On 22nd June 1941, the German armies overcame the Russian resistance on the river Bug and started to penetrate in depth in Russia in a drunken state of exaltation. It was the triumph of the Blitzkrieg which many generals considered the only true form of military art, according to the legacy of Clausewitz and Schlieffen: the dimension of the attack was such that the commanders ignored what other units were doing, and the common motto was “forward, no matter what the others do”, in order to annihilate the enemy before this could strike back. For many a soldier this unstoppable advance was just a leap into the void, because after leaving the last villages of the Reich they found themselves alone in the vastness of an unknown land…
When he stopped his studies of engineering in Manchester, Wittgenstein moved to Cambridge to study logic under the guidance of Bertrand Russell because he believed that by comprehending the fundamentals of language, and therefore the limits of language, he would understand its essence, as well as that of human beings, in primis, himself…
In 1991 Italian publisher Bollati Boringhieri issued a monograph titled Una Guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza. It would change points of view on history and stimulate debates for years to come. Its author, Claudio Pavone, one of the finest Italian historians, died last week, aged 95. Una Guerra civile appeared in English only three years ago, as A Civil War. A History of the Italian Resistance. A true ‘watershed’ title, this book provides a new stance on the Italian Resistance in the Second World War. In this gripping synthesis, Pavone defines the years between the armistice, on 8 September 1943, and the end of the war, which culminated with the Liberation on 25 April 1945, as a war of liberation, a class war, and more importantly, a civil war. The war of liberation was the war fought throughout Italy against the German occupiers, whereas the class war refers to the ideological conflict and the several strikes which took place in that period. What caused widespread debates amongst historians, former partisans, politicians and the public, was the idea of civil war. The though of a fratricidal conflict was not new in itself, but it had been used in the war years mostly by those who had remained loyal to Mussolini, to stress the idea of betrayal by the partisans and the institutions fighting with the Allies. Pavone used this term with a very different purpose, though. He wanted to resurface this aspect of the conflict, Italians killing other Italians, to make it once again part of the collective memory of the war. In Italy the memory of the Second World War is very much divided, as many works have demonstrated (for example Alessandro Portelli’s The Order Has Been Carried Out, a monograph about the divided memories of the Ardeatine Caves massacre), and this is mostly a political division. This is why Pavone’s book caused such a turmoil when it came out in 1991, at a time when political debates on the left and on communism had been revived after the fall of the Berlin wall. In addition, despite being lost in translation, the reflection on ‘morality’ that appears in the original title, remains one of the key issues in the essay, which the author explains as “the territory on which politics and ethics meet and clash”.
Perhaps it is worth stressing that Pavone’s agenda was certainly not
the same as that of neo-fascist groups who still exist in Italy, or of a
certain type of historical revisionism. Despite growing up under
fascist dictatorship, Pavone was able to develop his own political
conscience and after 8 September he got in touch with the socialist
partisan brigades and started cooperating with them. As a member of the
Resistance, he was imprisoned at Regina Coeli in Rome, but was able to
survive the experience.
For many years after the war, he worked as an archivist, with key
functions in the re-arrangement of the Italian national archives
(Archivio Centrale dello Stato). From the 70s he worked at the
Università di Pisa as a professor, and among his other prominent works
there is La continuità dello stato: istituzioni e uomini, in which he
reflected on the idea of the continuity between the fascist regime and
the democracy that followed the war. His work on the role of public
history is also worth remembering.
Claudio Pavone’s work has given scholars of our generation the chance
of having a critical view not only of events, but also on the place of
history in the wider society.
Few professions have such discriminatory stereotypes as translators and interpreters. Very sadly, the Italian cliché traduttore, traditore is still thought to be true by many people. Nevertheless, both translators and interpreters have also contributed to the persistence of these stereotypes. To make matters worse, the concept of the unfaithful interpreters has been fuelled by sensationalist media as well as by military and political leaders. The following example is from The New York Times…
The letters sent from the front during WWII constitute a broad universe which we are just partially familiar with (tens of thousands of letters out of billions). Only a very small portion of the immense corpus of letters from and to the fronts has been published, which means that such a form of testimony constitutes an important but also distorted means of encounter with war. Do therefore letters constitute a good means for encountering war? Do people at home really come across war, when they read the letters received from their loved ones at the front?…
In an interview published in the newspaper El País
(April 17, 2015), José Palazón, president of the nongovernmental
organization “Prodein”, and winner of the XVIII Luis Valtueña
Humanitarian Photography Award, remembers a conversation that he had
with a prosecutor, twenty years ago, when he was denouncing the abuses
against immigrants in Melilla, the Spanish enclave on the North African
coast. Palazón complained that his efforts to gain visibility were not
getting anywhere, to which the prosecutor replied: “Look for evidences.
Take photographs”. Since then, it seems that Palazón has learned his
lesson and the photograph “Desolate landscapes”, which he submitted to
the Luis Valtueña photography competition has travelled around the
world.
