Extractive power

The extractive economy is predicated on a process of subtraction, whereby resources are obtained through removal and exploitation without regard for the broader ecosystem or long-term consequences. This economic model is often favoured by regimes seeking to consolidate power and consent, and it is symbolic of the coercion and culture of obedience that characterise both totalitarian and colonial systems of government. As formulated by De Grazia (Reference De Grazia1981, 4–7), consent in Fascist Italy – with its multifaceted interpretations – generally refers to the restless aim of unifying a fractured society by withstanding the severe and conflicting pressures of distorted economic growth amidst regional disparities and political divisions. A strong, centralised authority facilitated territorial control, which forcefully asserted its rule over the human population, as well as over landscapes above and below ground. In this sense, Fascist ideology acted through its extractive power. Historian Geoff Eley has formulated the theory of the aggressive relationship between consent, loyalty and coercion, the so-called ‘extraction of consent’, by actively discussing ‘the place of coercion in consent’ (2013, 36). Extraction, both as a method for coerced consent and as the violent exploitation of resources, constructs national identity and collective belonging through political, economic, historical and geological influences. State making and resource making are inherently intertwined in their idealised, extractive principles. They construct the imagined community of a nation by drawing on the discourse of resource nationalism, which argues that the people of a country should primarily benefit from the resources within their territorially defined state, rather than from foreign entities (Koch and Perreault Reference Koch and Perreault2019).

Under Fascism, the state sought to increase Italy’s industrial, chemical and military capabilities through the expansion of the country’s extractive industries, particularly in the areas of coal, iron, steel and sulphur production. In the 1930s, the latter became one of the main extractive industries, with Sicily as its focal point. Although sulphur was mined in other areas of Italy as well, Sicily was the main source of this mineral, despite limitations and problems.

In the nineteenth century, Sicily was the world’s main supplier of sulphur compounds, covering over 80 per cent of global production between the 1860s and 1880s. There were at least 182 operational mines, mainly in the Caltanissetta and Agrigento regions, up until the end of the First World War. Foreign merchants, especially British, heavily invested in mines and monopolised sulphur exports throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Mine management was typically exploitative, and only minimal improvements were made to the miners’ working and living conditions, despite the involvement of international capital (Alù Reference Alù2024). This was mostly the result of a tangled, hierarchical system maintained by landowners (who also possessed the subsoil) through patriarchal and exploitative labour structures, which secured their regional, social and political power, and the ineffectiveness of the government’s attempt to protect workers. Sulphur was exported and used for the fabrication of textiles, the production of gunpowder, soda ash and soap, in the paper industry, in the manufacturing of medicines and fertilisers, and for other chemical processes (Davis Reference Davis1982; Barone and Torrisi Reference Barone and Torrisi1989; Blando Reference Blando and Salvemini2009; Cunha Reference Cunha2019). Other major importers included the United States, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Russia. The combination of capital, labour and technology was aimed at producing large quantities of goods for sale on the international market. This led to an intense plundering of the environment, and sulphur became known as Sicily’s ‘yellow gold’, which, within a system of production and commercialisation, facilitated foreign companies’ monopolistic, speculative and extractive manoeuvres up until the beginning of the twentieth century (Squarzina Reference Squarzina1963; Spina Reference Spina2006).

In 1917, the Italian chemical company Montecatini managed to get direct and indirect control of nearly half of the national production of Italian sulphur; in Sicily, it participated in the establishment of the Società Solfifera Siciliana (which it absorbed in 1942) and the Unione Raffinerie Siciliane, and it acquired nearly the entire share capital of the Società Mineraria Siciliana. Montecatini later focused on refining, because it offered significantly higher profitability compared to the problematic, simple mineral extraction. In 1923, Montecatini – and its CEO Guido Donegani – declared its support for the regime to obtain protection of property rights and against foreign competition and social conflicts.Footnote ³

In 1927, Sicilian mines were declared state-owned; in April 1940, in line with the autarkic economic policy, the Fascist government created the Ente Zolfi Italiani. The measures adopted by the new authority aimed to limit the income of large landowners, to entrust the development of mineral resources to large companies, and to promote the mechanisation of production facilities, thereby reducing costs through lower rental fees and stricter regulations on the expiration of mining concessions. According to sources of the time, in 1937 Italy produced 367,000 tonnes of sulphur, of which about 250,000 tonnes came from 99 active mines in Sicily. The remaining production occurred in other mines owned by the chemical company Montecatini in Romagna and Marche, and in the Società Anonima Industrie Meridionali (SAIM) mines in Irpinia and in Calabria. Only 7,000 tonnes per year were for national use and almost none for local needs. In 1938, it was stated that Italy’s production was second only to that of the United States, and in 1939, it was reported that Sicily produced 70 per cent of the total sulphur production in Italy (in addition to rock salt, asphalt, chalk, pumice and sea salt) (Poggiali Reference Poggiali1938, 48–52; Siano Reference Siano1939). In 1939, a report indicated that sulphur was used for agriculture (38 per cent), textiles (20 per cent) and fertilisers (18 per cent), as well as for cellulose, paper, colours and paints, explosives and sugar. The report also made the following observation: ‘It hardly needs pointing out that in the case of sulphur, this is not a matter of autarky for Italy, but rather of gold that is brought into our Fatherland through the exportation of this mineral so abundantly bestowed upon us by Nature’ (MPII 1939, 99).

