While public intellectuals are typically thought of as inherently nonconformist and critical of established power, in practice many adapt themselves to the views of the majority-particularly in the context of repressive governments and military dictatorships. When the political winds change, such figures often refashion themselves to fit the new paradigm. Ghosts of Fascism follows the trajectories of four Italian intellectuals who, despite their passivity and at times even collaboration with Fascist institutions, became some of postwar Italy's most iconic anti-Fascists: Federico Chabod, a prominent historian of the twentieth century; the jurist Piero Calamandrei, who participated in drafting the Italian democratic constitution; the influential literary critic Luigi Russo, who presided over the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa; and Alberto Moravia, the internationally renowned novelist. Simon Levis Sullam weaves together their histories to show how postwar Italian intellectuals quietly revised their previous political positions, redefining themselves-and their recent pasts-as consistently anti-Fascist.
Simon Levis Sullam is a professor of modern history at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, specializing in modern Italy, Jewish history, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. Among his books translated into in English are Giuseppe Mazzini and the Origins of Fascism and The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews in Italy, as well as the coedited volume Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism: A Global History. Stuart Oglethorpe specializes in translating modern Italian history into English. His recent translations include Alberto Mario Banti's The Nation of the Risorgimento: Kinship, Sanctity, and Honour in the Origins of Unified Italy and Francesco Cassata's Racism and Antisemitism in Fascist Italy: The Politics, Ideology, and Imagery of "La Difesa della razza."
List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Treason of the Intellectuals and the Ghosts of Fascism 1. Federico Chabod and the Limits of Consent to Fascism 2. Piero Calamandrei's Ghosts 3. After the Flood: The Transition of Luigi Russo 4. The Novel of Our Times: Alberto Moravia, from Indifference to Conformism Conclusion: Repressing Fascism as Autobiography Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index
"Levis Sullam's book is innovative and fills a significant gap." - Enzo Traverso, Cornell University "Did Italian intellectuals come to terms with the Fascist era? And to what extent did they contribute to the collective repression that still characterizes much of our nation? According to Simon Levis Sullam, the author of an impassioned essay on the metamorphoses of our leading thinkers, the verdict is clear: in the period after World War II, prominent members of Italy's intellectual class chose to erase, censor, or minimize their involvement with the regime, representing their pasts as unblemished and consistently anti-Fascist."- (La Repubblica, praise for the Italian-language edition) "Perhaps more than any other author, Levis Sullam has investigated Italy's Fascist era in the same way that scientists identify cells and researchers create vaccines. Levis Sullam's method is to retrace the footsteps of major anti-Fascist figures and tell us what we had not known about them; to acknowledge aspects and phases of their lives that the various historical and biographical accounts had previously set aside."- (Il Fatto Quotidiano, praise for the Italian-language edition)
