Aquilanità e maschere identitariste. I rischi del rassicurazionismo patrimonializzante

Aquilanity and masks of identity: the risks of reassuranceism through cultural heritage This chapter traces a picture of the forms within which the sense of being a citizen subject to political strategies connected to social representations is expressed in the here and now. The aim is a critical-problematizing discourse: that of highlighting how two identitarian fixations, such as the concept of ‘L’Aquila city-territory’ and the ideal of ‘L’Aquila as a medieval city’ (together with the architectural conservation practice of ‘as it was where it was’, have been translated–beyond the intentions of the proponents and in the process of descent from expert speeches towards institutional decision-makers’ common sense–in choices that, although with the intention of healing the seismic catastrophe of 2009, have produced a series of derivative disasters that will weigh on the future of city as a territorial debt (in this sense it will be illustrated how, in an intertwining of policies inspired by neoliberal instances camouflaged within the poetics of belonging, certain theoretical constructs supported the affirmation of urban planning strategies that ultimately turned out to be harmful). This is because the aforementioned identitarian fictions have proved capable of subsuming the entire sense of place into images of appeal - highly persuasive but equally binding in terms of the exclusivity of the strategies inherent to them; consequently, foreclosing a series of possibilities and alternatives that could have led to institutional paths capable of increasing the resilience of the city.