"Memoricide": The Legacy of Lombrosian Positivism and State Violence in Italy
Modern historiography identifies "Memoricide"—the systematic destruction of a community’s collective memory through the scientific manipulation of facts—as a phenomenon with lethal consequences for national identity. Drawing upon the scholarship of R. Sécher, this process occurs when political and ideological agendas lead to the relativization or suppression of significant historical events. In the Italian context, a severe form of state-sanctioned negationism persists regarding the Risorgimento and its traumatic impact on Southern populations. To understand this ideological framework, it is essential to analyze the eugenic and positivist foundations of the 19th-century Lombrosian school, which provided the theoretical scaffolding for the construction of a "New Italian" identity.
Cesare Lombroso, influenced by British phrenology and Social Darwinism, pioneered a pseudo-scientific narrative that attributed a constitutional "atavism"—or evolutionary regression—to Southern Italians. This discourse was not merely academic; it served as a vital instrument for the Northern ruling classes to justify their hegemonic dominance. By framing the inhabitants of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as biologically predisposed to criminality, the state transformed them into "colonized" subjects, facilitating a policy of internal colonialism.
The legislative manifestation of this prejudice was the Pica Law of 1863. This statute institutionalized a massive machinery of internal deportation and internment. Thousands of civilians—often labeled as "brigands" or "accomplices" without judicial conviction—were relocated to over 70 concentration sites scattered across the Italian peninsula and its archipelagos, such as the Tremiti and Aegadian islands. Despite extensive documentation from independent researchers and contemporary parliamentary acts, these events remain largely excluded from national school curricula and mainstream academic discourse. This omission constitutes what may be described as "State Memoricide," where the devastating truth of the nation’s unification is obscured by the "fog of power."
The intellectual roots of this exclusion also lie in the works of Paolo Marzolo and Carlo Cattaneo, whose linguistic and physiological theories influenced Lombroso. Marzolo’s evolutionary paradigm separated peoples and social classes based on linguistic development, viewing dialects as "rusty relics." This linked biological laws with historical development, creating an indissoluble bond between body and mind. Consequently, Southern populations were deemed socially irredimible and "foreign bodies" within the new Italian state—an image famously reinforced by contemporary political cartoons depicting Southerners as deformed outcasts.
Furthermore, the participation of the Italian positivist school in the 1912 International Eugenics Congress in London demonstrates the global reach of these theories. Figures like Sergi and Niceforo advocated for "artificial selection" to prevent the increase of "degenerates" through deportation and the prohibition of marriage. While modern Italy rightly institutionalizes the "Day of Memory" to honor international tragedies, it continues to ignore its internal history of institutionalized discrimination. A truly democratic society must dismantle these historical taboos, acknowledging the voices of independent research to foster an authentically shared national memory, liberated from the hegemonic distortions of the past.