Mussolini between Hero Worship and Demystification: Exemplary Anecdotes, Petite Histoire, and the Problem of Humanization

Mussolini is considered in this article as a figure around whom narratives have been developed for a century or more. Several biographies were published shortly after he came to power and many others have appeared in the decades since his death in 1945. This article explores the place of anecdotes in the construction of a legendary Mussolini in the 1920s and in the demystification that marked the period after World War Two. It is shown that early biographies were marked not only by hero worship but also by a commercially driven need to humanize and to amuse. After the war, humanization persisted as former Fascists and associates of Mussolini spread stories and anecdotes that made the dictator appear not as an evil tyrant but as a flawed and fallible human being. The agenda here was to make support for Fascism and its leader forgivable. A comparison of the anecdotes shows that both adulatory and demystificatory ones reserved a place for minor stories or petite histoire. The resulting image, which placed some emphasis on his sex life, proved influential. It presented a challenge to historians and found its way into the biographical films that were made for cinema and television between the 1970 and the 2000s. It is suggested that, via anecdotes, Mussolini occupied an ambiguous and continuous place in the moral universe of Italians, functioning variously as a political and a gender exemplar.

A Tale of Two Statues: Memorialising Queen Victoria in London and Calcutta

The Victoria Memorial in London and the Victoria MemorialHall, Calcutta, are the two most substantial and enduring commemorative schemesbuilt following the death of Queen Victoria on 23 January 1901. Both memorialsremain heritage icons, immediately recognisable parts of the urban fabric ofLondon and Calcutta. The original schemes are nonetheless notable for the imperialmyth-making and the way they place Victoria as the focal point of British rule.Moreover, both schemes foreground the question of the nature of Victoria’sagency and fashioning in relation to commemoration and hero-worship. Thestatues of Victoria by Thomas Brock at the heart of both memorials are part ofmuch grander and elaborate reshaping of the political and urban landscape, butthe commemoration of Victoria in Britain and India reveals some of thefrictions and instability around her legacy.        

Reconsidering the Everyday Ambedkar: Notes towards an Alternative Hero Worship

The main concern in the present article is to bring out the heroic portrait and life-world of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as witnessed by followers living around/with him from the ‘mundaneness’ of every day. By taking recourse into the autobiographical evidences produced by his followers, the article attempts to investigate how the heroic capital of Ambedkar is continuously (re)produced, (re)imagined and disseminated in the contemporary Dalit life/thought. It is my contention that in the post-independent India, the problematic of hero worship has become an important signpost for floating the questions of representation, identity, self-respect, power and historicity which eventually metamorphoses the upholder/beholder of these qualities (Dr Ambedkar in the present case) to that of a God. In academe, we have models to study such transitions. However, in the present context, the hero worship around Ambedkar is that of an alternative kind, channelized through ‘human concerns and impressions’. Instead of transforming him into a God, the followers here attempt to humanize Dr Ambedkar. The humanization of Ambedkar is extracted by plunging into his household, conjugality, paternal instincts, food, clothes and passion for entertainment, among others, categorized usually within the mundaneness of everyday. The article further attempts to argue that the concerns from everyday offer a contest to bring forth the contested stories; that attempt to (re)interpret as well as (re)count the asymmetry and discrimination of caste dynamics in India’s cultural life and Ambedkar’s subsequent combative response to them. The discussion concludes by formulating that these concerns and anecdotes from everyday also give an alternative twist to the process and context of hero worship itself.

Ecological Aesthetic Implications of the Image of “White Deer” in The Plain of White Dear

The Plain of White Deer is an epic novel written by Chen Zhongshi based on Chinese folk mythology and traditional customs and with the Western magic realism creation method. The image of “white deer” in the novel, a regional symbol of Bai Lu Yuan, implies the mythological consciousness of nature worship, deity worship, ancestor worship and hero worship, and embodies the ecological aesthetic concept of harmony and unity among human, nature, and society. This paper focuses on the mythological worship consciousness implied in the image of “white deer”, and tries to explore its internal ecological aesthetic implications.