Radio Technologies for the Fascist Alternative Modernity

Abstract In this article, I use the history of a 1930s inductor microphone made by RCA (model 50- A ) as a material fragment to investigate radio production in fascist Italy and its role within the creation of a fascist “alternative modernity” through technology. The object was donated to the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in 2021 and belonged to the Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche ( EIAR , 1927–1944), the national broadcasting company under Italian fascism. This object and its representations in the company publications show its use both as an interface in the literal sense, in radio production contexts, and as a symbolic interface representing the connection made possible by the EIAR between the regime personified by Benito Mussolini and Italians. The representation and use of the microphone testifies how the efforts for performing a vision of a fascist alternative modernity involved radio technologies, too, similarly to military and industrial technologies.