The twentieth-century opened under the sign of great trust in progress and technology. Machines, which had since ever been considered as a dangerous adversary and as a source of primordial fear, quickly began to lose their disquieting aspect and to become an ally of human beings as a ductile tool to overcome physical strain. Airplanes and cars created new opportunities for transport at unprecedented speed besides steam-locomotives, which had replaced horse-powered coaches as the main connection between cities…
Ancient Romans used to say “si vis pacem, para bellum”,
which one could rephrase as “if you want peace, prepare for war”. War
has always been much more than mere fighting. It affects society as a
whole even in peacetime, for example in terms of training, preparation
and strategy. Carl von Clausewitz wrote that war is the “continuation of
politics by other means”, meaning that war implies some transformation
of mentality and the awareness that sometimes dialogue and compromise
are not enough to compose litigation between two countries o two
communities. However, war is no necessity. The Latin motto cited above
must be read ironically, especially because it sounds very useful for
any imperialistic ideology aiming to preserve its power and privileges
by threatening other countries by stockpiling weapons and training big
armies. War is not desirable, and as the French WWI veteran Jean Giono
said, war does not uphold peace. All the opposite: war produces war,
while peace is just another path. But one could say that it takes a long
way to understand this, or better, it takes experience.
War is a brutal affair, but it has been and continues to be a key
aspect of human history and social change. The Humanities and the Social
Sciences can help us make sense of that, because they talk about who we
are and they help us define our experience. They can also help us make
sense of the disturbing aspects of the human character which become so
evident in war. The violent nature of wars and conflicts and their
effects on societies around the world and throughout history raise
complex moral and ethical questions the answer to which is generally
very controversial. For example is war always wrong? How can we explain
our behaviour in war? Why do we wage war?
We believe that the best way to address these complex questions
(again, ambitious project!) is to look at the cultural aspects of war
and conflict, really focusing on the human experience of those who were
(or are) there. We want to talk about ‘what it is like’ to be there, and
for us the best way to do it is with the help of the Humanities.
‘Cultural aspects’ means that any kind of narrative about war and
conflict is interesting for us, as well as any kind of representation,
from literary, journalistic and artistic portrayals to exhibits and
museums.
Combatants are not the only witnesses of war. Civilians, journalists,
NGOs-operators, and other groups can equally tell stories about war
insofar as they have seen it. The strength of such stories rests on
their ability to convince others that war is, or is not, a worthwhile
experience. They have come across war and gone through it, for better or
worse. All those who have seen war have experienced violence and its
corruption. Story-telling, together with other things (such as
monuments, museums, celebrations, and others) embodies atonement,
purification and return to civil society. Witnesses can share their
opinions about war, can use words as a new and not lethal weapons to
support the cause of fighting or that of peace. Story-telling is a
particular encounter with war for those who have no clear idea of what
war is. A narrated conflict is a cultural object. It is made of images
and words; its very fabric is the rhetoric of story-telling, and later
on of history. From facts to stories, war transforms itself into an
experience of suffering and violence which can be made without the risk
of getting overwhelmed and harmed.
All representation is interpretation. It has its own reality but it
also contributes to create new reality. Representation-interpretation
transfigures war into an indirect experience, an intellectual one. One
could say that a discourse on war is true because it has been produced
by an eye-witness or by an objectively detached and well-informed
historian. But how can one tell the difference? Where is the limit
between war as reality and war as a vision? The Humanities and the
Social Sciences set the tools, critical and intellectual, to face this
methodological and epistemological questions. What’s more, they also
help understand those questions ethically.
War as an encounter with the unknown, the unexpected, the undesirable
implies an understanding of what encountering ‘the enemy’, ‘the other’,
or merely ‘the different’ means. Disciplines such as history,
philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology and others
can help us discern and comprehend. So let us begin our discussion with
two articles on the very actual issue of violence in captivity.
Terrorists kidnapping relief workers and journalists, terrorists publishing videos of horrible executions by decapitation and even burning, terrorists wiping out principles such as the freedom of the press and satire in the heart of the West in Paris, while stories of westerners joining the fight on the IS side are profusely present in the news. The ‘war on terror’, far from over, is raging, and it continues to be depicted by Western media and political authorities as a ‘just war’ fought against a heinous enemy…
In all ages of human history, torture has represented a fear and a reality for prisoners of war. Soldiers captured in war can be the victims of the victor’s retaliation immediately after battle as well as far behind the front line, through interrogations for intelligence, forced-labour, brain-washing. In fact, torture is not only physical. George Orwell describes the perversion of psychological torture in his novel 1984 (1948) by means of the symbol of Room 101. Primo Levi, the well-known Auschwitz-witness, once wrote that “useless violence” in Nazi Lagers consisted in inflicting apparently aimless physical and psychological suffering in order to demolish the human dignity and resilience of captives…
