Talking (and Silencing) Emotions: The Culture of Mobilization in the Italian Communist Party During the 1940s

The tale of most communist organizations is a tale of discipline and preparation that tends to see distinct emotional cultures as problematic and residual. We can commonly witness not only a lack of attention to political symbolism in their own reflection on culture (though in practice the development and communication of political culture played a great role), but also that emotions are even more problematic than this expressive dimension when it comes to defining the characteristics and meanings of ‘being’ and ‘acting’ like a communist. Political organizations that have a background in the Marxist and Leninist traditions usually conceive the role that emotions and symbolism play in mobilization with an unsurprising suspicion: they mainly stress the nature of politics as being inherently rational and goal-oriented (Barbalet 1998). However, an effective mobilization of emotions is crucial for the formation of communist and class identity (Barbalet 1992), especially in transitional and ‘effervescent moments’ (Durkheim 1995) which go ‘against bureaucracy’ but are nonetheless governed by bureaucratic principles of efficiency and commitment to the organization’s values. In addition the everyday, ordinary and routinized party life features a constant reference to how emotions should be ‘used’, governed and repressed.