FACING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE NECESSITY TO DECONSTRUCT A MONSTRIFICATION

The 1990s experienced an increasing flow of studies that stemmed from this period in order to retrospectively analyze the previous hundred years. Many scholars produced a strong monstrification of the Twentieth century, in a debate that looks a lot like a sacrificing and purifying rite. These conceptions have two common features: the identification of totalitarianisms as the core and the evil of the Twentieth century and the comparison between Nazism and Communism. Nowadays to talk about the returns of the Twentieth century means preliminarily questioning what the Twentieth century was: if we accept its monstrous image, any of its returns would in fact only be a bad omen. Nevertheless, to argue for the idea that the Twentieth century was traversed by multiple tragedies but is not reducible solely and exclusively to them is to claim a more complex approach to the legacy it has left us. In this paper, we will focus on a topic and three books that have strongly contributed to the monstrification of the idea of the Twentieth century. The topic is the new role that masses have gained in politics of the Twentieth century. We will examine this topic starting from the interpretation proposed in the books of two historians and a philosopher: The Passing of an Illusion. The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century by the French historian François Furet, published in 1995, Reflections on a Ravaged Century by the English historian Robert Conquest, published in 2000, and finally Hope And Memory. Reflections on the Twentieth Century published in 2000 by the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzevetan Todorov. After tracing the perspectives of these three scholars, we will trace some alternative hermeneutic possibilities that are considered necessary for an interpretation of the Twentieth century free from any form of indulgence towards the evils that have permeated it, but also from any kind of monstrification.