The hegemonic, extractivist methods that had characterised the sulphur industry in Sicily during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remained – although in other forms – under Fascism. The management of the extractive industry reflected the complex and often contradictory nature of Fascist economic policies, which sought to balance the interests of large private enterprises – such as Montecatini – with the needs of the state and broader society, and with national aspirations. In the 1930s, sulphur mining – along with the electrical, motor, steel and chemical industries – was integrated into the economic framework, which was characterised by a mixture of capitalist principles and state intervention (see Grifone [Reference Grifone1936] Reference Grifone1975). This fusion aimed to position the Italian industry as a formidable force, enhancing the nation’s international prominence and asserting its dominance in the Mediterranean (Toniolo Reference Toniolo1980; Falasca-Zamponi Reference Falasca-Zamponi1997, 134; Dell’Orefice Reference Dell’Orefice and Fausto2007; Settis Reference Settis2023).

Sulphur mines in Sicily were a source of wealth accumulation that existed and operated despite various contradictions. They were periodically affected by production crises, US competition, the backward technologies still used in numerous mines, and conflicts between mine owners and the various organisations set up to control prices. The Fascist regime’s problems mostly dated back to the previous liberal government and its inability to properly exploit natural resources (Cappa Reference Cappa1922). After a few years of economic and production difficulties, especially following the 1929 crisis, the fall in prices on the world market was exacerbated in Italy by higher extraction costs compared to competitors; between 1934 and 1935, as Italy prepared for the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, extractive production – including sulphur – was under control, exports increased and unsold stock decreased, at least up until the war (Toniolo Reference Toniolo1980, 164). In 1936, 128,446 people were employed in the extractive industries, including 17,370 in sulphur mines, of whom 10,783 were located in Sicily. This number grew over the next three years before eventually collapsing.

In his essay on the Mostra del Minerale Italiano in Rome, published in 1938, Ramiro Fabiani acknowledged the complexity of the problems, which were made more difficult by interconnections with various general and local issues that hampered sulphur production on the island. However, he stressed the great importance of Sicily for its ‘new Mediterranean and imperial role’ and the support of the national government and other bodies to promote and encourage the study of these problems. In this way, Sicily could fulfil its desire to contribute, as much as possible, to the self-sufficiency of the nation (Fabiani Reference Fabiani1938, 37).

Notwithstanding the vaunted improvements in the extractive industry and its role in the imperial and autarkic project, wages were among the lowest in Europe. The growing unrest had several outcomes: on the one hand, there were covert wage rises, such as production bonuses and family allowances; on the other hand, absenteeism was penalised, leading to stricter state oversight of employment, among other measures. The regime exercised power over the population through policies aimed at controlling and regulating labour, for example by dissolving trade unions and restricting workers’ bargaining power, coupled with censorship and state violence to suppress dissent. Moreover, records and documentaries rarely reported incidents, disasters or the life-threatening conditions of miners (and other workers) (Monthly Labor Review 1943). In his Under the Axe of Fascism (1936), Gaetano Salvemini (Reference Salvemini and Vivarelli1974) wrote how Italian journalists visiting Sicily portrayed the sulphur mines as prosperous, claiming that no accidents had occurred in two years; instead, a single mining accident in 1928 caused seven deaths and 12 serious injuries. The number of general workplace injuries rose from 394,759 in 1933 to 490,800 in the following year. In the 1930s, official reports continued to understate the number of injuries twelvefold, and compensation for industrial worker fatalities declined (Salvemini Reference Salvemini and Vivarelli1974, 262–263, 273).

Nevertheless, the hardships and dangers of working in the mines were predominantly depicted—as we will see later—through a celebratory narrative that elevated the miners as heroic fighters against the brute force of nature and the challenges of their material environment. The ‘renewal’ of the extraction industry was publicised in the journal La Miniera Italiana, which communicated its programme related to natural resources in 1936 (under a new director and renamed La Miniera Italiana: Rivista dell’industria mineraria e della metallurgia):

Reiterating the international view of Italy as a country poor in primary resources, the journal nevertheless stressed how they, along with the mining and metallurgical industries, were synergised for national strength: ‘We must be truly grateful to the short-sighted policies of many countries, which have finally placed Italy in a position where it must make full use of the resources that Nature has so generously endowed it with’ (La Direzione Reference Direzione1936). According to this view, above—and underground resources, whether provided by nature or not, were intimately related to each other and had to be conquered, made visible and exploited with any means: ‘Peoples who lack Raw Materials tend to seek them through conquest. In doing so, they exercise a natural human right—for as inhabitants of the Earth, no one can be deprived of what the Earth has made available for human life and progress’ (MPII 1940).

