Walking on fascist landscapes: looking at the shadows of the f-word

This article is an exercise in dialogue in which the literature on feminist ethnography has given me the occasion to rethink my fieldwork of ten years ago with third millennium fascist activists, to reflect on my ethnographic encounters in order to further investigate the presence and diffusion of fascist practices in Italian society today. My retrospective review of my ethnography thus offers an occasion for examining how the public space occupied by fascism has deeply changed in the last ten years; at the same time, it also allows me to consider the contribution that an analysis rooted in gender relations may offer. I analyse the words that are spoken and the word that has been hidden. A daily process of demystification, banalisation, aesthetisation and mediatic expansion seems to have unearthed the public secret surrounding the “f-word” of fascism, a word that has simultaneously been concealed and performed in Italian democracy. Looking at the shadowed side of fieldwork and the silenced forms of fascist cultural practices proves a fertile strategy for casting light on meaningful directions of inquiry that would otherwise remain in the dark.