"Telling their own story": women, resistance, and memory in Italian and French communist political cultures, 1943-1958

This thesis examines the ways in which a Communist memory of the Resistance was created and how women created a space for themselves within it. As such, this thesis understands the Resistance as a cultural, as well as a military, movement which had as one of its purposes that of creating and identifying a new national (imagined) community. This community was chiefly built through newspapers and the rhetoric of resistance martyrdom, which could bring the rebirth and redemption of France and Italy. In this context, I question the gendered remembrance of the Resistance communist dead, highlighting – through the case studies of Irma Bandiera (1915-1944) and Danielle Casanova (1909-1943) – how a byproduct of this culture was the commemoration of idolised, figurative women. Then, this thesis examines how the narrativized experience of Resistance (through memoirs, journalism, oral history, official histories and public art) was or was not mobilised in the postwar reconstruction of the countries. Within this context, the thesis focuses on how Communist women amplified the resistance experience through the work of the Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) and the Union des Femmes Françaises (UFF). Through the comparison between the Italian and French cases, this thesis asks why the memory of the Resistance became immediately divisive in Italy, while a greater degree of unity was achieved in France. It will examine the self-representation of French and Italian women and their own agency at a time where traditional gender roles were being re-established and reinforced. Finally, the case studies of Teresa Noce (1900-1980) and Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier (1911-1996) offer the opportunity to examine two exemplary political trajectories as they unfolded in the 1950s. These cases demonstrate how their roles as historical and political actors clashed with or reinforced the communist party’s agenda with respect to the idolised figures of Resistance heroines. Through the analysis of mass media, political propaganda and fictional and biographical accounts, the thesis examines the liminal but visible position of Communist women in postwar French and Italian society and the ways in which a gendered Communist collective memory of the period was created and challenged.