Africa Italiana: dalla narrazione coloniale alla postcolonialità.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the Italian colonial narrative outlining its main features and tracing those features in different aspects of today’s Italian culture and society. After examining the evolution of the idea of race in Italy and the unfolding of the “colonial adventure” in East Africa, basing on gender and race studies and on the work of Angelo Del Boca, material pertaining to the Italian society at the time of the colonies, from advertisement to pictures, to articles, songs and children toys, is collected and analyzed on the basis of its relation to the concepts of race and intersectionality. Two different categories of post-colonial material are then examined: material that reflects the experience of migrants from Italian former colonies, specifically interviews to women who migrated to Italy from Eritrea and fiction written by the Italian-somali writer Igiaba Scego, and excerpts from today’s Italian society, such as news, tv commercials, urban topography and supermarket products. What appears from comparing colonial narrative and different aspects of today’s Italian society is that there is in fact a post-colonial narrative that makes use of recurring topics to be traced back to the colonial period, and that in the majority of the cases the existence of this narrative is clear to those who have been, and still are, subjected to it, but mostly unknown to the white Italian society.