Summary :Skrjabinelazia rizzoi n. sp. (Seuratoidea), from Podarcis sicula captured at Cammarata, Agrigento Province, Sicily, is distinct from the 13 known species of the genus, including Skrjabinelazia sp. Rizzo from Catania. It is identified with the following set of characters: in the male, short spicules and gubernaculum, thin body; in the female, buccal cavity with a crown of leaflets, body cuticle without internal ornamentation, presence of cephalic and caudal vesicles, tail with a terminal digitiform spike 42-48 µm long. The morphology of the new species supports our previous hypothesis of two Skrjabinelazia lineages, one with spicules and one without spicules, respectively linked to Lacertidae and Gekkonidae. In Palearctic lacertids, five named species are presently known, S. taurica from Crimea (Ukraine), S. hoffmanni from Beijing (China), S. pyrenaica from Pyrenees (Spain), S. vozae from Cevennes (France), S. rizzoi from Agrigento Province, Sicily (Italy), but analysis of some published works suggests a greater diversity. S. rizzoi infection, found in April-May in 1/5 lizards, was recent with young females in the host's stomach and intestine, and males in the stomach. One female contained four membranous-shelled eggs. The two other females contained a few hatched infective larvae, membranous-shelled eggs with developing embryos and, unexpectedly at this early stage, a few thick-shelled divided eggs. As in several other Skrjabinelazia species, the progeny of S. rizzoi are adapted for intra-host suprainfection and inter-host transmission, but in this species the production of resistant eggs appears in very young females. Résumé

Il volume esplora l’opera di due autori classici come Capuana e Verga sotto la lente della prospettiva postcoloniale, accogliendo la tesi del processo di unificazione italiana come processo di colonizzazione interna. L’autrice indaga gli effetti della colonizzazione sulla rappresentazione della realtà rurale siciliana, mettendo in luce zone di ambiguità e ibridismo nella scrittura di Capuana e Verga. I due scrittori, stretti in una posizione in-between tra mondo colonizzato e mondo colonizzatore, a volte prendono parte alla costruzione del discorso nazionale egemone, a volte creano dei contro-discorsi, in un’alternanza mai definitiva che rende sempre ricchi e affascinanti i testi dei due veristi.

In this article, I analyze the cultural meaning of the emergence of an African migrant literature in Italy at the beginning of the 1990s and its presence today. I put this emergence in dialogue with the construction of Italian identity as white. Through a brief historical account of how this social construction came into being, I verify how African migrant literature contests this (de)racialized myth of “Italianness.” Using Gordon’s concept of “haunting,” I argue that African literature within Italian literature can be read as a manifestation of ghosts: the appearance of a presence that has always been there but was repressed by hegemonic discourses. African literature not only works against subalternity, but also reveals whiteness as imagined and acknowledges a colonial past that has been deleted from the public remembrance. Despite such work, African migrant authors today are still writing against the paradigm of the “arrival,” asking: who is Italian? Who can represent Italian citizens?

This essay draws on the first (of two) edited volumes of ISSA dedicated to “Postcolonialismi Italiani ieri e oggi appunti (sudafricani) per una (ri)concettualizzazione ‘rizomatica’ dei postcolonial Italian studies” (Virga, Zuccala 2018) and on some of the new concepts introduced therein. The essay tackles in a more thorough fashion and from a broader perspective some of the methodological and terminological issues raised – albeit in a necessarily cursory manner (and in Italian) – in Virga and Zuccala 2018. The essay starts by geographically positioning writers in the context of global academia and claiming an epistemological consequence of their geographical position. It then gives an overview of the field of postcolonial Italian studies in order to explain how the concept of rhizome, when applied meta-critically to the whole field, might provide a useful starting point for a paradigmatic reconceptualization of postcolonial Italian studies.

Abstract