Continuities and ruptures between generations of political leaders in Italy: The memory, the memories

Abstract

Investigating the political intervention of mass women’s associations in the period following the Second World War, and favoring press materials, archives, memoirs, attention will focus on the first ten years after the Second World War, which see the affirmation of suffrage, the development of mass associations and the birth of the Republic. In the context of this periodization, the forms and channels of transmission of one’s own tradition by associations of different political orientations will be considered. Through the research and analysis of publications (including press articles) dedicated to single figures active in the public sphere (intellectuals, politicians) or to historical events, documentary exhibitions, the intention is to shed light on the collective and individual restitution of a political experience. In this frame, the relationship between generations will be explored and attention will be paid to the different declinations of memory (collective and individual), with the aim of identifying analogies and caesuras in the choice of narrative strategies, in genre models, in the values proposed both in work of political pedagogy and from self-narrative writings. The deepening of these aspects can constitute a fruitful area of analysis for studying intergenerational relationships and the possible construction of a female genealogy, its solidity and its possible fragility.