Mining, together with harvesting and related activities involving the digging up and extraction of resources from nature, contributed to human and material regeneration, all in line with the principles of the bonifica integrale, bonifica umana and bonifica della cultura (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 4). The bonifica integrale, with its battle for wheat project, was seen to boost agricultural production in Italy. By draining the swampy areas and turning them into farmland and new towns, such as along the Latium coast and in Sicily and Sardegna, the government hoped to increase food production and reduce reliance on imports. Between 1937 and 1940, for example, villages were built in Sicily by the ECLS, the national institution of colonisation of the Sicilian latifundium (Samuels Reference Samuels2012).Footnote ⁴ Writing in 1937, the journalist Virginio Gayda observed that ‘bonificare la Sicilia’ (to reclaim Sicily) was indeed necessary to double its production of wheat and to ‘enhance and expand the potential of agricultural cultivation—which represents a major part of the island’s economy—and simultaneously, to bring the farmer back to the land’ (1937, 55–57). Such a project involved a radical revision of the entire environment and transformation of the landscape to improve the living standards of the farmers. It was strictly dependent on the extraction of natural resources and the battle for the ‘liberation of our Country from the bondage of foreign supplies’ (Mussolini Reference Mussolini1934, 124; PNF Reference Fascista1938, viii). The use of heavy machinery and equipment for the bonifica required the extraction of raw materials such as iron and coal, which were furthermore used to build infrastructure such as roads, bridges and drainage systems. The battaglia del grano, the fight for self-sufficiency in bread cereals, was also intended to boost the production of the chemical industry, the hallmark of any policy of autarky. The sulphur industry produced nitrates and phosphates for the making of chemical fertilisers employed to increase crop yields. The government encouraged the use of chemical fertilisers and supported chemical companies such as Montecatini by providing subsidies and tax breaks, and by promoting the use of chemical fertilisers through propaganda campaigns (Lyttelton Reference Lyttelton1973, 356–357). Examples can be found in the photobooks published by the Touring Club between 1936 and 1938, such as the well-known Il Volto agricolo dell’Italia by Senator Arturo Marescalchi, which provided a visual display of the changes in Italian agriculture thanks to the large-scale combined use of new machines and chemicals, from the cultivation of Sicilian oranges to vineyards treated with sulphur products. Marescalchi’s book combined idealised agrarian life with modernist realism in photographs of fertile landscapes and heroic workers, thus reflecting the Fascist vision of agricultural progress and purity. Regarding Sicily, Gayda highlighted its three main industrial resources, linking wheat production and consumption (‘mills and pasta factories’), land and extraction (1937, 93). In this way, land – its soil and subsoil – had to be used and shaped into a productive machine that was represented through images of technological progress and the moral superiority of rural life.

As explained by Armiero, Biasillo and von Hardenberg (Reference Armiero, Biasillo and von Hardenberg2022, 39), the subterranean environment in Italy and its colonies served as the quintessential canvas for envisioning a nature tailored to self-sufficiency and a biopolitical agenda. Under Fascism, ‘productive nature’ meant that nature was valuable only when humans worked on it to increase productivity, which was essential for building a human world across economic, political, moral and intellectual realms (Mussolini [Reference Mussolini1932] Reference Mussolini1934, 67–96; Caprotti and Kaïka Reference Caprotti and Kaïka2008; Armiero and von Hardenberg Reference Armiero and von Hardenberg2013).

Moreover, mining was necessary for ‘the defence of the very freedom of our Fatherland’ and operated in conjunction with the subtraction and annihilation of life, especially in colonial territories. Reports from the time stated that sulphur was indispensable for producing sulphuric acid, other crucial chemicals and high-potential gas-asphyxiating explosives, as well as for metallurgical processes vital to the production of war material (Fugardi Reference Fugardi1930, 88; Consiglio Reference Consiglio1935, 725). Sulphur was used to produce gas weapons including ‘mustard gas’ (iprit), which was used in air bombs in the colonial campaigns in Libya (1929–30) and in Abyssinia (1935–6) and caused severe injuries, deaths and widespread contamination of agricultural lands and villages. Italy’s use of chemical weapons was part of the broader trends in chemical warfare advancements among the major military powers at the time.Footnote ⁵

Extractive displays

Autarkic measures required a strong belief in the state, as it was a matter of discovering what nature kept hidden, from groundwater to minerals and oil. As in the quotes above, references to all of Italy’s natural ‘provvidenze’ enhanced the rhetoric of a sacralisation of the homeland and of its leader – as in the photographs of Mussolini at Grottacalda, where he appears either on a podium holding a pickaxe or among workers, as the protector and benefactor of Italy’s natural wealth, sanctifying the homeland and elevating his image as a paternal figure. In particular, in order to unearth the material and spiritual riches located both above and below ground, it was first necessary to ‘have the Fascist faith, which allowed one to see the invisible’ and what the political myopia of other countries had missed. But it was also necessary to have Fascist science and technology, which allowed faith to become action (Armiero, Biasillo and von Hardenberg Reference Armiero, Biasillo and von Hardenberg2022, 141), for ‘not having believed that Nature intended to take everything away from us’ (MPII 1942, 118). Thus, extraction went hand in hand with the surveillance and scrutiny – through arts and science – of the underground and that which was not perceptible to the naked eye. The magazine Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero vividly illustrated this idea with the recurring image of an overseeing eye peering into the depths of the earth ‘to see underground’, including in an advert showcasing mining models (Figure 5). By merging two images – the eye and the mine model – along with graphic design elements and text, this photomontage created a composite of photographic fragments that deliberately emphasised the alteration of reality. The larger scale of the eye compared to the reproduced interior of the mine, combined with the dynamic suggestion of looking through the textual composition and the slogan ‘per vedere sottoterra’, created pictorial disjunctions (see Frizot Reference Frizot1991; Braun Reference Braun and Lyttelton2002). The image of the eye was also separated from its original context on the cover of one of the magazine’s issues (Figure 6), reinforcing the idea that visualising natural deposits was essential for their accumulation, conversion and expansion to boost the national economy.

