Publisher Description

Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento, Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the Italian nation.

These contributors offer compelling essays on decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics, anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature. Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial culture.

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"This impressive volume succeeds in bringing Italian colonialism into the space of today's most important debates regarding colonialism and multiculturalism."--Graziela Parati, author of Mediterranean Crossroads "A significant collection that really has no equal to date. The essays in this volume investigate profoundly the relationship between Italian colonialism and Italian society, past and present."--Anthony Tamburri, author of A Semiotic of Rereading

Table of Contents

Introduction: Italian Colonial Cultures Patrizia Palumbo PART I. THE SHAPING OF ITALIAN COLONIAL HISTORY: POLITICAL PRACTICES AND THEORETICAL LEGITIMIZATION The Myths, Suppressions, Denials and Defaults of Italian Colonialism Angelo Del Boca Studies and Research on Fascist Colonialism, 1922--1935: Reflections on the State of the Art Nicola Labanca Italian Anthropology and the Africans: The Early Colonial Period Barbara Sorgoni The Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea: The Liberal and Early Fascist Period (1897--1934) Giulia Barrera PART II. COLONIAL LITERATURE: FROM EXPLORATION TO A DOMESTIC EMPIRE Gifts, Sex, and Guns: Nineteenth-Century Italian Explorers in Africa Cristina Lombardi-Diop Incorporating the Exotic: From Futurist Excess to Postmodern Impasse Cinzia Sartini-Blum Alexandria Revisited: Colonialism and the Egyptian Works of Enrico Pea and Giuseppe Ungaretti Lucia Re Mass-Mediated Fantasies of Feminine Conquest, 1930--1940 Robin Pickering-Iazzi Orphans for the Empire: Colonial Propaganda and Children's Literature during the Imperial Era Patrizia Palumbo PART III. THE COLONIAL PRODUCTION OF AFRICA AND THE SILENT SCENE OF DECOLONIZATION Colonial Autism: Whitened Heroes, Auditory Rhetoric, and National Identity in Interwar Italian Cinema Giorgio Bertellini Black Shirts/Black Skins: Fascist Italy's Colonial Anxieties and Lo Squadrone Bianco Cecilia Boggio Empty Spaces: Decolonization in Italy Karen Pinkus Notes on Contributors

Long Description

Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento, Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the Italian nation. These contributors offer compelling essays on decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics, anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature. Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial culture.

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