Contained in:
Book Chapter

Postcolonial Italian Studies: Rhizomatic Notes from the South

  • Anita Virga
  • Brian Zuccala

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.

  • Keywords:
  • Italian Postcolonial Studies,
  • Hypertext and Italian Postcolonialism,
  • Postcolonial Italian Studies,
  • Post-colonial Metacriticism,
  • Post-colonial Rhizome,
+ Show More

Anita Virga

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa - ORCID: 0000-0002-7600-4919

Brian Zuccala

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

  1. Ashcroft, Bill. 2001. Post-colonial Transformation. London: Routledge.
  2. Ashcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge.
  3. Ashcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2013. Postcolonial Studies Dictionary. London-New York: Routledge.
  4. Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2016. Cultural Turns: New Orientation in the Study of Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter.
  5. Bayart, Jean-François. 2011. “Postcolonial Studies: A Political Invention of Tradition?” Public Culture 23, 1: 55-84.
  6. Barrera, Giulia. 2005. “Patrilinearity, Race, and Identity: The Upbringing of Italo-Eritreans during Italian Colonialism.” In Italian Colonialism, edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and Mia Fuller, 97-108. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  7. Bhattacharya, Baidik, and Neelam Srivastava, edited by. 2012. The Postcolonial Gramsci. New York: Routledge.
  8. Bianchi, Rino, e Igiaba Scego. 2014. Roma negata. Percorsi postcoloniali nella città. Roma: Ediesse.
  9. Bouchard, Norma. 2018. “Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Interruptions.” Italian Studies in Southern Africa 31, 1: 25-59.
  10. Brioni, Simone. 2015. The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature. New York-Oxford-Cambridge: Legenda.
  11. Burns, Jennifer. 2003. “Borders Within the Text: Authorship, Collaboration and Mediation in Writing in Italian by Immigrants.” In Borderlines: Migrant Writing and Italian Identities (1870-2000), edited by Jennifer Burns, and Loredana Polezzi, 387-394. Isernia: Iannone.
  12. Burns, Jennifer. 2013. Migrant Imaginaries: Figures in Italian Migration Literature. Oxford-Bern-New York: Peter Lang.
  13. Carotenuto, Carla. 2016. “Percorsi transculturali e postcoloniali in Roma negata di Rino Bianchi e Igiaba Scego.” From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 211-217.
  14. Cassano, Franco. 2001. “Southern Thought.” Thesis Eleven 67, 1: 1-10.
  15. Chambers, Iain. 2016. “The South: from geography to epistemology.” From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 31-34.
  16. Chambers, Iain. 2017. Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities. London-New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
  17. Coburn, Melissa. 2013. Race and Narrative in Italian Women’s Writing Since Unification. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
  18. Comberiati, Daniele. 2009. La quarta sponda. Scrittrici in viaggio dall’Africa coloniale all’Italia di oggi. Roma: Caravan edizioni.
  19. Comberiati, Melissa. 2010. “ ‘Missioni’: Double Identity and Plurilingualism in the Works of Three Female Migrant Writers in Italy.” In Migration and Literature in Contemporary Europe, edited by Mirjam Gebauer, and Pia Schwarz Lausten, 205-218. München: Martin Meidenbauer.
  20. De Donno, Fabrizio, and Neelam Srivastava. 2006. “Colonial and Postcolonial Italy.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 8, 3: 371-379.
  21. De Franceschi, Leonardo. 2013. L’Africa in Italia. Per una controstoria postcoloniale del cinema italiano. Roma: Aracne editrice.
  22. Del Boca, Angelo. 1976. Gli italiani in Africa orientale. Dall’unità alla marcia su Roma, volume I. Bari: Laterza.
  23. Del Boca, Angelo. 1979. Gli italiani in Africa orientale. La conquista dell’Impero, volume II. Bari: Laterza.
  24. Del Boca, Angelo. 1982. Gli italiani in Africa orientale. La caduta dell’Impero, volume III. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  25. Del Boca, Angelo. 1984. Gli italiani in Africa orientale. Nostalgia delle colonie, volume IV. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  26. Del Boca, Angelo. 1986a. Gli italiani in Libia. Tripoli bel suol d’Amore, volume I. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  27. Del Boca, Angelo. 1986b. Gli italiani in Libia. Dal fascismo a Gheddafi, volume II. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  28. Del Boca, Angelo. 2005. Italiani brava gente?. Vicenza: Neri Pozza.
  29. Deleuze, Gilles, et Félix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateux. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. English edition, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. London-Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  30. Derobertis, Roberto. 2014. “Da dove facciamo il postcoloniale? Appunti per una genealogia della ricezione degli studi postcoloniali nell’italianistica italiana.” Postcolonial Studies from the European South 17.
  31. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2016. “Epistemologies of the South and the future.” From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 17-29.
  32. De Vivo, Barbara. 2011. “La letteratura postcoloniale italiana: Strategie di auto-rappresentazione in tre scrittrici africane-Italiane.” PhD Dissertation. Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”.
