Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [203]
Roma e Roma (Rome is Rome)-I often heard this phrase, usually not with any sense of resignation, but with the pride of specificity that recognizes Rome's place in world history but also recognizes the tenacity of its people's adherence to their own way of doing things. In associations like the Monti Social Network, the echoes of the old rotating credit associations still occasionally reverberate-ghostly reminders of the conflicts, the distrust, and the underhand dealings without which social life would perhaps have very little meaning. Those who hear the echoes value the conflict. They will be the bearers of memory, but also of social practices deeply sedimented in the play of gesture and indirect hint; of jokes and quarrels; of dizzying alternations between fierce resistance and humble self-abasement; of menaces in the night and promises during the day; of jealous precision in the conservation of old buildings and crafty cunning in the pursuit of new construction; of images and even human performances of the Madonna's role given meaning only by the sins of their authors.
Roma e Roma, and Monti is its "first rione," even if for some it has also proved to be the "last frontier." Here, eternally, eternity continues to fracture and to coalesce, repeatedly and without rest; for such, paradoxically, is the eternity of the Eternal City. It seems still that no bureaucratic hand can yet stay the corruption, at once and forever corrosive and creative, of time. When and if it succeeds, Rome will no longer be Rome.
NOTES
OVERTURE
i. I use the term tempo in Bourdieu's sense of a distinctive and manipulable rhythm (1977, 6-7).
2. See Herzfeld 2008. This rendition of a heritage held in trust by the state perhaps also implies the equally gendered sense of paternalism.
3. On the French term patrimoine and the link with concepts of property, see Handler 1985, 1988; Herzfeld 2002. On the term patrimonio in Spanish (Mexico), see Ferry 2005, 82-88, 215-16. On the Italian sense of patrimonio, see especially Palumbo 2003, 17-34.
4. Smith (2006 offers an excellent account of how global economic forces penetrate local urban practices, and especially of ostensibly left-wing and liberal governments' preference for "regeneration" over the invasive and class-directed implications of "gentrification."
5. On this, see especially Lozada's remarks on Catholicism in China (2001, 198-99).
CHAPTER ONE
1. The original was in Latin: Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini. It was during the papacy of Urban VIII (1623-1644) that Galileo was tried for heresy. Stendhal (n.d. a, 27) notes a version of the comment.
2. About thirty years earlier, the youthful Rutelli swept the steps of the Church of Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona in a symbolic gesture of cleansing them of clerical corruption.
3. Pasquino is an ancient statue (originally female) on which people deposited satirical poems commenting on current affairs. See Giovannini 1997. A Monti taxi driver with strong historical interests commented that Mayor Francesco Rutelli should have feared his colleagues' opposition to the mayor's policies because "when the people murmur ... when Pasquino speaks," there is "some point of truth."
4. Pope Benedict XVI's recent admonition that the corrupt should not expect to enter Paradise (see "'Chi prende tangenti non sale a Dio': 11 Papa contro i corrotti," La Repubblica, 2 April 2007, p. i 5 is only new in its specific emphasis on tangenti (kickbacks; Romans, forever practical, are used to taking such reminders of the dangers of eternal damnation-the reality of which