Forward vs. Reverse Gear: The Politics of Proliferation and Resistance in the Italian Fascist State

Abstract

Gender serves as a useful category for historical analysis of the project of Italian fascist state-building, how it proceeded and how it became trapped in its own paradox. Fascist policies played upon nonnative and limited gender stereotypes of women as mothers and prolific bearers of children, yet in the process the dictatorship constructed women as political subjects for the first time in the history of the Italian state. This paper focuses on the fascists' demographics campaign-the Duce's politics of proliferation-and identifies the places in which subjects of fascism consciously chose to. act in opposition to fascist ideologies. Resistance is discussed in terms of everyday acts of noncompliance with fascist directives regarding reproduction. The strategies of legitimation that the fascists used are explored.