Memorie Collettive Fluide: i Fiumi Po e Tevere fra Fascismo e Rappresentazione Letteraria
Fluid Collective Memories: the Rivers Po and Tiber between Fascist Ideology and Literary Representation

Summary/Abstract: The notion of collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992/1925) is of central importance in the modern social sciences, although it remains highly controversial in its conceptualization: Hirst (2008) encapsulates the two ends of a spectrum in which collective memory is seen as a social representation contained “in the world” or as shared individual memories. The current work aims at exploring how these two positions are not mutually exclusive, but rather coexist and are useful in distinguishing between different types of collective memory. Two rivers of the Italian peninsula, the Po and the Tiber, will exemplify how the same segment of the world can be the object of a collective memory understood both as a social representation that transcends individual minds, and as a direct result of shared individual memories. More specifically, we will first investigate the transcendent symbolic meanings that both rivers have acquired from the fascist ideological apparatus; secondly, through the analysis of two contemporary works of travel literature [Il Po si racconta (Rea, 1996) and Storie lunghe un fiume (Romani & Vinti, 2006)], we will explore how multiple shared individual memories are able to shape collective memories by themselves. To conclude, we aim at clarifying that defining a collective memory as completely independent or completely dependent on multiple individual memories is a matter of understanding the essence of a specific collective memory, rather than a realistic race for the conquest of a pure conceptualization.

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