The Wounded Male Body: Masculinity and Disability in Wartime and Post-WWI Italy

Abstract This article examines the variety of ways in which Italian soldiers responded to the experience of incurring a permanent physical disability during the First World War. It also describes the potentially unsettling presence of soldiers’ disabled bodies in Italian society, where they were perceived as being disruptive to cultural understandings of male embodiment and hegemonic masculinities. By analyzing different intimate and social exchanges, as well as emotional bonds, this article attempts to disentangle historically the intersection between masculinity and disability. In so doing, it will expose the implications of normative expectations of masculinity, the anxiety that arose from attempts to challenge these norms, and the relevance of context and life phase in understanding the impact of disability on male identity. Drawing on both theories of masculinity and literature on disability, this article will ultimately illustrate how and to what extent disabled veterans in post–First World War Italy negotiated and shaped their gendered identities. It will conclude by considering the role of Fascism in promoting a model of hegemonic masculinity, to which the war disabled could also conform. “Will you still want me if I come back like Vincenzo Bellu?” “With only one arm? Of course, because they’ll give you the Order of Vittorio Veneto and I’ll be your lady! . . .” “I’m not joking. Would you still want me if I was a cripple? Deafened by a grenade or with no legs like Luigi Barranca?” “I’d want you back in any condition, as long as you’re still alive. . . .” “Maybe you can imagine having me back as a worm, but I’d rather die full of life ten times over than have to live ten years like a dead man. If that happens to me I shall do what Barranca did and shoot myself.”1