Figure 5.

‘Per vedere sottoterra. Fate un plastico delle vostre miniere’ in Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero; January 1940, XVIII, Year V, No. 1, p. 40. Biblioteca Digitale, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

Figure 6.

Cover of Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero, June 1940, XVIII, Year V, No. 6; Biblioteca Digitale, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

The mapping of Italian resources was closely tied to capitalism, industrial interests and military technologies, driving dispossession. This served a geology that, as a form of power, facilitated territorial extraction through survey, classification and annexation (Yusoff Reference Yusoff2018).Footnote ⁶ In fact, as ‘an expression of the colonisation of nature’, extractivism is expressed in images and words through a reorganisation of the territory and the indistinguishable connection between industrial entities, state and empire (Martín Reference Martín, Engels and Dietz2017). With reference to Sicily, for instance, Gayda emphasised the urgent need for a comprehensive reviewing of Sicily and its problems (‘to see Sicily’), which included a revision and updating of the island’s geological map in collaboration with the Istituto Geografico Militare. This revision aimed to obtain a complete and direct assessment of Sicily for the underground exploration of new deposits, including fossil fuels, solid hydrocarbons, minerals and oil, as part of a ‘quotidian work of analysis on the Island’ in order to align its interests and functions with those of the rest of Italy and the empire (Gayda Reference Gayda1937, 128–129, 132).

Additionally, the image of the overseeing eye served as a symbol of the survey, visual extraction and recreation of resources and their sites through the intersection of technology and art. Leonardo da Vinci became the representative icon of this cultural bond, as the regime manipulated both classical and contemporary art forms – particularly monumental sculpture and architecture – to project ideals of power, control and national pride (Lazzaro and Crum Reference Lazzaro and Crum2005).Footnote ⁷ Each issue of the monthly journal La Miniera Italiana contained his quote: ‘Li occulti tesori e gemme riposti nel corpo della terra fieno tutti manifesti’ (The hidden treasures and gems stored within the body of the earth are all now revealed). Defined as the ‘first geologist of Italy’, he also featured on the cover of one issue of Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero, and a long article described his depiction of geological elements in his paintings and his scientific writings (Mioni Reference Mioni1940). Technology, geology, art and history were thus combined to support and justify material, conceptual and imaginative modes of extraction.

Similar to excavation, extraction was therefore a process that had to be understood literally and that also served as a rhetorical strategy (Arthurs Reference Arthurs2012). Both were active, related interventions that redeemed (pre)historic and ancient material (from ore and marble to Roman ruins) for the present and future Italy. Excavation formulated the ‘digging up’ (and out) of old traditions and romanità during Fascism. Through archaeological projects, exhibitions and other cultural initiatives, the Fascist regime’s manipulations and appropriation of the Roman past were deeply intertwined with its broader political, ideological and cultural goals (Gentile Reference Gentile2007; Arthurs Reference Arthurs2012), but also with its geological projects.

Among the various initiatives, four exhibitions held at the Circo Massimo – which coincided with Hitler’s visit to Italy in 1938 – formed ‘the imprint of the Fascist vision of an “excavated”, restored, and re-enacted romanità’ (Kallis Reference Kallis2014, 22–37): the Mostra del Tessile Nazionale (1937), the Mostra delle Colonie Estive e Assistenza all’Infanzia (1937), the Prima Mostra Nazionale del Dopolavoro (1938) and the Mostra Autarchica del Minerale Italiano (November/December 1938–May 1939; see MPII 1939; PNF Reference Fascista1939). The latter, defined by Mussolini as the ‘Mostra magnifica’, aimed to celebrate Italy’s advancements in exploiting its mineral resources, while promoting the idea of autarky and downplaying the economic sanctions imposed by the League of Nations following the country’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. The Circo Massimo testified to the excavated, restored past and provided the setting for a spectacle of extraction: ‘Twenty-five centuries. An avalanche of history’; ‘Upon a grand stage, artistically conceived and executed, stand the powerful symbols and records of victories achieved through Italian will and daring in one of the most arduous and troubled fields of human labour’ (PNF Reference Fascista1938, xviii).

