Abstract

The Concept of Resistance in Italy brings together experts from different fields to reflect in a new, comprehensive critical approach, on an event that has shaped the young Italian nation from the onset of Fascism in the early 20s. Although grounded in the Italian context, its theoretical frameworks, provided by the variety of disciplines involved in the volume, will prove beneficial for any critical discourse on the concept of resistance nowadays.

Moving from a reflection on the legacy of the Italian Resistance to Fascism and the
Resistance Movement born in the latest years of WWII, when Italy witnessed the presence on its territory of foreign troops from opposite corners, and was involved in a Civil War at the very same time, this collection reassesses the concept of Resistance within the Italian 20th and 21st century cultural context, moving beyond historical perspectives. The multidisciplinary scope allows for an historical, philosophical and artistic exploration of the concrete actions that define resistance to Fascism, and the Resistance Movement during WWII, their representations in literature, cinema and music, and the more abstract philosophical concept of Resistance in a rapidly changing globalized world, with oppressive political orders, new global economic structures, and emerging new philosophical fields.
Maria Laura Mosco is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Western Ontario, Canada

Pietro Pirani is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Western Ontario, Canada
A collection of inspiring, original, multidisciplinary articles by internationally acclaimed scholars on the concept of resistance and Italians’ troubled relationship with Resistenza, The Concept of Resistance in Italy encourages us to reconsider both the role of the Resistance in the making of a nation and its legacy within Italian society. Here comes a much-welcomed volume to understand texts as forms of resistance.
Anna Chiafele, Associate Professor, Auburn University, USA
This book offers a refreshingly iconoclastic, multidisciplinary approach to study of the Italian Resistance and its legacy. Through a series of cohesively integrated and original contributions from an eclectic group of scholars, the collection confronts lingering questions about the history and contested memories of the Resistance. Yet it also insists that we conceive of the Resistance in the broadest possible terms, as a concept, whose meaning has universal and enduring value.
Robert A. Ventresca, Associate Professor, King’s University College at Western University, Canada