Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy

This book explores intersectional constructions of race and whiteness in modern and contemporary Italy. It contributes to transnational and interdisciplinary reflections on these issues through an analysis of political debates and social practices, focusing in particular on visual materials from the unification of Italy (1861) to the present day. Giuliani draws attention to rearticulations of the transnationally constructed Italian 'colonial archive' in Italian racialised identity-politics and cultural racisms across processes of nation building, emigration, colonial expansion, and the construction of the first post-fascist Italian society. The author considers the 'figures of race' peopling the Italian colonial archive as composing past and present ideas and representations of (white) Italianness and racialised/gendered Otherness. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Italian studies, political philosophy, sociology, history, visual and cultural studies, race and whiteness studies and gender studies, will find this book of interest.

Auteur

Gaia Giuliani is a Researcher in Postcolonial Studies at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra, Portugal and a Founding Member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Race and Racisms, University of Padova, Italy. She has published widely in the areas of race, nation and gender in Italy.

Résumé

Finalist for the 2019 Edinburgh Gadda Prize

This book explores intersectional constructions of race and whiteness in modern and contemporary Italy. It contributes to transnational and interdisciplinary reflections on these issues through an analysis of political debates and social practices, focusing in particular on visual materials from the unification of Italy (1861) to the present day. Giuliani draws attention to rearticulations of the transnationally constructed Italian 'colonial archive' in Italian racialised identity-politics and cultural racisms across processes of nation building, emigration, colonial expansion, and the construction of the first post-fascist Italian society. The author considers the 'figures of race' peopling the Italian colonial archive as composing past and present ideas and representations of (white) Italianness and racialised/gendered Otherness. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Italian studies, political philosophy, sociology, history, visual and cultural studies, race and whiteness studies and gender studies, will find this book of interest.

Contenu

Part 1: Constructions of Whiteness from Unification to Fascism.- 1. Race, gender and the early colonial imaginary.- 2. Race, gender and the fascist colonial imaginary.- Part 2: Race and Gender in Italians' Post-fascist Cinematic Imaginary.- 3. Black Venuses between colonial memory and global horizons.- Part 3:Visualisation of Race, Visibilisation of Bodies and Concealment of Racism in Italian television, 1980s2010s.- 4. Visualising race in Italian public and private television in the 1980s-2010s.- 5. Silent and exoticised, criminal or victim: the new racial paradigm.- 6. Conclusions.