Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REDIRE (Recorded Sound Propaganda of the Italian Fascist Regime)
Período documentado: 2023-10-01 hasta 2025-09-30
The first political regime to be designated as totalitarian, Italian fascism (1922-1943) deployed intense propaganda, whose use of the press, radio, and cinema has already been extensively studied. However, another of its tools has been overlooked: the phonograph record, which nevertheless played a key role in disseminating fascist policies and imagination. Situated at the intersection of history, sound studies, and media studies, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action REDIRE (Recorded Sound Propaganda of the Italian Fascist Regime) has pioneered the study of phonography, sound, and propaganda through the Fascist era. This innovative research has revealed the political role of phonography in Fascist Italy by tracing its production, describing its uses as a means of propaganda, and analyzing how the imagery of recorded sound and music was intertwined with Fascist imagery to promote the regime.
Based at the University of Bonn, REDIRE benefited from a training and archival research focus secondment at the University of Cagliari and from the expertise of leading researchers in sound studies, media studies, history, and musicology.
Four research and innovation objectives (ROs) have been pursued.
RO1. Establish an online and open access database of discs (metadata plus short descriptions of discs' uses) employed for propaganda by the Fascist regime by examining disc catalogs, press and State archives.
RO2. Analyze the conception, realization and effects of Fascist recorded sound propaganda to inform its political Imaginary.
RO3. Determine how and why the capacities of discs to store, reproduce and amplify sound are exploited by fascist propaganda.
RO4. Understand better the political functioning of technicized sound in a totalitarian regime by comparing the recorded sound propaganda of Fascist Italy to those practiced in Nazi Germany and interwar democratic France.
REDIRE also highlighted the more general strategic role of sound in the representation, and the realization, of the Italian fascist regime, showing how it had been used to support colonialism, aestheticize and territorialize the fascist imagination, exercise and strengthen the regime's hold over the Italian masses.
Based at the University of Bonn, REDIRE benefited from a training and archival research focus secondment at the University of Cagliari and from the expertise of leading researchers in sound studies, media studies, history, and musicology.
Four research and innovation objectives (ROs) have been pursued.
RO1. Establish an online and open access database of discs (metadata plus short descriptions of discs' uses) employed for propaganda by the Fascist regime by examining disc catalogs, press and State archives.
RO2. Analyze the conception, realization and effects of Fascist recorded sound propaganda to inform its political Imaginary.
RO3. Determine how and why the capacities of discs to store, reproduce and amplify sound are exploited by fascist propaganda.
RO4. Understand better the political functioning of technicized sound in a totalitarian regime by comparing the recorded sound propaganda of Fascist Italy to those practiced in Nazi Germany and interwar democratic France.
REDIRE also highlighted the more general strategic role of sound in the representation, and the realization, of the Italian fascist regime, showing how it had been used to support colonialism, aestheticize and territorialize the fascist imagination, exercise and strengthen the regime's hold over the Italian masses.
The methodology developed for REDIRE is designed to analyze the political uses of records and sound, in this case those employed by the fascist regime, based on four epistemic categories: Sound Shaping; Listening; Territorialization; and Apparatus. The decisive aspect of this method of analysis is that it combines aesthetics, political and technical imaginaries, intentions to act, and practices in order to describe and better understand how and for what purpose a political use of records and sound was conceived and implemented.
This method was informed by archival research conducted in the general and specialized press, as well as in Italian State archives. At the same time, information on more than 900 records containing sounds likely to represent the fascist regime, its policies, and its imagination was collected from press archives, record catalogs, and digital catalogs of national libraries (Italy; France). This information was refined and presented in a freely accessible online database (RO1; redire.uni-bonn.de). Press sources, as well as ministerial archives on the censorship of phonography and the measures adopted for its control or political use, revealed powerful representations of its fascist imagery, particularly in a colonial context (RO2). Analysis of the uses of recorded and amplified sound deployed by the fascist regime made it possible to address issues relating to its relationship to time and its totalitarian nature (RO3). Finally, comparisons were made between French and Italian political phonography, as well as comparisons of the uses of records and sound by Italian fascist and Nazi totalitarian regimes.
