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.
A Place in the Sun Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present
About the Book
Reviews
“Intelligent and praiseworthy anthology . . . Lucid and thoughtful discussions.”—Jay Spaulding African American Review
“Gives the reader an excellent account of the lengths taken by Italian leaders to cover up colonial atrocities, while disseminating information to the contrary.” “The essays found. . . make a profound argument for the need to study fascism’s effects through alterations in literature and cinema.”—Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani - University of St. Francis Joliet, Illinois Canadian Journal Of History"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 Sòrgoni
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
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