Gianmarco Mancosu | University of London (original) (raw)
Book Chapters by Gianmarco Mancosu
Film Exhibition: The Italian Context, 2024
The role of film in shaping fascist imperial discourses is well-documented, with most academic wo... more The role of film in shaping fascist imperial discourses is well-documented, with most academic work focusing on textual analysis and production mechanisms. However, the specific contexts in which colonial films circulated have received little attention. This study seeks to fill that gap by mapping politically sponsored initiatives displaying colonial films. I will first examine key events in Rome, such as those at the Teatro Augusteo (1924, 1925) and the Museo Coloniale (1927), where “scientific” films from early colonial expeditions were shown to cultivate colonial aspirations aligned with fascist policy—especially during the re-conquest of Libya (1928-32) and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-36). The proclamation of the fascist empire (1936-41) led to intensified propaganda efforts across Italian society, with major imperial films produced and circulated in Italy, abroad, and in the colonies. I will then focus on the role of imperial films in the fascist film showcase par excellence, the Venice International Film Festival, and in the pavilion of the Mostra Triennale delle Terre d’Oltremare (Naples, 1940), though systematic initiatives there were halted by WWII. By examining primary and secondary sources—including archival documents, cinemagazines, and newsreels—this study provides a fresh perspective on how the contexts for colonial film screenings became increasingly aligned with the fascist regime's aggressive, racist imperial agenda.
Mediating Historical Responsibility: Memories of Difficult Pasts in European Cultures, 2024
Italy’s colonial past has influenced the making of modern and contemporary Italian society in sur... more Italy’s colonial past has influenced the making of modern and contemporary Italian society in surreptitious yet significant ways. However, the political and cultural results of that extended chapter of Italy’s past (1890-1960) are seldom seen by scholars, politicians, and the Italian public as intrinsic to understandings of Italian history, culture, and society. Colonial legacies have likewise left enduring traces on those countries where Italy acted as a colonial power (Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Ethiopia). Our essay will tackle the transnational and transcultural dimension of those memories through the critical use of the metaphor of haunting. Starting from a reflection on the Italian buildings and spaces erected by the Italian settlers in Addis Ababa – during fascist colonization (1936-1941) as well as in the subsequent period (1941-1974) when Italians still played a crucial role in the life of the city – we will explore histories and memories of the Italian community in Addis Ababa, its self-perception, and the representations of its (post)colonial identity. The different stories of the Italian presence are clearly visible in those spaces (the Italian Cemetery, the “Piazza” area, the Juventus Club, the Italian Schools), which have been of course re-signified by postcolonial interactions and meanings, but which still bear the marks of a violent and unburied past. We will thus explore the interplay between material and immaterial memories, between living and dead elements – in other words, the liminal condition of the colonial memories, which are neither fully present nor fully absent, belonging to a "hauntological" domain (referring to Derrida’s pivotal work). Our aim is to point out the extent to which the “natural” transition from colonial to a postcolonial setting has been somehow suspended within these heterotopic sites, in which the boundaries separating the past and the present are uncertain, and where the ghosts of the Italian empire still question very roots of our histories and cultures.
Non-Fiction Cinema in Postwar Europe. Visual Culture and the Reconstruction of Public Space, 2024
At the end of World War II, newsreels and documentaries played a crucial role in somatising the t... more At the end of World War II, newsreels and documentaries played a crucial role in somatising the trauma of the dramatic loss of wealth, power, and pride caused by the end of the empire, whilst at the same time representing the re-structuring of (post)colonial relationship like the Commonwealth, the Union Française, and various forms of trusteeship administrations under the aegis of the UN. This contribution aims to shed a comparative and transnational light on the ways by which some European countries (UK in Togoland 1946-1956; France in Cameroun 1946-1959; Italy in Somalia 1950-1960) envisioned their new political presence under the guise of the UN trusteeship system. I will highlight common patterns in the representation mechanism of the former colonial world, thus conceiving the images of trusteeship administrations as a means to re-articulate an epistemic and political hegemony over the newly independent states.