This method was informed by archival research conducted in the general and specialized press, as well as in Italian State archives. At the same time, information on more than 900 records containing sounds likely to represent the fascist regime, its policies, and its imagination was collected from press archives, record catalogs, and digital catalogs of national libraries (Italy; France). This information was refined and presented in a freely accessible online database (RO1; redire.uni-bonn.de). Press sources, as well as ministerial archives on the censorship of phonography and the measures adopted for its control or political use, revealed powerful representations of its fascist imagery, particularly in a colonial context (RO2). Analysis of the uses of recorded and amplified sound deployed by the fascist regime made it possible to address issues relating to its relationship to time and its totalitarian nature (RO3). Finally, comparisons were made between French and Italian political phonography, as well as comparisons of the uses of records and sound by Italian fascist and Nazi totalitarian regimes.
REDIRE has enabled significant advances in research on the uses and political imagery of phonography, and on the uses of sound as conceived and employed by a totalitarian regime, in this case the Italian fascist regime.
First, the database implemented for REDIRE has made it possible for the first time to identify a vast corpus of records useful for fascist propaganda, which will promote research on political phonography, aesthetics, propaganda, politics, and fascist imagination.
Second, REDIRE has implemented a method of analyzing the political uses of sound in four categories (Sound Shaping; Listening, Territorialization, Apparatus) through which it is possible to write their pragmatic history and contribute to the fields of sound studies and media studies
with new lines of research on the political functioning of sound and its media.
Third, by focusing on the uses and imaginaries of phonography and sound in the context of fascist colonialism, REDIRE has opened up a new line of research into the study of the expansion of fascism.
Fourth, REDIRE has also made it possible to reflect on how the fascist regime articulated its own relationship to time with that of sound media (radio; phonography) by combining, in its propaganda operations, the immediacy of radio listening with the re-presented past of phonographic listening. REDIRE has thus opened up a new line of research into the temporality of Italian fascism and the practices it adopted in an attempt to perpetuate itself.
Fifth, by tackling head-on the issue of the political uses of sound, REDIRE questioned the possibility that there might be a specifically fascist use of sound, thereby questioning the technological determinism of sound media, the differentiation of political practices, and the nature of sound as a mediator. In doing so, REDIRE introduces sound as one of the possible elements of a general definition of fascism, which is still debated today.
Sixith, the results of the research conducted for REDIRE were linked to those of research conducted on France between the two world wars in order to establish a unique point of comparison between a democratic regime and a totalitarian regime.
By launching these lines of research, REDIRE has brought a transnational dimension to the study of political phonographies and the practices they nurture. In doing so, REDIRE has initiated a European history of the production and political uses of phonography, as well as a broader reflection on the circulation and differentiation of political practices at the European level, which will need to be fully investigated in the future.
First, the database implemented for REDIRE has made it possible for the first time to identify a vast corpus of records useful for fascist propaganda, which will promote research on political phonography, aesthetics, propaganda, politics, and fascist imagination.
Second, REDIRE has implemented a method of analyzing the political uses of sound in four categories (Sound Shaping; Listening, Territorialization, Apparatus) through which it is possible to write their pragmatic history and contribute to the fields of sound studies and media studies
with new lines of research on the political functioning of sound and its media.
Third, by focusing on the uses and imaginaries of phonography and sound in the context of fascist colonialism, REDIRE has opened up a new line of research into the study of the expansion of fascism.
Fourth, REDIRE has also made it possible to reflect on how the fascist regime articulated its own relationship to time with that of sound media (radio; phonography) by combining, in its propaganda operations, the immediacy of radio listening with the re-presented past of phonographic listening. REDIRE has thus opened up a new line of research into the temporality of Italian fascism and the practices it adopted in an attempt to perpetuate itself.
Fifth, by tackling head-on the issue of the political uses of sound, REDIRE questioned the possibility that there might be a specifically fascist use of sound, thereby questioning the technological determinism of sound media, the differentiation of political practices, and the nature of sound as a mediator. In doing so, REDIRE introduces sound as one of the possible elements of a general definition of fascism, which is still debated today.
Sixith, the results of the research conducted for REDIRE were linked to those of research conducted on France between the two world wars in order to establish a unique point of comparison between a democratic regime and a totalitarian regime.
By launching these lines of research, REDIRE has brought a transnational dimension to the study of political phonographies and the practices they nurture. In doing so, REDIRE has initiated a European history of the production and political uses of phonography, as well as a broader reflection on the circulation and differentiation of political practices at the European level, which will need to be fully investigated in the future.