‘A Museum Label Is Not Enough!’: Diffraction, Urban Fascist Legacy, and Participatory Artivism from Contemporary Rome

Through the adoption of a methodology that combines ‘diffraction’ and personal experience, alongside an ecocritical interpretation of non-human bodies, this article demonstrates how literary works can be utilized to generate participatory ‘artivism’ initiatives in urban spaces, that intertwine the Roman districts EUR and Trastevere. These Roman landscapes, both central and marginal, marked by an ambiguous and naturalized fascist legacy, risk promoting the appropriation of urban spaces and buildings by neo-fascist discourse. Bearing in mind a specific genealogy of the term ‘artivism’, the article foregrounds the double position of the author as both a scholar and an activist, and discusses (we) Are Not GIL, a participatory artivism action geared towards decolonizing the former GIL – Gioventù italiana del Littorio (Italian Youth of Littorio) building, in 2019. This endeavour, which involved a comparative and performative use of two literary texts by Ghermandi and Flaiano, played a pivotal role in dismantling the uniformity of institutional narratives pertaining to the fascist, colonial, and patriarchal legacies – prefiguring a participatory artistic practice and politics aimed at depatriarchalizing, decolonizing, and defascistizing the artistic heritage of the city of Rome.