Narrare una storia universale. “L’uomo che verrà” e la storiografia gramsciana “dal basso”

Giorgio Diritti’s film “L’uomo che verrà” tells the violence of war that befell Monte Sole’s peasant community. It was a Nazi massacre and, like all massacres, it was a chronicle of tragedy and death, claiming nearly 800 victims guilty merely of having fought desperately against the War’s violence. Men, women, children and the partisan community are the leading players in the film, which gives voice to humble people from the Gramscian perspective “from below”. Poor country people and partisans withstand the tragedy of war, defending home, land and family. Not heroes, they are, first and foremost, common people. E.J. Hobsbawm takes the same perspective, starting with his Primitive Rebels (1959) where he devoted major studies to rebel peasants, brigands and rabble rousers. Like brigands, partisans are often poor country people: the myth of the “patriot-partisan” arose in the Second postwar period.