The Fascist war in Ethiopia (1936-1941) is one of the lasts violent attempts a western country un... more The Fascist war in Ethiopia (1936-1941) is one of the lasts violent attempts a western country undertook to create a colonial empire. Moreover, that conflict had a prominent role in strengthening the axis between Nazism and Fascism that would have brought to the Second World War. As highlighted by a remarkable part of historiography, the greater part of public opinion in the UK, France, and the United States was against the Italian aggression of Ethiopia. However, a not completely negligible part of those public opinions France were sympathetic with Fascist claims over Ethiopia and justified it by addressing a peculiar transimperial discourse operating beyond the national borders of fascist Italy. This paper wants to shed a light on that transimperial discursive space by addressing cultural strategies used to inform non-Italian audiences (namely in United States, in France, and in United Kingdom) about the Ethiopian war, in a time frame between the October 1935 and the May 1936. Thanks to the study of original archival records, the article investigates how some foreign journalists, embedded in the Italian army, described the military conquest of Ethiopia to non-Italian audiences in radio broadcasts from Asmara. By going beyond the boundaries of nation-based colonial culture analysis, this transimperial cultural space straightforwardly addresses the very roots of the process that has built and reinforced the idea of the ‘West’ as bearer of civilization, even on the threshold of the global process of decolonization.
This essay centres on how filmic and media representations of colonial Asmara resounded in contem... more This essay centres on how filmic and media representations of colonial Asmara resounded in contemporary documentaries on postcolonial Italy (namely Aulò and Asmarina). In doing so, I engaged two main theoretical standpoints: I try to assess to what extent directors use old material (mainly produced by the Istituto Luce) to evoke old colonial rhetoric; then I address the dialogue between old and new images as originating representation in which Asmara emerges as an heterotopic space.
To carry on such investigation, the essay provides a brief overview of the role of the fascist colonial propaganda, with a specific attention paid to the institutional organisation that produced and spread fascist film in the Horn of Africa (the Reparto Africa Orientale of the Istituto LUCE).
Quel che resta dell'impero. La cultura coloniale degli italiani, Sep 26, 2014
Il paper indaga sulla volontà politica e sulla struttura istituzionale che governava l'attività d... more Il paper indaga sulla volontà politica e sulla struttura istituzionale che governava l'attività del Reparto Africa Orientale dell'Istituto LUCE. Creato direttamente da Benito Mussolini nel settembre 1935, il Reparto LUCE A.O. era chiamato a seguire l'avanzata militare delle truppe italiane in Etiopia, descrivendo la guerra coloniale in modo che concretizzasse i miti che animavano la cultura fascista. Emerge una dialettica tra le varie istituzioni che poterono influenzare l'attività del reparto (l'Istituto LUCE, Benito Mussolini, gli uffici africani del Ministero della stampa e propaganda, i comandi militari), dialettica che poi si riflette nei contenuti dei cinegiornali riguardanti la battaglia d'Etiopia.
Il concetto di "alterità", inteso in maniera orientalista, è plasmato in modo da poter costruire l'immagine dell'elemento africano (declinato nelle rappresentazioni del territorio e della società etiope) affinché esso sia funzionale al processo di ridefinizione identitaria operato in patria dal fascismo. I cinegiornali e i documentari LUCE, diffusi ossessivamente in Italia e in colonia, mostrarono elementi di un discorso razziale che subdolamente si inserirono nella narrazione di quegli anni, lasciando eredità che si sono inserite subdolamente nella società e nella cultura italiane, immagini e contenuti che paiono resilienti anche alla caduta della dittatura e all'avvento della Repubblica.
"Mare Nostrum. Il colonialismo fascista tra realtà e rappresentazione". Aipsa., 2012
The empire was a crucial myth for Italian fascism. For this reason, Mussolini's dictatorship spre... more The empire was a crucial myth for Italian fascism. For this reason, Mussolini's dictatorship spread politically oriented images in which envisioning fascist founding myths. Documentaries and Newsreels produced by the 'Istituto LUCE' were peculiar tools to both shape and spread the myth of the fascist Empire. In this essay, the analysis of emerging contents reveals an ideal link between the multifaceted myths of Italian fascism and the process of narration of colonial war. By screening its own idea of "African otherness", the fascism tried to affect the process of Italian-identity re-building; within fascist newsreels, in particular, the Ethiopian element is depicted as waiting for the Italian reclaiming action. In the LUCE newsreels, African landscapes are the perfect stage where the mythic action of fascism could act; moreover, the African people were showed as keen to become italian subjects. These racial-oriented contents reached most of Italians, and it seems that these images have affected the perception of the "other" still after the fascism fall, by reframing the dichotomy between self and others according to racial principles.
