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Why Gothic?

Why Gothic?

Stanton H. Burnett (October 7, 2007)

(This article first appeared in UsItalia weekly on October 30, 2005)
This column will develop a structure of understanding of the background, practices, code words and quirks of Italian politics — a framework most people think they don’t need.

Tools

We, Italians and Americans, have the impression that the politics of the other country is clear and familiar. We both use the common vocabulary of Western politics. Italy has a parliament, parties, elections, a president, a prime minister (sometimes mysteriously called “President”), scandals and television debates. But, to our dismay, nothing works quite as one might expect.

Italians read American articles on Italy and shake their heads: the facts may be accurate, but the sense of what’s important, what isn’t, and what it means, is usually not there. Our confidence in our understanding is misplaced. It ignores the fact that the familiar words and forms hide a political culture that is profoundly different from what Americans know, even if their family background is Italian, even if they have a good understanding of how the rest of Europe works. (Fact: one reason American newspaper editors run fewer stories about Italian politics than about those of the other big Western countries is that the stories are usually much longer. The few good correspondents reporting from Italy need more space to make an event or a situation coherent; cut it and it becomes nonsense.)
So why should a framework of understanding appear to be Gothic?
In a Gothic novel, the innocent heroine (that’s us) enters the mansion with an easy heart, only to find that things are not what they seem. Besides the locked closets and trap doors, there is history there. Ecco.
In Gothic architecture, things are not supposed to be what they seem. The flying buttress does not fly, or leap, as it appears to do, but is, despite appearances, a serious buttress for the whole structure. The keys to the entire structure may be hidden behind ornament and illusion. Ecco.
We certainly do not intend to suggest that Italian politics is entirely dysfunctional or past-bound. The successes of the postwar Italian republic are singularly impressive. But the understanding of the workings of that politics is tricky, fascinating, and always highly provisional. Forget dietrologia — the study of what lies behind — for a while: reading the surface is difficult (and intoxicating) enough.
So, in weeks to come, we’ll explore such mysteries as:
—how to follow a political crisis;
—the Berlusconi phenomenon;
—the relation between culture and politics;
—autobiography and intellectual integrity;
—how to read the political press;
—how the parties tried to use cinema;
—re-writing Communist Party history;
—North and South;
—the failure of the two churches (political Christianity and Marxism);
—the politics of terrorism;
—the geometry of convergent parallelism;
—the role of the U.S. embassy;
—the politics of the magistrates: Milan, Rome, Palermo;
—what Craxi did to the Left…
You see how dense the forest is. We’ll begin next week by introducing the most important person in today’s Italian politics. This person was involved in Italian public life before the 1990s, but was then inconsequential. Then, 13 or 14 years ago, in a change that is almost revolutionary (careful of that word!), this person came on stage and strode across the Italian political landscape, and now dominates it.
I am not speaking of Silvio Berlusconi. I speak of the floating voter.

Stanton H. Burnett is Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies [email protected]

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