8. Imagined Geographies: Political and Scientific Discourses on Italy's North-South Divide (original) (raw)

As a secessionist movement, the Lega Nord, which promotes the formation of an independent northern Italian state named 'Padania', distinguishes itself by its professed anti-intellectualism. Its clearly populist discourse - Umberto Bossi, the Lega's leader, describes it as popolano, folksy - is scorned by the Italian intel- lectual community, which is generally hostile to the Lega. But together with its populist rhetoric the Lega has developed a framework for argument based on research in the social sciences. The highbrow version of the Lega's discourse focuses on several issues that are considered relevant within the mainstream Ital- ian intellectual debate, such as the crisis of the Italian state, the process of Euro- pean integration, and Italy's place in this process. The Lega legitimizes the seces- sion of northern Italy by referring on the one hand to the inadequacy of the Italian state and the weakness of Italian national identity, and on the other to the t...