Carte Italiane

In this article I argue that Marinetti's influence on Mussolini cannot be limited to cultural policy during the fascist regime and that it is essential to focus the attention on the interference of these currents intended as forms of modernist cultural items. Marinetti pioneered attention to peculiar generational and social targets, developing an approach to mass society which is defined as aporetic elitarianism, intercepting the nature of radical change within modernization, war, women role in the society and elaborated a model of identity alternative respect to the bourgeois one. Mussolini gained from this approach a series of suggestions and strategic hints concerning the technocratic modernism he was intended to achieve. Gender identity-making in modern mass society and the necessity to elaborate a modernistic figure of hero are traits pivotal in appreciating such issues. The main difference between Marinetti and Mussolini is individuated in the conception of state and party bureaucracy, which was seen by Marinetti in very derogative ways with respect to the centrality of the machine myth.