NATURAL TIME, POLITICAL TIME: CONTESTED HISTORIES IN NORTHERN ITALY

This article explores the ways in which a post-peasant society in the Trentino region of northern Italy reworked its past history at a time of political turmoil when the rise of regionalist parties with an Italian version of Thatcherism in their agenda challenged the legitimacy of the Italian state. It illustrates how making a regional, local history entails representing the past as a period characterized by the repetitiveness of events. It is argued that everyday accounts of the past, because they centre on the ideas of social and political order and private property, form the background against which 'official' politics is understood. In this sense, everyday local-level discourses about the past are as political as the 'official' ones of party leaders. In making this argument, the article shows that 'repetitive time' also represents a device through which social actors place themselves outside 'national history' and cast the encompassing nation-state as the outsider.