Godfrey, S.; (2005) Patriotic heterotopias: Architecture, city and the nation, Italy (1861-1911). Masters thesis , University of London.

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Abstract

This thesis is an enquiry into what patriotism means as an experience, which is considered through the historical context of the birth of the Italian nation and the 'making' of the patriotic subject. It seeks to raise questions on how patriotism is produced by the subject's dynamic interaction with Others and how it is through the repetition of patriotic spatial practices that a national psyche is formed. To undertake this enquiry four of the most significant spaces in Liberal Italy are analysed---the Cimitero Monumentale (Milan), the Vittorio Emanuele Monument (Rome), Lake Fucino (Abruzzo), the Torre Monumentale di San Martino (Lake Garda)---using Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopias as Other spaces where social identity is formed. At each site it is argued that the individual becomes patriotic through falling in love with the Other. The ideological processes by which this infatuation with the patriotic Other occurs is considered through the different ways in which each site appeals to Utopian images of fathers and mothers. This process is developed from Gilles Deleuze's theory that the boy becomes a man through a tragic oscillation between a paternal sadistic symbolic economy and a maternal masochistic one. From studying the patriotic heterotopias it is apparent that sites situated in the city are characterized by a maternal experience, whereas those in the countryside tend to be dominated by a paternal arrangement. Thus, it is suggested that a national psyche develops from an inner motherland, from which it spirals outwards until it reaches the outer limits of patriotic experience that are defended and guarded by a protective fatherland. These inner and outer experiences are united by what is argued is the principal component of patriotism: learning to live for Others more than for oneself.

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