Description
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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. (2025-09-12)
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