Paper Short Abstract:

Can a forest be fascist? My paper explores layers of that question charting the socio-environmental history of the 20,000 pines planted in the late 1930s to spell Benito Mussolini’s Latin title in trees on an Italian hillside.

Paper Abstract:

In the late 1930s, on the slopes of Monte Giano, above the town of Antrodoco in Central Italy, recruits studying at the nearby Academy of the Forestry Corps planted 20,000 black Austrian pines to spell out DUX, Benito Mussolini’s title in Latin. The outcome was an arboreal inscription so grand in scale that it is still today visible from Rome, some 100 kilometers away. This controversial formation stood intact until August 2017 when a fire – deemed an accident – burned down part of the forest, giving rise to a critical conversation about the meanings and values of politically manipulated human landscapes.

My paper charts the socio-environmental history of the DUX forest as well as the debate that has ensued about the future of this arboreal monument to Italian fascism. In analyzing the varied reactions to the 2017 fire from outsiders – some advocate its total erasure, while neo-fascist groups have begun plans to restore it – as well as within the local community, I investigate how the DUX forest is not just a spectacle but a repository of material stories, a concrete three-dimensional shared reality characterized by a series of processes and connections that weave together political institutions, human communities, and the nonhuman environment.