IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section B

Abstract

The EUR district in Rome is a relic of Fascist ideology manifested in urban form. While the district emerged as a utopian master plan, intended to celebrate Mussolini’s power at the 1942 World’s Fair, it was completed only after the Fascist regime was deposed. Thus, the district—a Fascist ghost from its outset—evokes curiosity regarding the ways by which the repressed and expressed collective memory of the Fascist era shaped the postwar reconstruction of Italian identity. This paper examines the political and cultural agency of the EUR as a site producing and reproducing a collective imagery of a conflictual national identity. Caught between a utopian vision and an actual—and partial—execution after World War II, the EUR provides a unique opportunity to explore the ambivalence involved, not only in materializing Fascist ideology as urban fabric, but also in mediating its image. While studies on mass psychology (most notably the ones by Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud) show the ease by which a desire to identify with the leader activates collective irrationality, Theodor Adorno was the first to reveal the link between irrational society and its rational products. In this context, the paper examines the hyper rational urban form of the EUR in relation to the inherently irrational crowd activation of Fascist propaganda. Consequently the paper asks: What role did Fascist urban form played in stimulating identification with the leader, and then, what kind of national sentiment was re-(or de)-activated when mediated through post war imagery?