This book questions Italian “white innocence” and examines the specificity of Italian racial discourse through the analysis of different kinds of texts and representations.
Intersectionality – a theoretical and methodological approach focusing on the multidimensional discrimination that individuals and groups experience based on their race, color, gender, and other axes of oppression – has only recently been embraced as an effective methodology in Italy, whose national identity is structured around the “chromatic norm” of whiteness. The categories of race and color have been almost absent in post-war public debate as well as in scholarly discourse. Feminist movements and theoreticians have mostly placed gender at the core of their analyses, leaving white privilege unchallenged and undertheorized. Colonial and postcolonial studies have linked present-day racism to Italian colonialism, thus shedding light on contemporary incarnations of Empire. In this volume, the authors adopt an intersectional methodology to question Italian “white innocence” and to examine the specificity of Italian racial discourse through the analysis of different kinds of texts and representations. The volume also includes two interviews with writers and intellectuals Djarah Kan and Leaticia Ouedraogo, who discuss how they articulate concepts of intersectionality, Blackness, white privilege, and structural racism in Italian contemporary culture and society.
The book will be of great significance to students, researchers and scholars of Migration and Postcolonial Studies interested in gender, class, and racial identity. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
Introduction: Of pink (and red) paint, Black lives (that matter), and intersectionality in Italy
Caterina Romeo & Giulia Fabbri
1. The importance of self-definition: An interview with Djarah Kan
Djarah Kan, Caterina Romeo & Giulia Fabbri
2. “Amplifying Black Italian voices”: An interview with Leaticia Ouedraogo
Leaticia Ouedraogo, Giulia Fabbri & Caterina Romeo
3. From Pecore nere to Future: Anthologizing intersectional Blackness in contemporary Italy
Caterina Romeo
4. Making visible the invisible: Colonial sources and counter body-archives in the boarding schools for Black “mixed race” Italian children in fascist East Africa
Angelica Pesarini
5. Black women at war: The Shadow King (2019), Cronache dalla polvere (2019), and intersectional violence in contemporary Italy
Mara Mattoscio
6. “I wanted to become an Abyssinian”: Rewriting Indro Montanelli’s memories of colonial Africa in Francesca Melandri’s Sangue giusto (2017)
Serena I. Volpi
7. In the name of Destà: Artivism, corporeality, and “postcolonial pathways”
Selby Wynn Schwartz
8. Shaping translingual writing and translation as intersectional practices: Nadeesha Uyangoda’s L’unica persona nera nella stanza and Sulla razza as case studies
Annarita Taronna
9. Anti-gypsyism, intergenerational conflict, and intersectional dilemmas in the films of Laura Halilovic
Áine O’Healy
10. Intersectional activism on social media: Anti-racist and feminist strategies in the digital space
Giulia Fabbri
Biography
Caterina Romeo is Associate Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, where she teaches Literary Theory, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. She is the author of Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature (2023), Riscrivere la nazione (2018), and Narrative tra due sponde: Memoir di italiane d’America (2005). She has coedited the volume Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (2012), and a special issue of the journal Postcolonial Studies titled Postcolonial Europe (2015).
Giulia Fabbri is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome, where she obtained a Ph.D. in Gender Studies. She is the author of Sguardi (post)coloniali. Razza, genere e politiche della visualità (2021) and has published in Italian and international journals. Her research areas include gender and racial politics in the colonial and postcolonial Italian context, the cultural production of Italian women of African descent, ecofeminism, and postcolonial and intersectional approaches to the Anthropocene.
A collection of generative and insightful essays mapping the complexities of anti-racist, decolonial feminist praxis confronting the racialized realities and normative whiteness in Italy. Examining literary, cultural, visual, and social media texts, Intersectional Italy archives the counterhegemonic, intersectional feminist epistemologies that we need to understand the colonial history and racialized gendered governance practices of the contemporary Italian State. A ground-breaking contribution to feminist postcolonial studies of Europe.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University, USA
Author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
Intersectional Italy, a new collection of essays edited by Caterina Romeo and Giulia Fabbri, is a ground-breaking book. Bringing together essays by established and emerging critics of postcolonial Italy and interviews with prominent Black Italian feminists and writers, it offers a truly innovative intervention in the understanding of Blackness in Italy as both a racialized and sexualized experience. From reflections on inter-racial unions in the Italian colonies to contemporary anthologies featuring cis, trans, and biracial writers of colour, to discussions of Romani film-making, the volume showcases the rich cultural debates taking place in Italy around new notions of identity and citizenship. The collection also offers a much-needed re-orientation of critical theories around race and gender from a primarily US-based perspective to one that takes into account Italian approaches and perspectives. Altogether, a collection that is sure to shape the thinking of new generations of scholars in Italian postcolonial studies and beyond.
Neelam Srivastava
Professor of Postcolonial and World Literature, Newcastle University, UK
Author of Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970
In the spirit of the transfeminist and antiracist activists who threw pink and red paint on the statue of Indro Montanelli in Milan, this powerful book throws paint on the field of Italian studies. Drawing together insights from postcolonial studies and Black feminist theory, and grounding them in the specificities of Italian nation-building and colonialism, it articulates a roadmap for intersectional analysis within Italian studies. The field-building essays and interviews in this volume foreground the interconnected dynamics of coloniality, racism, and gender violence at the foundations of italianità; unearth radical counter-archives of subjugated knowledges; and center irrepressible movements for justice.
Camilla Hawthorne
Critical Human Geographer and Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, UC Santa Cruz, USA
Author of Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean
