Paper short abstract:

The Slovenian minority in Italy mainly displays memory and heritage in forms of oral literature, collective history and traditional festivals, while the individual memory is almost absent. The aim of the paper is to understand how ideologies influenced the process of silenced memory and heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Slovenian community in the province of Udine (Italy) is situated in a very challenging condition of linguistic, cultural and political relationships with the Italian-Friulian and central Slovenian world, moreover with a component of the society that does not identify with Slovenians. The fact that the territory constantly belonged to the Italian political systems produced on the one hand the deletion of important segments of the memory, on the other hand the conservation of linguistic and cultural features that allow the community to be recognized as national minority.

The current cultural attitudes emphasize the collective history, as well as the oral heritage, mostly the language, and folk traditions that indeed risk falling into oblivion. Nevertheless as a result of interesting visions of the future is to consider the opening of museums and collections.

The author assumes that the minority complex, as a consequence of the ideological oppression from the majority, has not allowed a real valorisation of life stories because of the wrong perception that do not belong to the larger systems of the European history. The individual memory of the lived, also from the perspective of the migratory experiences, represents indeed an immense potential of knowledge.

Taking into account the issue of diversity, which seems to play the most important role in the utopian project of reconcialiation, the aim of the paper is to understand how and to what extent the social and political context has influenced the process of silencing the memory and the intangible heritage.