https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211053984 Memory Studies 2021, Vol. 14(6) 1414–1430 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/17506980211053984 journals.sagepub.com/home/mss Pre-emptive memories: Anticipating narratives of Covid-19 in practices of commemoration Francesco Mazzucchelli University of Bologna, Italy Mario Panico University of Bologna, Italy Abstract This article explores the narratives of the Covid-19 crisis in Italy, in the ways that they intersect with cultural memory processes. Moving from the hypothesis that the Covid-19 crisis, in Italy, has undergone two distinct narrative phases, we focus on the comparison between the forms taken, during the first lockdown, by an important (but also somehow divisive) memory ritual: the celebration of 25 April (the day that Italy was liberated from Nazi-Fascism) and the newly established commemorations of Covid-19 casualties. The aim is to observe the osmoses between two discursive domains (memory discourse vs emergency discourse). To do so, we propose the concept of “pre-emptive memory,” which can be defined as an act of—unwitting— anticipation, pre-figuration, and re-combination of the future cultural memory of an ongoing event in the present. Keywords commemoration, Covid-19, cultural semiotics, pre-emptive memory The memory-virus: the future-past temporality of Covid-19 crisis narratives There are two images of the first lockdown in Italy (March–May 2020), during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, that seem made to be displayed in future history textbooks in a hypothetical chapter illustrating this crisis: Pope Francis celebrating the Easter Mass under heavy rain and a dark sky in a deserted St Peter’s Square, and President Sergio Mattarella climbing alone the marble steps of the Vittorio Emmanuel II National Monument in Rome, to pay homage to the Unknown Corresponding author: Francesco Mazzucchelli, University of Bologna, Via Azzo Gardino 23, 40122 Bologna, Italy. Email: francesco.mazzucchelli@unibo.it 1053984MSS 0 0 10.1177/17506980211053984Memory StudiesMazzucchelli and Panico research-article 2021 Article