Understanding and Opposing Fascism: The Political and Intellectual Experience of the Interwar Exile
Zgodovina na Špici / History on the Edge
You are kindly invited to the new event of the History on the Edge series, which will take place on Wednesday, 11 December 2024 at 13:00, at the INZ premises or at the ZOOM link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86949706378
The lecture will be given by Marco Bresciani, and the title of the lecture is who will present his book “Understanding and Opposing Fascism: The Political and Intellectual Experience of the Interwar Exile”.
The lecture will be in English.
Understanding and Opposing Fascism: The Political and Intellectual Experience of the Interwar Exile
Drawing on his recently published book Learning from the Enemy. An Intellectual History of Antifascism in Interwar Europe (Verso Books, London 2024), the author will present the case-study of the revolutionary antifascist group Giustizia e Libertà in the context of the 1930s. Founded by Carlo Rosselli in Paris in 1929, this group experienced original ways of understanding and opposing Mussolini’s dictatorship, while striving for new ideas of statehood and society, nationhood and Europe. The lecturer will especially focus on the intellectual experience of interwar exile. In this regard, transnational networks with French and European intellectuals helped to discuss fascism and Soviet communism, to critically review the Marxist concept of class, and to blend new forms of liberalism and socialism. Additionally, the lecturer will expand on some aspects of the debates related to interwar East Central European experiences (namely, imperial collapse, crisis of the nation-state, federalism and the legacies of Russian populism and Austro-Marxism). Finally, the lecture will try to explain what Giustizia e Libertà learnt from its (fascist) enemy and how its legacy contributed to the construction of post-1945 constitutional democracy, and to its peculiar ways of intersecting politics and economics as well as political and social rights.