Like other Fascist exhibitions, the event featured prominent Italian artists, such as Marcello Nizzoli, Giancarlo Palanti and Pericle Fazzini, and used photomontages, installations and sculptures. A gigantic imperial eagle and the bold dictum ‘Mussolini is always right’ adorned the main façade, and modernist aesthetics characterised its 26 pavilions, which included Combustibili solid (solid fuels), Minerali ferrosi (ferrous minerals) , Marmi, graniti e pietre (marbles, granites and stones), Sale marino e salgemma (sea salt and rock salt) and Acque minerali curative (minerals and therapeutic waters). Other pavilions were called Arte (Art), Africa Italiana (Italian Africa), Autarchia (Autarky), Difesa della Razza nel settore minerario (Defence of Race in the mining sector) and Armi (Weapons). The Armaments pavilion traced the evolution of weapons in Italy from ancient times to Fascism, emphasising that war was an inevitable outcome and connecting mining, the chemical industry and weapons production.

Figure 7.

Vincenzo Aragozzini, ‘Roma. Interno del padiglione zolfo: fotografie e pannelli illustrativi dei luoghi e degli impianti di raffinazione dello zolfo’, Padiglione zolfo, Mostra autarchica del minerale italiano, Rome, 1938; with kind permission from Centro per la cultura d’impresa, Fondo Edison, Milan.

Pavilion no. 13, dedicated to sulphur, was positioned – deliberately or not – next to that of ‘Africa Italiana’ (Figure 7). It had ‘a distinctive entrance that perfectly evokes, in its decoration and colouring, the atmosphere of the sulphur mines’ (PNF Reference Fascista1938, xx–xxi) and was decorated with statues by Edgardo Mannucci and Ferruccio Vecchi and paintings by Giulio Rosso. The fundamental character of the exhibition was indeed to show the:

The visual narrative of the exhibition framed the past and present around a spatially exclusive vision, an artistic arrangement and an aesthetic of ownership (i.e. the Italians are the exclusive owners of their resources), sovereignty and imperialist claims. It also aimed to create a mirror effect, reflecting how resources from abroad doubled what was directly available in Italy, as in the presentation of the minerals identified by Comina-Compagnia Mineraria Etiopica – part of the Montecatini group – and in the ‘territories of the Empire, to demonstrate to all—especially to the skeptics—the value of the African conquest’ (Redazionale 1938; see also Masina Reference Masina2016). Sicily was abundant in sulphur and its strategic position was intricately linked to Italy, North and East Africa through narratives of Mediterranean regeneration.Footnote ⁸ This narrative combined national identity, racial constructs, rural preservation, land sanctity and the hegemonic control of overseas resources, forming a cohesive vision of Mediterranean homogeneity (McNeill Reference McNeill2000; von Hardenberg Reference von Hardenberg and Armiero2006). It became a ‘space intelligible and available both to the nation and to components of the new Empire’, whose control was essential for the domination of the Mediterranean or Africa (Insana Reference Insana, Karagoz and Summerfield2015, 130). The island was already represented as intricately linked to Cyrenaica at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1913, the geologist Paolo Vinassa de Regny had already compared aspects of the geological structure, vegetation and climate of Libya to those of Sicily, and suggested the potential mining of sulphur in Cyrenaica as a viable alternative to mining operations in Sicily, should the latter be extinguished (Vinassa de Regny Reference Vinassa de Regny1913, 36, 96, 121, 145, 150, 189–190). Roberta Pergher has reported the proposal of Giacomo De Martino, former governor of Somalia and Eritrea and governor of Cyrenaica between 1919 and 1920, that Cyrenaica be considered a ‘part of Sicily grafted onto the African continent’ (Pergher Reference Pergher2017, 42). The exportation of Sicilian agricultural products to Libya and the Dodecanese, as well as the provision of primary resources, sulphur and other minerals to industries, was seen as crucial to establish a ‘new Italo-Mediterranean economic solidarity’ (Gayda Reference Gayda1937, 126–127). Furthermore, Lina Insana has observed that, in the 1930s, the interconnection of emigration (i.e. colonies as a preferred outlet for southern workers and for transferring agricultural knowledge) and economic issues reinforced the Fascist image of Sicily as a source of both capital and labour (Insana Reference Insana, Karagoz and Summerfield2015, 127–130).

In his speech of 1937 (when he visited the Grottacalda mine), Mussolini stressed how ‘Sicily represents the geographical centre of the Empire’ (1937, 5–7). A mosaic celebrating Mussolini’s visit to Sicily was entrusted to the artist Michele Cascella for the maritime railway in Messina and completed in 1939. Representing ‘Sicily elevated to the centre of the Empire’ , it blended – in Fascist style – concepts of race, history, landscape, modernity and ruralism (Figure 8). The mosaic depicts the millennia-old history of Sicily through the figurative description of its most emblematic phases, from the classical era to the time of the artistic creation of the work; human labour, natural environment and national memory are combined in an allegorical image of hegemonic, imperialist power, where the figure of a bare-chested miner holding a pickaxe stands in the foreground. Placed next to rural and other workers and below the towering figure of Mussolini dressed in white, as in his speech delivered from a grandstand in the shape of a torpedo boat’s bow in Messina, the Sicilian miner becomes the symbol not only of spiritual elevation and the material hardship of the workers, but also of Sicily reaching out with its labour and resources to the Mediterranean and Africa.Footnote ⁹

Figure 8.

Michele Basilio and Tommaso Cascella, La Sicilia elevata al centro dell’Impero, 1939, Stazione Marittima, Messina.

