Nation, ‘race’, and racisms in twentieth-century Italy

This article explores the practical, ethical, and epistemological issues which arise when carrying out and sharing research in contexts of Italian migration, highlighting how greater reflexivity on our own geographic and historical location as researchers can productively inform and shape our understanding of sites of contact, exchange and confrontation in relation to contemporary Italy. Specifically, we write as researchers informed by ethnographic theories and practices, and who through our research have engaged in emplaced and embodied cultural encounters in sites which are identifiable as both transcultural and Italian. Drawing on vignettes from research in Italy and the UK, the article highlights some of the particular contradictions, opportunities and responsibilities generated by our respective positions. We address how our positionings as white, English and female scholars located within nationally-defined Italian Studies structures have raised pertinent questions of power, privilege and voice, as we place our own biographies and bodies, themselves shaped by specific colonial, national and local histories, into critical dialogue with those on and with whom we research. Through a discussion of these ‘irresolvable tensions’ of our research, we seek to practically engage with the broader imperative of finding new ways of studying and writing culture.

Section: Discussion: Researching Italy In the Ukmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emplaced and embodied encounters: methodological reflections on transcultural research in contexts of Italian migration

Wall

Wells

2020

“…Equally, the recent history of Italy as a 'receiving nation' has been marked by xenophobia and tragedy, a development that was already clear two decades ago but has since become a prominent trope in political debate. Recent work on race in Italian society (Patriarca 2021;Patriarca and Deplano 2018) suggests the longer-term importance of categories of exclusion within Italian citizenship, and their grounding in historical notions of family and gender, religion, and 'whiteness'. I wonder whether, in the many diasporas described in Gabaccia's book, we might these days give more space to the racist aspects of Italian identity (or identities), and to questions of indigenous erasure and sexual violence?…”

Section: Lucy Riall: Italian Diasporas and Global Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italy's diasporas: a discussion between Donna R. Gabaccia, Lucy Riall, Pamela Ballinger, and Konstantina Zanou

Zanou

2024

It has been over 20 years since Donna R. Gabaccia's seminal work Italy's Many Diasporas was published (London & New York, 2000), an overview of the social, cultural and economic history of Italy's various migrations. Much has changed since then, but this book remains a classic. In this roundtable, historians Lucy Riall, Pamela Ballinger and Konstantina Zanou reflect on the value of Gabaccia's work and on the historical moment of its production. They discuss with the author the developments in the historiography of Italian and other diasporas during the last two decades, and offer insights on new avenues of research including settler colonialism, race and belonging, migration and environmental change, global microhistory and biography, and the Mediterranean context of Italy's migrations.

“…14.On the continuity of the racist discourse in Italy after the end of the Fascist ventennio see Patriarca and Deplano 2018.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fascist Samurais: the Japanese race in the Italian imaginary during the Second World War and beyond

Monserrati

2020

Between 1938 and 1943, Fascist intellectuals debated the problem of how to create a racial policy that would encompass the Japanese within the Aryan doctrine. This article demonstrates how internal divisions in the Fascist party over racial issues generated alternative versions of pro-Japanese propaganda, which influenced the racial thinking of the Italian far-right even long after the Second World War. I show how Italian racial theories developed to underpin the alliance with Japan were transnational in scope, as they involved both German and Italian scholars in a common effort to lobby state racial policies. Specifically, I consider George Montandon and Julius Evola as two transnational actors engaged in building a case for the inclusion of the Japanese in the family of Aryan races, speaking either from a ‘biological’ or ‘spiritual’ perspective. While by the end of the Second World War the ‘biological’ thesis for the inclusion of the Japanese race had evaporated, the ‘spiritual’ thesis would continue to influence a generation of Italian far-right militants, especially during the ‘Years of Lead’. To make sense of this legacy, I suggest that the foundational myth of Italian Fascism, based on the spiritual heritage of the multiethnic Roman empire, responded to the neofascist quest for transnational affiliations against Western materialism.