Bodies politic: Burial and reburial in fascist Italy

This article examines the ‘necro-politics' or the fascist politics of death as it unfolded from the funerals of the squadristi - the members of the fascist paramilitary squads who carried out attacks and violence throughout Italy before Benito Mussolini came to power in the autumn of 1922 - to their exhumation and reburial in ‘shrines’ during the 1930s. Adopting an anthropological perspective, it considers the funerals, exhumations and reburials of fascists as rites of passage that dynamically came to shape political meanings. As the article will show, while the funerals of the early 1920s became crucial vehicles for the revolutionary mobilization that brought fascism to power, the reburials from the early 1930s served to normalize the politics of the squadristi and obliterate the dangerously disruptive repercussions of their revolutionary origins. At the conceptual level, the article foregrounds the dynamic and shifting relationship between power and ritual that shaped fascist political culture.