Forging and regenerating

Minerals, mining and miners featured in Mussolini’s idea of what Falasca-Zamponi has defined an ‘aesthetically sublime totalitarian order’ (1997, 41). In 1917, after the defeat at Caporetto, Mussolini had already written that ‘the Italian people, at this moment, are like a boulder of precious ore. It must be melted down, cleansed of its impurities, and worked’ ([1937] 1959, 88); a work of art could be extracted from a precious mineral. By promoting the idea that aesthetics is not just the expression of bodily senses but also of pure form, Mussolini positioned himself as an artist-politician who could shape and objectify unruly crowds, control their chaotic desires and ‘extract’ a sense of transcendence to reverse the disenchanting impact of modernisation and endow society with an aesthetic sublimity (Falasca-Zamponi Reference Falasca-Zamponi1997, 5). Through the establishment of a hierarchical order and the installation of a mythical leader, Fascism thus aestheticised politics by suggesting that the masses were unfit to appreciate aesthetic purity. This resulted in the imaginary and illusionary substitution for lived experience, and the replacement of concern for personal needs with the promise of a brighter future for the nation. Italian Fascism had a pluralist cultural policy, in contrast to the Nazi policies of the same period (Griffin Reference Griffin1998; Stone Reference Stone, Affron and Antliff1998). Yet, concepts associated with modernist aesthetics, including cultural, political and biological regeneration, were integrated into the (anti-Enlightenment) ideals of Fascist values (Falasca-Zamponi Reference Falasca-Zamponi1997, 125; Braun Reference Braun2000). In this sense, we can see the mineral resource – in this case sulphur – as a pure, organic element that reflected the Fascist search for spiritual values and organic institutions capable of counteracting what were considered to be the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on the body politic.

Sulphur mines were located in an inland rural area of Sicily, although they were not entirely rural places. They served industrial and chemical development but were not the site of industrial innovation; they remained linked to ‘Nature’s primitiveness’ and lacked the infrastructure and organisation of the factory system (Gayda Reference Gayda1937, 8–10). Sulphur mines and miners thus seemed to enable the coexistence of diverse modernities, in line with the Fascist illusion – as described by Ben-Ghiat (Reference Ben-Ghiat2001, 3) – of a mass society that allowed economic development without harming social boundaries and national traditions. Moreover, sulphur extraction in Sicily permitted the island’s century-old ‘differential elements’ to be shaped and rectified for unification purposes (Gayda Reference Gayda1937, 6).

Fascist regenerative values rested in such an imaginary national essence of origins to be recovered – in this case extracted – to forge something new. This also emerged from the Mostra Autarchica del Minerale Italiano: a repertoire of imaginary and aesthetic, human and material extractions together with the chiselling and transformation of the new man (homo fascistus) into the modern incarnation of the Roman legionary, and the epitome of the virile citizen-soldier.

In such a transformative project, the ‘estetica della scena mineraria’ (the aesthetics of the mining scene) aimed to give visibility to a regenerated ‘mining culture’. As Poggiali reported, ‘[N]o longer directors, assistants, and formen—shaggy under their wide-brimmed hats, bulky in their corduroy jackets and heavy cowhide boots. Today, young engineers descend into the mines—agile and quick, even elegant in their blue overalls’ (1938, 281). Consequently, the ‘grim, somber, abhorrent’ literature devoted to mining in Sicily was a matter of the past (Poggiali Reference Poggiali1938, 282). If during the previous government the Sicilian mines had been sites of desperation and child abuse, accidents, disasters, illness and degeneration, this was no longer the case under Fascism, according to a rhetoric that claimed that the regime had solved these issues – in addition to introducing electricity, healthcare services and emergency aids – and the southern question more generally.Footnote ¹⁰ In Italia mineraria, Poggiali reported how Sicilian sulphur mines showcased human labour’s sociological and picturesque aspects, but industrial progress and worker protections had reduced the dramatic and perilous elements traditionally associated with it, as depicted in literature. The carusi, the young exploited miners who had been the subject of much humanitarian and pietistic literature since the nineteenth century, were ‘completely disappeared’, and the visitors were thus able to witness an aesthetically pleasing display of health, safety and classic virility: ‘A sculptor’s spectacle: all around were naked men, like in an ancient gymnasium, youthful, slender, muscular—human architecture, simple and elegant; tireless legs, inexhaustible chests for the Italian infantry (and many claimed to have “done” Africa and Spain)’ (Poggiali Reference Poggiali1938, 50; Artieri Reference Artieri1940, 1). This rhetoric countered the reports that the Sicilian sulphur miners had degenerate bodies and were unfit for military service due to the diseases and physical deficiencies caused by their labour, which prevailed until the early twentieth century.Footnote ¹¹

