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Race, technological modernity, and the Italo-Australian condition: Francesco De Pinedo's 1925 flight from Europe to Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2020

Christopher Lee  and
Claire Kennedy
Christopher Lee*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Claire Kennedy
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
*
*Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Writing about fascism and aviation has stressed the role technology played in Mussolini's ambitions to cultivate fascist ideals in Italy and amongst the Italian diaspora. In this article we examine Francesco De Pinedo's account of the Australian section of his record-breaking 1925 flight from Rome to Tokyo. Our analysis of De Pinedo's reception as a modern Italian in a British Australia, and his response to that reception, suggests that this Italian aviator was relatively unconcerned with promoting Fascist greatness in Australia. De Pinedo was interested in Australian claims to the forms of modernity he had witnessed in the United States and which the Fascists were attempting to incorporate into a new vision of Italian destiny. Flight provided him with a geographical imagination which understood modernity as an international exchange of progressive peoples. His Australian reception revealed a nation anxious about preserving its British identity in a globalising world conducive to a more cosmopolitan model of modernity.

Gli studi incentrati sul rapporto tra fascismo e aviazione hanno messo in rilievo il ruolo ricoperto dalle tecnologie nell'ideologia mussoliniana volta a coltivare valori fascisti sia in Italia che all'estero tra gli Italiani emigrati. L'articolo prende in esame il resoconto dato da Francesco De Pinedo della sua trasvolata da Roma a Tokyo nel 1925 e in particolare la tratta australiana. L'analisi dell'accoglienza tributata a De Pinedo e del modo in cui - in un'Australia ancora britannica - viene considerato espressione della modernità italiana, insieme all'esame della sua reazione a tale ricezione sembrano indicare il poco interesse dell'aviatore a promuovere la grandezza dell'Italia fascista in Australia. La sua attenzione è principalmente volta alle forme di modernità manifestate in Australia, simili a quelle da lui osservate in precedenza negli Stati Uniti, e che il regime fascista mira ad incorporare in una nuova visione del destino italiano. L'esperienza aeronautica dota De Pinedo di un'immaginazione geografica che lo porta a vedere la modernità come uno scambio internazionale tra popoli progressisti. La ricezione di De Pinedo in Australia ci rivela una nazione ansiosa di salvaguardare la propria identità britannica in un mondo avviato verso la globalizzazione, un mondo favorevole quindi ad un modello più cosmopolita di modernità.

Keywords

Italian-Australian relationsmodernitygeographical imaginationracetravelaviation
Type
Research Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 243 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Association for the Study of Modern Italy

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