy of Antonio Gramsci, whose concept of hegemonic struggle paralleled and enriched MT, and from the critical dialogue with European social theory and European politics in general.
This paper intends to follow the main steps taken by MT in intellectually and culturally approaching Italian communism.
My argument here is that the transnational relations between the two experiences played a role in the process of rethinking ‘the political’ and in driving the British Left cultural tradition towards new themes and political issues. The influence of Gramsci’s ideas and the re-reading of Gramsci’s cultural theory, mainly through the work of Stuart Hall, was the theoretical platform upon which was generated a broader analysis of the crisis of the Left in general, and the Labour party in particular. The reception of the Italian Communist experience, in terms of policies as well as theory and party’s activity, exemplified the analysis of MT and acted as a reference culture upon which to test its validity.

Paul Addison, No Turning Back. The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain, Oxford: Oxford Univ... more Paul Addison, No Turning Back. The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010; Brian Harrison, Seeking a Role. The United Kingdom, 1951-1970 (2009) e Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970-1990 (2010), Oxford: Clarendon Press; David Marquand, Britain since 1918. The Strange Career of British Democracy, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008; Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good. A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (2005) and White Heat. A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (2006), London: Little Brown

H-Italy, 2020

Francesco Fusi. Il «deputato della nazione» Sidney Sonnino e il suo collegio elettorale (1880-190... more Francesco Fusi. Il «deputato della nazione» Sidney Sonnino e il suo collegio elettorale (1880-1900).
Segrate: Le Monnier, 2019. xii + 268 pp. EUR 34.00, paper, ISBN 978-88-00-74985-5.
Reviewed by Marzia Maccaferri (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Published on H-Italy (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Matteo Pretelli (University of Naples "L'Orientale")

Il Mestiere di Storico, 2019

Tribune, 2021

50 years ago, the publication of an English translation of 'Selections from the Prison Notebooks'... more 50 years ago, the publication of an English translation of 'Selections from the Prison Notebooks' catapulted Antonio Gramsci onto the world stage – and gave Marxism its most influential post-war intellectual.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/10/how-gramsci-went-global

Social Europe, 2020

Last month the Italian far right failed to seize the left-wing bastion of Emilia-Romagna. But the... more Last month the Italian far right failed to seize the left-wing bastion of Emilia-Romagna. But the election results raise wider challenges for the resistance to rising populism.

Il Mulino - La rivista, 2020

Sir Keir Starmer, MP per Holborn e St Pancras e shadow minister per la Brexit, è il diciannovesim... more Sir Keir Starmer, MP per Holborn e St Pancras e shadow minister per la Brexit, è il diciannovesimo leader del partito laburista britannico. Proclamato ufficialmente sabato 4 aprile dopo una lunga e stramba campagna elettorale, Starmer ha confermato tutti i pronostici al termine di una campagna elettorale di fatto congelata dall’esplodere del Coronavirus.
Guadagnandosi il 56,2% delle preferenze, il nuovo leader laburista ha ottenuto da un lato una vittoria scontata su Lisa Nandy (16,2%), dall’altro ha però allungato in modo significativo – un dato questo relativamente inaspettato – le distanze da Rebecca Long-Baily (27,6%), considerata l’erede di Jeremy Corbyn e John McDonnell.
Quanto tutto questo sia una inversione al "centro", tradendo le aspettative radicali e le attese socialiste della "rivoluzione corbynista", secondo una narrazione, o più semplicemente si tratti del ritorno al ruolo di opposizione democratica nel quadro del modello Westminster basato sul principio della scrutiny, secondo una diversa lettura, avremo tempo per capirlo. Ciò che unisce entrambe le interpretazioni tuttavia mi pare sia il fatto che Keir Starmer “non è Jeremy Corbyn”, come scrive un po’ sollevata quasi tutta la stampa britannica. E per comprenderne le conseguenze vale la pena riflettere su che cosa abbia realmente rappresentato il corbynismo.

LSE Brexit blog, 2019

This short article looks at how the press covered the referendum campaign and in the process revi... more This short article looks at how the press covered the referendum campaign and in the process revived notions of the ‘Anglosphere’ and British exceptionalism.

Manca appena una settimana all’election day nel quale il popolo britannico sarà chiamato ad elegg... more Manca appena una settimana all’election day nel quale il popolo britannico sarà chiamato ad eleggere i membri del nuovo parlamento e del governo, incaricato di traghettare il Regno Unito fuori dall’Unione europea. Il paese, colpito da un recente attentato e diviso da tensioni interne, in che stato si avvicina all’appuntamento elettorale? E quali forze politiche saranno più capaci d’interpretare e dar voce ai bisogni ed alle ragioni dei cittadini? Ne discutiamo con Marzia Maccaferri, professoressa di storia politica presso la Goldsmiths University of London, esperta di politica europea ed autrice di numerose pubblicazioni in merito

Trumpismo e Brexit sono dunque le parole del 2016. E ahinoi stanno riscaldando i cuori di molti i... more Trumpismo e Brexit sono dunque le parole del 2016. E ahinoi stanno riscaldando i cuori di molti in Europa, da Marine Le Pen che domenica alla BBC ha indicato il trionfo repubblicano come un ulteriore passo verso la rivoluzione globale auspicando la sua di vittoria, ovviamente, come il gradino successivo, a Matteo Salvini e Beppe Grillo che già si vedono (in coalizione?) a guidare l'Italia in una crociata anti-Europa, anti-immigrazione, anti-establishment (che nel più provinciale vernacolo si declina come "anti-casta"); in definitiva anti-tutto.

