Futurism from foundation to world war: the art and politics of an avant-garde movement

The cultural influence of the Futurist art movement on the modern era is undisputed. Of course, it is also undisputed that the movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, but in the early years were also known for advancing ideas more associated with the extreme left, such as republicanism, anti-clericalism, and workers’ advancement through revolution. There is no consensus on how to narrate Futurist politics, or their relationship to Futurist art. Were the politics more of the left or the right? And, more to the point, should the politics be studied in isolation, or as integral to the broad ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’? This article takes the latter approach and offers an interpretation that unifies the art and politics of the Futurist movement from its foundation in 1909 through to Italy’s entry into the Great War. I argue that the Futurists themselves did not differentiate between their cultural initiatives to modernize Italy or their political interventionism. In looking at key moments in the political evolution of the movement, and the corresponding artwork of the period, I show that Futurism offered a confused political message in its first years, mixing elements of the left and right, but after the Libyan War and especially in the interventionist period, the political message became much more stridently nationalistic and bellicose, and such themes became prevalent in the art of that time.     

On the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles reflecting the current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, edited by Annalisa Capristo and Ernest Ialongo, marks the 80^th anniversary of the implementation of the Racial Laws in Fascist Italy. It is an opportunity to assess the evolution of the historical literature on Fascist anti-Semitism and to mark future directions for research, but also to pay homage to Michele Sarfatti, who was critical in the development of the current state of the historiography on the subject. Where the earlier work, before the 1980s, was founded on the idea of ‘Italiani brava gente’, wherein Italy’s role was downplayed in the persecution of the Jews and in the Holocaust, that Italians were simply too humane to have participated in such horrific events, Sarfatti’s work launched a veritable revolution in the field, which dismantled all the tenets of the original consensus. This introduction surveys these developments, and summarizes the contributions of the varied authors published here who continue to challenge old truths and bring us closer to a more full and accurate understanding of Fascist anti-Semitism.     

Book reviews

CHINA

JUSTIN JON RUDELSON. Oasis Identities, Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xv, 209 pp. Acknowledgments, maps, illustrations, bibliography, index. US$42.50, hardcover; US$16.50, paper.

ROSS TERRILL. Mao: a Biography. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1995. 524 pp. Bibliographic note, reference notes, index. A$24.95, paper.

ROSS TERRILL. Madame Mao: the White‐Boned Demon. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1995. 466 pp. Bibliographic note, reference notes, index. A$24.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

EIJI OGUMA. Tan'itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [The origins of the myth of the homogeneous nation]. Tokyo: Shinyosha, 1995, 1997. 450 pp. ¥3800, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

H. Th. CHABOT. Kinship, Status and Gender in South Celebes. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996. 291 pp. Author's biography, author's bibliography, appendix, bibliography, three indexes, photographic illustrations. No price given, paper.

GREG POULGRAIN. The Genesis of Konfrontasi: Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia 1945–1965. Bathurst: Crawford House Publishing; London: C. Hurst and Co Ltd, 1998. xxvi, 322 pp. Foreword by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, introduction, map, photographs, index. A$29.95, paper.

M. J. C. SCHOUTEN. Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998. xiv, 334 pp. Index. No price given, paperback.

GENERAL ASIA

KERRIE L. MACPHERSON (ed). Asian Department Stores. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1998. x, 309 pp. Preface, introduction, notes, references, index. £40.00, hardcover.

PETER P. ROGERS, KAZI F. JALAL, BINDU N. LOHANI, GENE M. OWENS, CHANG‐CHANG YU, CHRISTIAN M. DUFOURNAUD and JUN BI. Measuring Environmental Quality in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Asian Development Bank's Office of Environment and Social Development, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1997. vii, 368 pp. Foreword, preface, acknowledgments, notes on contributors, abbreviations and acronyms, appendices. US$30.00, paper.     

A courageous colonialist

R. B. Joyce, Sir William MacGregor, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1971, pp. xvi + 484, $15.00.