Marxism and Historiography: Contesting Theory and Remaking History in Twentieth-Century Italy

Eminent Italian historian Giovanni Levi once notably remarked that “no one is a Marxist anymore,” pointing to a paradox in Italian cultural history. While what is called "Marxism" was supposedly hegemonic over Italian culture, and especially history writing, for decades in the postwar period, it then seems to have suddenly disappeared.

This study questions such a vision of a monolithic and hegemonic Marxism. It starts from the most effective anecdote to all ideologising narratives—that is,...