  33. Dickie, John. 1997. “Stereotypes of the Italian South 1860-1900.” In The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno Revisited, edited by Robert Lumley, and Jonathan Morris, 114-147. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
  34. Di Maio, Alessandra. 2001. “Immigration and National Literature: Italian Voices from Africa and the Diaspora.” In The Mediterranean Passage. Migrations and New Cultural Encounters in Southern Europe, edited by Richard King, 146-162. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
  35. Di Maio, Alessandra. 2008. Wor(l)ds in Progress: A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings. Milano-Udine: Mimesis.
  36. Fiore, Teresa. 2012. “The Emigrant Post-‘Colonia’ in Contemporary Immigrant Italy.” In Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop, and Caterina Romeo, 71-82. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  37. Fiore, Teresa. 2017. Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies. New York: Fordham University Press.
  38. Gabaccia, Donna R. 1988. Militants and Migrants: Rural Sicilians Become American Workers. New Brunswick-London: Rutgers University Press.
  39. Gabaccia, Donna R. 2000. Italy’s Many Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  40. Gabaccia, Donna R., and Fraser M. Ottanelli, edited by. 2001. Italian Workers of the World. Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States. Urbana-Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
  41. Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation, translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Original edition Édouard Glissant. 1990. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard.
  42. Giuliani, Gaia, e Cristina Lombardi-Diop. 2013. Bianco e nero. Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani. Firenze-Milano: Mondadori Education.
  43. Hackler, Ruben, and Guido, Kirsten. 2016. “Distant Reading, Computational Criticism, and Social Critique. An Interview with Franco Moretti.” Le foucaldien 2, 1: 1-17. DOI: 10.16995/lefou.22
  44. Henderson, Greig E., and Christopher Brown. 1997. Glossary of Literary Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto.
  45. Labanca, Nicola. 2002. Oltremare. Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino.
  46. Leitch, Vincent. 1981. Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press.
  47. Lombardi-Diop, Cristina, and Caterina Romeo. 2012. “Introduction: Paradigms of Postcoloniality in Contemporary Italy.” In Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop, and Caterina Romeo, 1-29. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  48. Lombardi-Diop, Cristina, and Caterina Romeo. 2014. “The Italian Postcolonial: A Manifesto.” Italian Studies 69, 3: 425-433.
  49. Lombardi-Diop, Cristina, and Caterina Romeo. 2016. “Oltre l’Italia: Riflessioni sul presente e il futuro del postcoloniale.” From The European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 51-60.
  50. Lori Laura. 2013. Inchiostro d’Africa: La letteratura postcoloniale somala fra diaspora e identità. Verona: Ombre corte.
  51. Mauceri, Maria C., e Maria. G. Negro. 2009. Nuovo immaginario italiano: italiani e stranieri a confronto nella letteratura italiana contemporanea. Roma: Sinnos.
  52. Mellino, Miguel. 2007. “Italy and Postcolonial Studies: A Difficult Encounter.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 8, 3: 461-471.
  53. Mezzadra, Sandro. 2008. La condizione postcoloniale: storia e politica nel presente globale. Verona: Ombre corte.
  54. Moe, Nelson. 1992. “ ‘Altro che Italia’: Il Sud dei piemontesi (1860-61).” Meridiana 15: 53-89.
  55. Moe, Nelson. 1998. “The Emergence of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti, and Sonnino.” In Italy’s “Southern Question”: Orientalism in One Country, edited by Jane Schneider, 51-76. Oxford: Berg.
  56. Moe, Nelson. 2002. The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  57. Moretti, Franco. 2013. Distant Reading. London-New York: Verso.
  58. Moretti, Franco. 2017. “Franco Moretti: A Response.” PMLA 132, 3: 686-689.
  59. Oboe, Annalisa. 2016. “Archiviare altrimenti: riflessioni ‘postcolonialitaliane’.” From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 3-14. <http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it/journal/2016-1/2.2016-1.Oboe.pdf>
  60. Parati, Graziella. 1997. “Strangers in Paradise: Foreigners and Shadows in Italian Literature.” In Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture, edited by Beverly Allen, and Mary Russo, 169-190. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  61. Parati, Graziella. 1999. Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy. Madison-Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press.
  62. Parati, Graziella. 2001. “Shooting a Changing Culture: Cinema and Immigration in Contemporary Italy.” In ItaliAfrica: Bridging Continents and Cultures, edited by Matteo Sante, 261-280. Stony Brook: Forum Italicum Publishing.
  63. Parati, Graziella. 2005. Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  64. Picarazzi, Teresa. 2001. “Italian African Meticciato Artistico.” In ItaliAfrica: Bridging Continents and Cultures, edited by Matteo Sante, 205-235. Stony Brook: Forum Italicum Publishing.
