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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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The return of colonial memories in postcolonial Italy
| Panel |
82. AEGIS related journals panel: Africa's contested memories
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| Paper ID | 779 |
| Author(s) |
Triulzi, Alessandro
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | The paper intends to contribute to the current debate on the failure of Italian public memory to come to grips with its colonial past. Several authors have argued that Italian public memory is still under the weight of an oppressive historical amnesia as regards the country's brief and desultory colonial past. In fact, it appears to hide hidden memories which are neither dead nor less controversial within Italian society and its political and cultural institutions. Different memories are preserved by different groups in Italian society - essentially those who participated in the making of the colonial empire and their descendants, and those who, although they never went to Africa, were most exposed to colonial propaganda at home. Thus colonial memory in post-colonial Italy can be defined as a 'pendulum' oscillating between public nostalgia and national pride (which is partly responsible for the current Italian protagonism in the international arena) and an all-out retrenchment and desire to forget.
Given its oscillating nature, colonial memory and its public representations are back-files which can be brought to light easily according to convenience or factuality. The recent influx of African migrants escaping to the well-fortified European citadel is one of them. As wave after wave of ex-colonial subjects escape difficult situations at home and seek refuge and stability of work and family in present-day Italy, colonial memories and their feelings of superiority are re-emerging in Italian society and threaten its willingness to include the new migrants within the ambiguous post-colonial encounter with its denial of rights and social entitlements. Thus the European citadel becomes daily more and more fortified and well guarded from foreign inroads as well as from its own past.
'The return of colonial memories in postcolonial Italy' is the subject of a special issue of afriche e orienti (1,2007), edited by Ruth Iyob and myself, aimed at confronting colonial memories in a wider perspective in conjunction with other European journals who have published or are preparing issues on Africa's contested memories. |
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