Storiografia come storia. Gioacchino Volpe (e dintorni)

In questo contributo si propone una interpretazione dell’indagine di Enzo Cervelli sulla figura di Gioacchino Volpe, vista come un prisma attraverso il quale ricostruire la storia della cultura italiana tra Otto e Novecento nei suoi aspetti ideologici di anticipazione del fascismo. Attraverso l’individuazione, nell’analisi della produzione volpiana, dei temi della nazione, del discorso generazionale nel mancato incontro con il marxismo, dell’irrazionalismo storiografico, della soggettività autobiografica – alcuni dei quali elaborati con decenni di anticipo rispetto ai tempi della ricerca – Cervelli tracciava un complesso e labirintico affresco della cultura italiana ed europea fra età liberale e fascismo, che prendeva le mosse da un problema storico di natura essenzialmente politica. Historiography as history. Gioacchino Volpe (and his surroundings) In this contribution an interpretation of Enzo Cervelli's investigation into the figure of historian Gioacchino Volpe is advanced. Cervelli’s Volpe, it is argued, is seen as a prism through which to reconstruct the history of Italian culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notably in its ideological aspects of anticipation of Fascism. Cervelli was able to discern, across the whole of Volpe’s historiography, a number of topics, such as nation and nationalism, the generational discourse, the missed encounter with Marxism, the historiographic irrationalism, the autobiographical subjectivity, some of which elaborated decades before the maistream research did. By leveraging on these issues, Cervelli traced a complex and labyrinthine fresco of Italian and European culture during the late liberal age and Fascism, which took its cue from a historical question of an essentially political nature.

This contribution advances an interpretation of Enzo Cervellis investigation into the figure of the historian Gioacchino Volpe. Cervellis Volpe, it is argued, is seen as a prism through which to reconstruct the history of Italian culture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notably in its ideological aspects of anticipating Fascism. Cervelli was able to discern, across the whole of Volpes historiography, a number of topics-such as nation and nationalism, the generational discourse, the missed encounter with Marxism, historiographic irrationalism, and autobiographical subjectivity-some of which were elaborated decades before the mainstream research did so. By leveraging these issues, Cervelli painted a complex and labyrinthine fresco of Italian and European culture during the late liberal age and Fascism, which took its cue from a historical question of an essentially political nature.