  65. Pinkus, Karen. 2003. “Empty Spaces. Decolonization in Italy.” In A Place in the Sun. Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present, edited by Patrizia Palumbo, 299-320. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  66. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2004. Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  67. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2012. “The Postcolonial Turn in Italian Studies: European Perspectives.” In Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop, and Caterina Romeo, 51-69. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  68. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2014. “La ‘svolta’ postcoloniale negli Studi italiani. Prospettive europee.” In L'Italia postcoloniale, edited by Cristina Lombardi-Diop, and Caterina Romeo, 46-60. Milano-Firenze: Mondadori-Le Monnier.
  69. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2016. “Does Italy Need Postcolonial Theory? Intersections in Italian Postcolonial Studies.” English Literature 3: 145-161.
  70. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2017. Migrant Writers and Urban Space in Italy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  71. Portelli, Alessandro. 1999. “Mediterranean Passage: The Beginning of an African Italian Literature and the African American Example.” In Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, edited by Maria Dietrich, Henry L. Gates, and Carl Pedersen, 282-304. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 282-304.
  72. Portelli, Alessandro. 2006. “Fingertips Stained with Ink: Notes on New Migrant Writing in Italy.” Interventions 8, 3: 472-483.
  73. Quaquarelli, Lucia, edited by. 2010. Certi confini. Sulla letteratura italiana dell’immigrazione. Milano: Morellini.
  74. Re, Lucia. 2003. “Alexandria Revisited. Colonialism and Egyptian Works of Enrico Pea and Giuseppe Ungaretti.” In A Place in the Sun: Italian Colonial Culture and the Crisis of National Identity, edited by Patrizia Palumbo, 163-196. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  75. Re, Lucia. 2009. “Nazione e Narrazione: scrittori, politica, sessualità e la ‘formazione’ degli italiani, 1870-1900.” Carte Italiane 2, 5: 1-38. <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rj8r3c6>
  76. Romeo, Caterina. 2017. “Italian Postcolonial Literature.” California Italian Studies 7, 2: 1-43.
  77. Sabelli, Sonia. 2005. “Transnational Identities and the Subversion of the Italian Language in Geneviève Makaping, Christiana de Caldas Brito, and Jarmila Očkayová.” Dialectical Anthropology 29, 3-4: 439-451.
  78. Sarnelli, Laura. 2018. “Affective Routes in Postcolonial Italy Igiaba Scego’s Imaginary Mappings.” Roots and Routes, Research on Visual Cultures, special issue, Italianità 6, 23. <http://www.roots-routes.org/affective-routes-postcolonial-italy-igiaba-scegos-imaginary-mappings-laura-sarnelli/>
  79. Scego, Igiaba. 2010. La mia casa è dove sono. Milano: Rizzoli.
  80. Scego, Igiaba. 2015. Adua. Firenze: Giunti.
  81. Schneider, Jane. 1998. “Introduction: The Dynamics of neoOrientalism in Italy (1848-1995).”In Italy’s “Southern Question”: Orientalism in One Country, edited by Jane Schneider, 1-23. Oxford: Berg.
  82. Sorrentino, Alessandra. 2014 (2013). Luigi Pirandello e l’altro. Una lettura critica postcoloniale. Roma: Carocci Editore.
  83. Tomasello, Giovanna. 1984. La letteratura coloniale dalle avanguardie al fascismo. Milano: Sellerio.
  84. Verdicchio, Pasquale. 1997. Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
  85. Virga, Anita. 2017. Subalternità siciliana nella scrittura di Luigi Capuana e Giovanni Verga. Firenze: Firenze University Press.
  86. Virga, Anita, and Brian Zuccala. 2018. “Postcolonialismi Italiani: Ieri e Oggi. Appunti (sudafricani) per una (ri)concettualizzazione ‘rizomatica’ dei Postcolonial Italian Studies.” Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe 31, 1: 1-24.
  87. Virga, Anita, and Brian Zuccala. 2019. “From Blaxploitalian to Black-Italiano: A South African Exploration of Afroitalianess with Fred Kuwornu.” Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 7, 1: 107-116. DOI: 10.1386/jicms.7.1.107_7
  88. Warf, Barney, and Santa Arias. 2009. “Introduction: The Reinsertion of Space in the Humanities and Social Sciences.”In The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Barney Warf, and Arias Santa, 1-10. New York: Routledge.
  89. Wong, Aliza S. 2006. Race and the Nation in Liberal Italy 1861-1911. Meridionalism, Empire, and the Diaspora. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Pages: 145-161
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

XML
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Postcolonial Italian Studies: Rhizomatic Notes from the South

Authors

Anita Virga, Brian Zuccala

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-597-4.12

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Rewriting and Rereading the XIX and XX-Century Canons

Book Subtitle

Offerings for Annamaria Pagliaro

Editors

Samuele Grassi, Brian Zuccala

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-597-4

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-597-4

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-598-1

Series Title

Biblioteca di Studi di Filologia Moderna

Series E-ISSN

2420-8361

322

Fulltext
downloads

218

Views

Export Citation

1,340

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

2,191

Book Chapters

3,790,127

Fulltext
downloads

4,399

Authors

from 923 Research Institutions

of 65 Nations

64

scientific boards

from 348 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,246

Referees

from 379 Research Institutions

of 38 Nations