‘The way we were’ : everyday life in fascist Italy and lessons of Alltagsgeschichte

Abstract

This article shows the benefits to be drawn by applying to Fascist Italy an approach that has emerged within the German literature on Nazism within the field of Alltagsgeschichte or the history of everyday life. That approach has the potential to counter a nostalgic, rose-tinted and depoliticized view of life under Fascism, which has arisen in Italian public discourse since the crisis of anti-Fascism in the 1990s. Through a series of vignettes, the authors illustrate how ‘ordinary’ Italians encountered the Fascist state within the spaces of daily life.