Mutilation of political power: Spolia exhibiting as symbolic strategy

Resumo

This paper aims to highlight some strategy used during the Fascist regime in Italy to symbolically mutilate the Ethiopian’s crown power and it wants to show the exposition context key-role determining items’ cultural and symbolic meaning. Through the exposition of cultural goods stolen from Ethiopia such as Menelik’s Gala Hat and Hailé Selassié throne, the Fascist regime showed its military and politically superiority, proving to succeed where the previous democratic government failed. After the II World War, according to the Treaty of Paris (art. 37), Italy must give back several stolen cultural goods, including the hat and the throne. Following their movements in space and time, these two objects become an opportunity to develop some important reflections about the strategies used to propose a victorious image of the Fascist regime, according to propagandistic goals. The methodology used privileged an analytic and multidisciplinary approach, combining history, museum studies and cultural studies notions.