What Does Fascist Architecture Still Have to Tell Us? Preservation of Contested Heritage as a Strategy of Re- Enunciation and ‘Voice Remodulation’

This chapter attempts to revisit some issues related to the recent debate on so-called ‘difficult heritage’ (Macdonald) from a semiotic perspective. More specifically, the symbolic weight of the monumental (especially architectural) material legacy of past totalitarian regimes is examined in terms of a temporal transformation of its ‘ideological voice’. According to this theoretical proposal, the material changes induced by restoration and rehabilitation works can be analysed as operations of ‘remodulation’ of the voice of monumental architectures, which can be framed by a semiotic theory of enunciation. Through the analysis of a series of case studies of Italian Fascist monumental buildings and their subsequent material transformation over time, a typology of diffferent possible forms of remodulation is proposed.