Routledge eBooks, Mar 15, 2023

Italy as Europe's Political Laboratory? : Thirty Years of Italian Political History, 1990-2018, 2019

Journal of Political Ideologies

Constellations, Mar 29, 2022

In this article, I tease out the different aspects of the appropriation of Gramsci's thin... more In this article, I tease out the different aspects of the appropriation of Gramsci's thinking by Anglo-Marxism, from the 1960s onward, in the context of the British debate, in the field of political theory, regarding the “crisis of democracy.”

European History Quarterly

Historiography on environmentalism has been growing significantly for the last two -decades and i... more Historiography on environmentalism has been growing significantly for the last two -decades and is now considered a separate and consolidated discipline in the context of European studies and global history. Usually, scholars agree that though it was almost absent from any post-World War II European political discourse or electoral manifesto, and not even mentioned in the United Nations Charter, human concerns about the environment changed in the years around 1970, when, according to the environmental historian Joachim Radkau, the ‘age of ecology’ arose. [...]

European History Quarterly

This article reconstructs the encounter between environmentalism and the intellectual discourse o... more This article reconstructs the encounter between environmentalism and the intellectual discourse of the Left in Britain. It shows how environmentalism struggled to converse with British socialism and Marxism and why the final politicization of the environment took a quite long path to transition. Through the analysis of the discussions in The Ecologist, New Left Review, and Marxism Today the article documents their contributions to the ‘greening’ of wider political discourse, and the important place they had in rethinking the role of left-wing politics in the difficult years of the 1980s. While the concept of crisis played a central role in the assimilation of environmental argument and ecology into the complex ideological configuration of socialism and Marxism, it was however an external factor – Thatcherism – that forced the Left’s intellectuals to come to terms with the changing of the political and imposed the idea that the preservation of the environment was a ‘socialist princip...

Modern Italy

Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene La... more Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, New York. He is one of the leading scholars on fascism and populism. Professor Finchelstein is the author of many books that have been translated into several languages, including the successful From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press, 2017). His new monograph, Fascist Mythologies. The History and Politics of Unreason in Borges, Freud, and Schmitt, is forthcoming in June 2022 from Columbia University Press. Given this, he is a natural starting point to discuss the global dimension of populism and its historical experiences from Latin America to Italy. Andrea Mammone, co-editor of Modern Italy, interviewed him in December 2021.

Modern Italy, 2022

Journal of Language and Politics, 2022

The European project has always played a pivotal role in Italy’s politics and Italian political d... more The European project has always played a pivotal role in Italy’s politics and Italian political discourse. The European Union (EU) represented the primary vehicle through which to regain international legitimacy. From this perspective, the intensification in the last few years of the Eurosceptic and populist discourse of Matteo Salvini’s Lega has marked a critical turning point. This article contributes to an understanding of such process from critical discursive and historical perspectives. Building on the concept of recontextualization as elaborated in CDS but also more generally appealing to conceptual history and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) frameworks, this study deconstructs the Lega’s Euroscepticism diachronically, interpreting populism as a key discursive element of the Lega’s Far Right ideology. We thus highlight how the Lega’s Eurosceptic discourse and the recontextualisation of the European legitimisation process present a dramatic change and seem highly indicative...

Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2021

This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle duri... more This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle during their campaigns for the European Parliament elections (January-May 2019). We focus on the Italian case as it is representative of a generalised shift in European public discourse towards an overt delegitimation of the European project and its re-imagination. In the Italian case, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle, which were in a Government coalition for fourteen months, have been instrumental in Italy’s shift from a strong Europhile country to one of the most Eurosceptic. However, while Lega has definitely aligned itself with a strong right-wing populist agenda, Movimento 5 Stelle has promoted a populist technocratic vision of democracy. Our analysis shows that the articulation of Eurosceptic discourses from both parties by and large reflects the two stances above with Lega’s messages (primarily produced by its leader Matteo Salvini) characterised by a ‘hyperled’ style of communication and ...

Modern Languages Open, 2018

Critical Discourse Studies, 2019

E-Review. Rivista degli Istituti Storici dell'Emilia-Romagna in Rete, 2013

Modern Italy, 2022

In March 2018, Italian voters sent a shockwave through the European Union. One in two Italians vo... more In March 2018, Italian voters sent a shockwave through the European Union. One in two Italians voted for parties ranging from the anti-establishment Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), which accrued the most votes in the election, to the neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia (FdI). A small number of votes went still further right, to the openly fascist groups CasaPound and Forza Nuova. For the first time since the 1990s, the far-right Lega surpassed Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in their (allegedly) ‘moderate’ centre-right alliance. Nor was this political trend confined to Italy. Protest and anti-system voting throughout traditional Western democracies, and especially in Europe, is actually a much more complex phenomenon that has exposed a new homogeneous and anti-establishment electorate. EU-led austerity measures, along with the refugee emergency, clearly played a role in the concerns of many Italians and Europeans in general, and trust in EU institutions dropped dramatically (Baldini and G...

European History Quarterly, 2022