The Future Belongs to Us? Ideology, Memory, and the Struggle over Time”
This lecture examines how political ideologies shape our experience of time—invoking lost golden ages, projecting radical futures, or anchoring themselves in an eternal present. By exploring how movements mobilize memory and expectation, we will analyze the temporal structures that distinguish restorative, conservative worldviews from those driven by transformation and rupture. Through key theoretical frameworks, the lecture invites reflection on how time becomes a site of political struggle.
Memories and Counter-Memories: History, Silence, and the Politics of the Past
This lecture introduces the politics of memory and counter-memory, exploring how societies construct narratives of the past through inclusion and exclusion. From national myths to silenced traumas, memory is shaped by power, conflict, and identity. Drawing on foundational thinkers like Halbwachs, Nora, and Foucault, we’ll examine how memory operates not just as remembrance but as a form of governance—deciding who is remembered, how, and why.
Counter-Memories of the Right: Fascist Defeat and the Politics of Mourning
This lecture examines how fascist and post-fascist movements, particularly in postwar Europe, have reconfigured their history of violence and defeat into a narrative of persecution, victimhood, and silencing. Through the strategic use of memory tropes traditionally associated with the subaltern—mourning, marginalization, counter-history—former perpetrators construct themselves as forgotten or dishonored dead. Drawing on case studies from Europe and the US, and engaging with theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Enzo Traverso, we will explore how this memorial inversion functions as a political and ideological weapon. The lecture investigates how monuments, oral histories, and public rituals are used not only to remember the past but to reclaim legitimacy in the present—raising urgent questions about historical justice, memory regimes, and the contested right to remember.
Masculine Martyrs, Feminized Loss: Neofascist Memory and the Politics of Gender
This lecture explores how neofascist memory is not only political but deeply gendered. Postwar and contemporary far-right movements often recast fascist defeat as a tragedy marked by virile sacrifice, heroic loss, and feminized betrayal. Through monuments, rituals, and testimonial literature, fascist militants and collaborators are remembered as noble warriors or persecuted victims, while the nation is figured as a violated mother or mourning widow. Drawing on gender theory, memory studies, and case studies from Italy and Germany, we will analyze how neofascist cultures of remembrance produce highly codified roles for masculinity and femininity—reinscribing patriarchal authority even in defeat. Particular attention will be paid to the aesthetics of mourning, the feminization of national suffering, and the militarization of male memory.
