MIGRATION OF IDEAS’ PERLOCUTIONARY EFFECT
MIGRATION OF IDEAS’ PERLOCUTIONARY EFFECT

HOW MARINETTI BOMBED HIROSHIMA

Summary/Abstract: The present paper aims at studying the perlocutionary effects of the Italian futurism’s ideas. Should illocutionary acts involve the speaker’s intentions immediately and explicitly expressed, performatives loaded with ideological influence, i.e. those that are perlocutionary acts (Austin, 1975), involve acquiring effects by discursive engagement in time. These effects become noticeable after long periods of germination, when they have activated themselves through subsequent discursive engagements, also loaded with ideological influence. Although they do not fall under the category of colonial critical discourse, subject of the larger Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) that uses discursive tools in relation with macro-social changes within certain major social changes, perlocutionary acts involving germination of ideas also seek macro-social changes, yet, these social events may not exist or they may be minor. A perlocutionary effect produced through ideological germination of ideas benefits from ideological flows of spreading ideas, within channels of scientific knowledge or literary creation. Our purpose is to study the perlocutionary effects of the Italian futurism and pre-futuristic literary environment on the Italian military thinking of the early twentieth century and, consequently, their spread and production of subsequent effects against humankind. Gabriele d’Annunzio’s ideas and, especially, the manifestos of F.T. Marinetti, including Ucidiamo il chiaro di luna! (1909) or Guera sola igiene del mondo (1915), radically influenced General Giulio Douhet (1921), an amateur writer, to propose the strategic bombing solution. After years, his proposal constituted the foundation for the homonymous American strategy and guided its implementation under the umbrella-concept of Terrorangriffe (terror attacks) by Nazi troops. Nuclear bombing was a particular manner of understanding the strategic bombing implementation. This paper aims at highlighting routes of such ideas, their perlocutionary effects and their ideological tools used in circulation, from the perspective of the critical discourse studies.

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