Football, Romanità, and the Search for Stasis - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 165

these fans, fascism is overshadowed by what was one of its most useful tools:
romanità.
in this context, romanità acts as a will to connect with something eternally
Roman—“ours”—in Rome. in a Rome that is home to almost half a million im-
migrants, italian Romans are using football and its deep connections with the
discourses of imperial greatness and valor—both of which are part of fascism's
self-understanding and romanità —as a salve against the immigrant city. This is
replete with its own political struggles and ironies, as football itself is a highly
visual battleground between traditional and commercial conceptions of cultur-
al property and heritage. That football has become a successful global business
is certainly not lost on Roman football fans. instead, some of them, the ultras,
work actively to attempt to minimize the impact of global capital and labor on
the game (Dyal 2014, 360-400).
here we see a process similar to theatrical politics. Theatrical and cultish
politics, Kertzer explained, function in modern societies just as they did in what
were assumed to be “traditional” societies. These political forms are based on
ritual practices and liturgies that attach great meaning to action. They are also
based on mythical or ideational discourses, like romanità, which “give meaning
to the world around us” and provide the fabric of order in the face of chaos. far
from lulling their audiences to sleep, these discourses and narratives transform
ideas into a lived reality (Kertzer 1988, 13).
Notes
1. “lotito: lazio prima squadra della Capitale simbolo Roma era un lupo spelacchiato,”
Il Messaggero, 4 July 2011, http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=154935&sez=home
_spoRt&ctc=220 (accessed 2 october 2013).
2. The union of european football associations (uefa) is the governing body of euro-
pean football. its two professional competitions are the uefa Champion's league and the
uefa Cup, now known as the europa league.
References
armstrong, Gary. 1998. Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score. oxford: berg.
baxa, paul. 2010. Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome. tor ont o:
university of toronto press.
Creed, Gerald. 2011. Masquerade and Postsocialism. bloomington: indiana university
press.
Dyal, mark. 2010. “war as a form of life: The agonistic Culture of italian ultras.” Inter-
national Journal of Sport and Society 1 (2): 11-22.