The politics of memory. Heirlooms and relics of patriots, fighters and martyrs of the Italian Risorgimento

The topic of the essay is that of the political use of relics belonged to patriots, heroes and martyres of the Italian Risorgimento, in a national perspective from the first half of 19th century to the first period of 20th century. The aim regards the building of a historical picture within which I would examine a diversified and broad-spectrum range of objects, belonged to patriots, politicians, military (both individuals and groups); which objects were recovered, stored, collected by relatives, friends, associations, sometimes during the unification achievment still ongoing, and then moved from a private framework into a wide spread exhibition and public sharing of the composite and also conflicting memory of the Risorgimento. In different periods and contexts, and according to several purposes, these relics-objects were alternately mediators of political languages, symbols of collective identities, pedagogical tools and, as documents-monuments, parts of a cultural, memorial and scientific heritage. Within the historical context signed by seeking political support, building a national identity, using the memory of the Risorgimento – on which recent historiography has dwelt – the principal aim is to investigate the nature, texture, origins, destinations of particular sets of objects which, starting from the last two decades of the 19th century, would crowd the first museums of national history in Italy. The essay wants to provide a systematic mapping and a typological division of the relics-objects; to linger on the actors and main characters (relatives - especially women -, comrades in arms, exiled; the galaxy of war veterans’ associations; and then politicians, mayors, administrators, cultural organizers) involved in the first attempts of production, assembly, custody and exhibition of such materials. The focus will then move to the first places of memorial construction, during the pre-unitarian period and then during the years of the Right governements (amphibians places such private collections, boardrooms, council chambers, barracks and membership sites; mortuaries; palaces and churches; exhibitions sites); and it will study in deep the subsequent transfers of many of these items in the first major exhibitions and the first museums of the Italian Risorgimento, following institutional rather than hidden ways.