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Anomalies and Exceptions
To paraphrase Tolstoy:
Happy countries are all alike; every unhappy country is anomalous in its own way.
In November 2010, the international press, which seldom discusses Italy seriously, provided ample coverage of the Bunga Bunga affair. To some, perhaps to many Italians, this was yet another source of embarrassment, a new manifestation of the anomalia italiana . Thus, wrote a well-known journalist, Giuseppe D'Avanzo, in La Repubblica , 2010: 'In un altro Paese appena rispettoso del canone occidentale il premier già avrebbe dovuto rassegnare le dimissioni. Siamo nell'infelice Italia ...'.
One of the anomalies of Italy is that problems affecting the country are quickly transformed not so much in a problem to be resolved but in an 'anomaly' that enables commentators to stress how different their country is from all other countries, that whatever is happening in Italy could not happen elsewhere, and how, if it did, it would be resolved rapidly and efficiently - an instance of the well-known Italian 'esterofilia' - a variant of what Gramsci called the cosmopolitanism of Italian intellectuals. It is, in fact, a well-known characteristic of Italian intellectuals that of exhibiting marked anti-Italian traits, judging their compatriots somewhat lacking in moral fiber. This trait has been recently mapped out with remarkable ability by Silvana Patriarca (2010) who points out that such views exist even in texts purporting to acclaim Italian superiority in all things. Thus, Vincenzo Gioberti's Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) praises Italian civilization, particularly in its Catholic incarnation, but damned Italians, particularly those belonging to the privileged classes, for their 'excessive love of money and pleasure, the frivolity of customs, the slavery of intellects, the imitation of foreign things, the bad ordering of education' and the lack of 'public and private discipline' (Patriarca, 2010, p. 25). Such whinging has never stopped. Just over 20 years after achieving unity, in a letter of 1884 Francesco Crispi was complaining that 'We are heading towards decadence without ever having scaled the heights of greatness .... Look at the people around you. The majority are listless and indifferent, as if politics were none of their business. Others are skeptical and mistrustful ... they think that nothing can be done, because if they tried, they...