Bøger af Nicola Guerra

Qual è l'origine del fenomeno dei murales repubblicani nordirlandesi? Quali sono i significati che questi murales comunicano? Questo studio mira, attraverso un'indagine multidisciplinare, a rispondere a queste domande. Dotato di un importante apparato di documentazione fotografica ad opera dell'autore, il lavoro condotto da Nicola Guerra rappresenta un nuovo genere nel quale la fotografia incontra lo studio del linguaggio, la semiotica, la semantica, l'etnografia, le scienze politiche e sociali e la storia. Lo studio offre uno sguardo unico e profondo sulle radici e i significati del fenomeno artistico e politico degli "artisti armati" nazionalisti nordirlandesi.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers. My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers' political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the "Germanisation" or "Nazification" of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers' ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase. The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers' ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers' relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers' domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs. An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers' motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers' political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically "super-fascist". The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the "Germanisation" or "Nazification" of fascist ideology.

Scientific Study from the year 2011 in the subject History of Europe - Newer History, European Unification, Turku School of Economics, language: Italian, abstract: The present paper discusses the Counter-Risorgimento movement (Controrisorgimento) in Northern Tuscany focusing mainly on the historiographical issues regarding the current research on the Risorgimento-phenomenon and the concept of the Death of the Nation (Morte della Patria) suggested by Renzo de Felice and Ernesto Galli della Loggia. The approach of Italian historical research toward Risorgimento, as well as the Resistance (or Civil War), has traditionally been very black and white: the protagonists of the events have been divided into moral categories of good and evil as a result of the political function of historical writing and a historical reconstruction of both sides of the story is still, quite surprisingly, to be written. This article proposes a new and less apologetic approach to the study of the Italian Risorgimento by looking at the phenomenon as the conclusive point of a great internal conflict. The article discusses the Counter-Risorgimento movement primarily from a local perspective but it also aims to widen and to rethink the methodological approach that has traditionally been adopted by historians in relations with the Risorgimento. In conclusion, the article proposes a more holistic approach to the study of the Risorgimento most of all by taking in consideration also the experience of the counter-forces of which we know very little today and by deconstructing the political and rhetoric pathos that still influences the historical representation of this phenomenon.

Scientific Study from the year 1999 in the subject Romance Studies - Italian and Sardinian Studies, Turku University of Applied Sciences, course: Italian Culture & Language, language: Italian, abstract: Questo studio, basandosi su fonti di archivio e pubblicazioni dell'epoca, prende in esame, nel territorio corrispondente all'attuale provincia di Massa Carrara, gli eventi e le condizioni sociali successive alla presa di potere sabauda del 1859. Il quadro che emerge si dimostra da subito complesso ed articolato evidenziando una situazione sociale e politica ben lontana dalla collettiva sollevazione popolare filounitaria spesso narrata. È presente, infatti, una reazione filoestense, determinata da scelte e comportamenti individuali e collettivi, che assume i tratti tipici di un movimento di resistenza e di un fenomeno di volontariato militare. L'inquadramento di tali eventi all'interno del dibattito storiografico nazionale porta l'autore a formulare e rispondere ad un chiaro interrogativo: il Risorgimento fu moto di unificazione nazionale, rivoluzione mancata o guerra civile?