Alessandro Portelli: Theatres of Memory, Memory as Theatre
|
A lecture given on 8 November 2011 at the Bishopsgate Institute, London
On 8 November 2011 Alessandro Portelli, Professor of American Literature at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' as well as one of the 'big names' in oral history research, gave the annual Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture in London. I can't really call it a lecture, though, in the sense that it felt more like listening to a very good storyteller. I guess what I'm trying to say is how pleasant indeed it is to listen to Alessandro Portelli, undoubtedly one of the finest oral historians in the field. Salvo's sacrifice The title of his talk, 'Theatres of Memory, Memory as Theatre', was well chosen, from various points of view. It is, of course, the title of Raphael Samuel's famous Theatres of Memory, but the idea of being constantly exposed to versions of the past was very well illustrated by Portelli's analysis of two incidents that occurred during the Second World War in Italy: the Nazi massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine in Rome, and the execution of the carabbiniere (a special type of police officer) Salvo D'Acquisto, who sacrificed himself in order to save innocent civilians during a Nazi retaliation. Or did he? 'Sacrifice' is a tricky word, used too often and too easily with the risk of changing the meaning of events, as its cousin 'tragedy'. For a sacrifice is when one deliberately offers one's life to save that of another. Salvo D'Acquisto was captured, however, along with a group of civilians, who were all to be shot dead as a retaliation for the death of a Nazi officer. D'Acquisto decided to pretend he was the killer so that the others would live. He was going to die anyway, so why not try to get the most out of it and negotiate at least the lives of the others? Of course this is not the version which has been transmitted to future generations of Italians and carabbinieri, who have to watch movies about this incident as part of their training. Alison Landsberg (Prosthetic Memory, 2004) has demonstrated how powerful the modern media are in planting images in people's heads and creating memories of events they have not lived, but which they nevertheless come to live/remember as their own. A number of highly romanticized and drammatic movies and TV shows about this 'tragic' event certainly did the trick in this case. But there's more to it. Stories such as that of Salvo D'Acquisto also become myths at the cost of other memories. Thus, D'Acquisto's sacrifice which was not a sacrifice is countered to the absence of a similar, heroic action on behalf of the Communist partisans held responsible for the Nazi retaliation at the Fosse Ardeatine in Rome. It also excludes other memories, or perhaps it becomes a container of a variety of memories converged into one. A lieu de mémoire, if you like. Salvo D'Acquisto then becomes a symbol of heroism and purity, whereas three carabbinieri who had been killed under comparable circumstances during the war, but who had actually faught the Nazi's, have not entered public memories of the war. It seems then that, in order to qualify for a national hero, one needs to die giving one's life for the country but without fighting. And one needs to be Catholic, of course, at least in Italy. Silvio's sacrifice The thesis of anticommunism is indeed at the basis of these interpretations, and the issue of violence has been much debated both after the Second World War and then again in the 1970s, when young generations of the (extreme) left decided to take on arms and start a 'new Resistance'. Phil Cooke, in his essay on the Legacy of the Italian Resistance But we need not to go back in time too far to get a hint of Italy's anticommunist legacy: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a living example, although he will soon step off the stage of his own (red light) theatre. One of his favourite strategies to cast off the various legal attacks he has suffered, for example, was to put himself across as an innocent victim of envious and jealous, Communist judges. And on Tuesday night, when Berlusconi handed in his resignation and not long after Portelli's talk was closed off with a big applause and wine reception, I was stunned by the coincidence: in a brief TV communication posted on his Facebook profile, Berlusconi posited himself as a victim of European politicians, who 'bravely' sacrificed himself for the nation's well being. The truth is that - for the past 17 years - he has been sacrificing Italy for his own benefit, and the tragedy is that the majority of the Italians just don't get it. Or maybe we'll see a replay of what happened back in 1943, when Italy got cold feet and turned its back on its former ally Germany in order to join the winning party, and all was forgotten. Because fundamentally Italy's problem centres around one thing: either too much memory, or too little. Andrea Hajek, 10 November 2011 PS - the History Workshop Journal Online webpage was launched on this occasion, and can be accessed here |
Portelli's most recent publication: They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History Oxford Oral History Series, 2010
Podcast of the lecture available here |
