This book offers an intersectional investigation into the ways in which the disavowed history of colonial, sexual and racial violence remain embedded in Italian Fascism and contemporary Italian national identity. Writing at the rich juncture of cultural, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic theories, the author draws on visual, textual and performative representations—including open air memorial sites, cinema, testimonial film, and fascist propaganda—to examine the structural disavowal of the myth of the brava gente (the "good Italian”). This exculpatory postwar transitional narrative casts the Italian people as inherently decent and fundamentally unsuited for the cruelties of fascism. Salvio demonstrates how the brava gente myth continues to inform contemporary Italy’s restrictive citizenship laws, anti-immigration policies, and the political economy of late fascism.

The book presents six case studies that portray teachers, activists, and artists working to transfigure the disavowed histories structuring the brava gente narrative. Each case argues that curriculum theory calls for studies of transitional justice that are best informed by scholarship, art and activism that disrupt state-sanctioned disavowal and render education 'useless for the purposes of fascism,' thereby radicalizing Walter Benjamin's historic mandate.

Recommended reading for scholars and students in curriculum theory, Italian studies, history education, migration and museum studies, public pedagogy, transitional justice, and public humanities.

Paula M. Salvio is Professor of Education and Affiliate Professor of Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies at the University of New Hampshire.