Moreover, sulphur miners were able to cultivate a wide range of interests and activities beyond their mining work, reflecting a broader engagement with culture and leisure that aligned with the regime’s values of physical fitness, national pride and cultural advancement as well as imperialist aspirations. As Poggiali wrote, they ‘know the intoxicating thrill of athletic exertion; they are footballers, basketball players, devotees of athletic elegance. They are also amateur actors and singers’ (1938, 283). Concerts and cultural activities reached these remote regions, which had previously been dismissed as wild and uncultured: ‘Like when the concert at Grottacalda, among the Sicilian sulphur mines, took place in the cheerful village, with the distant smoke rising from the calcaroni.’ It was a ‘noble and refined art, brought into the wild landscape among rough people, who were yet open to the most genuine sensitivity, capable of drawing from music the most exquisite solace’ (Poggiali Reference Poggiali1938, 283). Similarly, in July 1938, Sicilian miners were transferred from Grottacalda to Enna to see a representation of Verdi’s Aida in the suggestive, open-air scenario of the Castello di Lombardia.Footnote ¹²

At the same time, this arte mineraria (mining art) needed to establish a new connection between art and labour, as articulated in the call to participate in an art competition published in Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero. Painters were invited and funded to visit specific mines in Italy in order to portray the mining work ‘to bring to light human values, to capture their spiritual essence, and to dynamically elevate them as driving forces in the unfolding of history’ and to shed light on ‘the heroic lives of the humble, who chose to battle against the rock in the darkness’ (Savelli Reference Savelli1940b, Reference Savelli1940c).Footnote ¹³ Fascist rhetoric reconciled light and darkness, above ground and below, artistic work and manual labour in a communal ritual that brought together artists and miners in shared actions and values in pursuit of war. The artist was given the responsibility to interact with the public and the masses as a catalyst for social progress and a ‘revolution of the mind’ by inventing a ‘palingenetic mythology’ for the emerging modern society (Braun Reference Braun2000, 6; Gentile [Reference Gentile1975] Reference Gentile2003, 46). The artist thus became an agent in the extraction and transformation of what was hidden underground. The mines, on the other hand, were envisioned as mecenati (patrons), embracing the artists ‘to unite them alongside humble workers—regarding them as soldiers in the same battle’ (Savelli Reference Savelli1940b, Reference Savelli1940c).Footnote ¹⁴ Combatant and producer, the miner – as a ‘new’ Italian worker – and his labour were a metaphor for national regeneration. Such an ideal labouring subject was both modern and rooted in carefully selected traditions of allegedly contra-modern Italian cultural origins (Milano Reference Milano2021, 367). Regarding the conditions of the miners, Poggiali praised the achievements of the Fascist regime: ‘This is why the mining industry must be regarded as being on the front line—not only in the autarkic struggle, but also in the effort to elevate both the spiritual and material value of workers’ labour, even where welfare and leisure facilities inevitably appear modest and rustic’ (Poggiali Reference Poggiali1938, 279–280). In this way, a distinct worker subjectivity was cultivated by fostering the idea that miners, too, were actively invited and empowered to participate in Fascism’s project of modernity.

Extractive photography

The aesthetic and political valorisation and ideological construction of mining – which was not too different from that used for other activities, such as agriculture – relied on the technological and aesthetic power of photography. The extractive industry was one of the most photographed industries during Fascism, and mines and quarries in Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany, Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy became the subject of propaganda. Photography as a material, economic and social process made visible the natural resources that were being extracted from mines and quarries, and the labour involved, with the purpose of legitimising and promoting mining, while obscuring the human, social and environmental impacts of this process. Walter Benjamin has argued that the rise of Fascism was connected to the ideology of organicism and a commitment to technological power, which was related to the emergence of photography and its impact on our understanding of aesthetics. By giving the masses ‘not their right, but instead a means of expressing themselves’, and treating the past as a vast quarry of raw material extracted for mythic images, Fascism not only aestheticised politics but politicised aesthetics (Benjamin Reference Benjamin2007, 241; Gentile [Reference Gentile1975] Reference Gentile2003, 43).

The monthly publications Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero and Il marmo nell’arte, nell’industria, nel commercio contained articles accompanied by photographs that addressed a specialised readership made up of geologists, technicians and engineers.Footnote ¹⁵ Materie prime occasionally also featured articles on industrial arts and films. These publications were characterised by an aesthetic of labour that combined a dated industrial photographic style, typical of the beginning of the twentieth century, with new modernist trends. They featured commissioned works for advertising, architecture and industry by esteemed photographers such as Bruno Stefani, Vincenzo Aragozzini, Antonio Boggeri and Giuseppe Pagano (Desole Reference Desole2016).

In 1941, the artistic director of Materie prime expressed his views on photography and mining in an essay that reflects most of the ideas of Fascist industrial photography, such as the symbiotic relationship between healthy bodies and the machine, the epical perspective of the worker fighting against the material, and the relation between modernity and technology:

Through photography, Fascism and its factories promoted an aesthetic of ‘minerary culture’ where the ‘brutal force’ of the mine, controlled by a rationally organised state and economy, produced commodities and capital. In such visualisations, the miners’ culture and body were aesthetically forged just like the minerals they extracted. At the same time, the heroism of the miner’s labour and his interaction with modern machinery galvanised his potential for invention.

As I have mentioned, Montecatini operated in Sicily and controlled several sulphur mines. It was one of the privileged firms that linked Fascism to industry, along with Ansaldo, Ilva, Terni (for steel), Snia Viscosa (for synthetic fibres), Pirelli, Fiat and Porto Marghera. Like other corporations, it launched a marketing campaign to capitalise on the surge in demand for fertilisers during the agricultural boom of the 1920s, and in 1921 it created a ‘propaganda office’ to manage its image, paying special attention to photography. While the essence of Fascist propaganda linked the regime to Mussolini’s body, as in the photographs of Mussolini among the miners, the industrial photographs of Montecatini, as well as those of other industries of the time, presented factories, machines, workers and production cycles in a seemingly ‘neutral’ manner, as mere documentation (Magliulo Reference Magliulo1999, 357–366; Desole Reference Desole2016).Footnote ¹⁶ Images were meant to testify to the technical achievements and the complexity of the processes required to accomplish them. Montecatini produced its institutionalised visual documentation of industrial processes to control and expose the division of labour and the centralisation of capital. In these photographs, the miner’s body and the material product of his labour and fatigue appeared as essential components of this process. Photographs of mines (which also circulated through the Istituto Luce’s foto-cinegiornali) were documentary and ideological representations of modernity and symbols of a Fascist, aesthetically founded notion of politics (see Falasca-Zamponi Reference Falasca-Zamponi1997). This is evident in the photographs of Sicilian mines and miners taken by the Milanese photographer Bruno Stefani and his studio, commissioned by Montecatini and used in publicity posters for magazines such as Materie prime (Figure 9). Influenced by the Bauhaus movement and the photographs of Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy, Stefani’s pictures were characterised by diagonal shots, precise cuts and striking viewpoints, meticulously crafted geometries and repetitions (Figures 10–12). Low angles brought the workers into focus, while aerial views captured the grandeur of quarry landscapes and ore piled in the open air. They suggest a certain solemnity, accentuated by the wealth of the material transformed by both human hands and machinery. Although Stefani was not enrolled in the Fascist party, his aesthetic view echoed the propaganda photography of his era; he emphasised the juxtaposition between the raw material and human perseverance, evident in the sweat and toil of labour, and an epic of work befitting the Fascist mythology of the uomo nuovo.Footnote ¹⁷

Figure 9.

Advert for Montecatini in Materie prime d’Italia e dell’Impero; January 1940, XVIII, Year V, No.1, p. 9 Biblioteca Digitale, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

Figure 10.

Bruno Stefani, ‘Carrelli con minerale’, Grottacalda, Piazza Armerina (EN), 1935–40; with kind permission from Centro per la cultura d’impresa, Fondo Edison, Milan. The same shot was used in Montecatini’s advert in Figure 9 and in PNF (Reference Fascista1939, 152), among other venues.

Figure 11.

Bruno Stefani, ‘Operai spostano panetti di sterro nella miniera di Grottacalda’, Grottacalda, Piazza Armerina (EN), 1935–40; with kind permission from Centro per la cultura d’impresa, Fondo Edison, Milan.

Figure 12.

Bruno Stefani, ‘Grottacalda. Interno del pozzo Mezzena: argano del castello di estrazione con un operaio al lavoro’, Grottacalda, Piazza Armerina (EN), 1930–40; with kind permission from Centro per la cultura d’impresa, Fondo Edison, Milan.

Vincenzo Aragozzini also produced a photographic documentation of the Sicilian sulphur mines for Montecatini in the 1930s (and took photographs of the Mostra Autarchica del Minerale Italiano). Characterised by a more traditional style, Aragozzini’s industrial photographs are sharp, precise compositions that emphasise the geometric forms of factories and machinery. His style juxtaposes the monumental scale of industrial structures with the human element, using light and contrast to dramatise the interaction between workers and technology. Yet, none of these images represent the miners in their original community or family surroundings, or what was a genuine ‘cultura mineraria’ (Atzeni Reference Atzeni1984, 97–105; Zanini and Viazzo Reference Zanini and Viazzo2015).

In their visual and representational forms, these photographs separated natural resources and bodies from their specific (social and environmental) contexts by extracting and isolating specific visual and temporary fragments in order to generalise and turn them into commodities and ideology. As Ariella Azoulay has stated, ‘Photography should be understood as part and parcel of the imperial world, that is, the transformation of others and their modes of being into lucrative primary resources, the products of which can be owned as private property’ (2021, 28). In this sense, capitalism, photography and Fascism are not just functionally connected but also conceptually and politically linked in their extractive force. They share a common process of abstraction, alienation and the conversion of use value into exchange value (Coleman and James Reference Coleman and James2021, 1–26). The transformation of sulphur into a commodity began with its extraction and continued once sulphur was photographed, as in the case of the Montecatini photographic archive and specialist publications. Sulphur extracted from Sicily was alienated from its natural environment and from the hands of miners before being further processed elsewhere in Italy, entering the national and international market in different forms. Within this framework, the conversion of use value into exchange value aligned with Fascist economic and political principles. Moreover, the emphasis on self-sufficiency, Mediterranean expansion and imperial ambitions influenced and distorted the assessment of natural resources (and the related labour). In a similar way, as a narrative framework, photography converted human and material resources into representations, while simultaneously concealing, leaving unrecorded or altering what really lay beneath the surface. Much like extractivist policies, however, these photographs generated value by disregarding the social, human and environmental costs associated with sulphur mining.