Presentations by Gianmarco Mancosu
Other by Gianmarco Mancosu
Thesis defended in January 2020 at the University of Warwick
PhD thesis submitted in May 2015 at the University of Cagliari.
Conferences organization by Gianmarco Mancosu
'Identities in motion' engages with recent trends in Modern Languages research, aiming to be a fo... more 'Identities in motion' engages with recent trends in Modern Languages research, aiming to be a forum in which to discuss different methodologies and representational practices. In the context of discussing mobility, Italy offers an interesting case study due to the singularity of the colonial past, the complexity of the process of decolonization, the history of migration from and, in the more recent past, to Italy. All these historical and social phenomena need to be seen in a multi-disciplinary perspective that encourages a complex awareness of the different meanings of Italian identites and belonging.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/people/postgraduate/panzarella/identitiesmotion
Call for Papers by Gianmarco Mancosu
University of Warwick, 21 - 22 June 2018 The ASMI Postgraduate Summer School provides a forum fo... more University of Warwick, 21 - 22 June 2018
The ASMI Postgraduate Summer School provides a forum for postgraduate students and early career scholars in the field of Italian Studies to share their research and test their ideas. We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of Modern Italian history, politics, society, and culture, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from any academic discipline
An interdisciplinary conference that will explore how peripheral colonial experience could help i... more An interdisciplinary conference that will explore how peripheral colonial experience could help in reframing both disciplines and methodological tools to understand global issues.
11 March 2017 - University of Warwick
Papers by Gianmarco Mancosu
Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2018
In my PhD dissertation I try to answer to the question on how the Fascist regime in Italy represe... more In my PhD dissertation I try to answer to the question on how the Fascist regime in Italy represented its empire through the “Istituto Luce” newsreels, between the 1935 and 1942. Given the lack of a comprehensive work on the above mentioned subject, I’ve investigated on how cinematographic representations could shape or redefine the process of identity building during the “Ventennio”. In order to achieve a broad theoretical frame, in the first chapter I’ve analysed the roots of the Italian fascist’s culture. The discourse as conceived by Michel Foucault is a key concept to investigate about the relationship between power, knowledge and culture. I’ve used two theoretical evolutions of the Foucault’s discourse, namely the visual discourse and the Orientalist theory. In so doing I’ll be able to apply the concept in order to study the visual products about colonialism. Then I’ve investigated about the history of Italian colonialism, focusing on both the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and ...
Cinema e Storia, 2018
The article centres on the exploration of the fascist attempts to arrange the cinematographic aud... more The article centres on the exploration of the fascist attempts to arrange the cinematographic audience in Italian East Africa (1936-1941). Methodologically, it puts the study of original archival records issued by the fascist administration against the background of theories and discourses about cinema for colonial subjects well spread in fascist Italy and in other imperial countries.
Book Reviews by Gianmarco Mancosu
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,, 2017
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 37, 2017 - Issue 4
Talks by Gianmarco Mancosu
The Italian Cultural Institute is delighted to host Dr Gianmarco Mancosu, the second holder of th... more The Italian Cultural Institute is delighted to host Dr Gianmarco Mancosu, the second holder of the Luisa Selis Fellowship. Funded by the Fondazione di Sardegna in memory of anthropologist Luisa Selis, who specialised in the cultural memory of Sardinia, the fellowship enables researchers in this field (ethnography, anthropology and/or literature for example) to conduct research at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory at the Institute of Modern Languages Research and the Italian Cultural Institute London.
Sardinia, as other Italian regions, has experienced a massive emigration since the nineteenth century. This flux of people moving either to Italy or abroad allows to look at island’s identity ‘from the outside, and to take from the outside world whatever aids in renewing and developing its own roots’, as put by Roberto Esposito.
In this lecture, cultural memory and postcolonial approaches conflate against the background of the personal experience and positionality of the researcher, who uses different theoretical underpinnings to investigate the often-contradictory ideas nurturing narratives and discourses about Sardinian contemporary belongings. By taking the cue from preliminary fieldwork carried out in some Sardinian migrant associations based in Turin, Pavia, and Bologna, the talk will tackle how Sardinia is imagined outside the borders of the island and the intermingling of several forms of belongings (Sardinian, Italian, and European) in the social and cultural activities of those associations.
Film Exhibition: The Italian Context, 2024
The role of film in shaping fascist imperial discourses is well-documented, with most academic wo... more The role of film in shaping fascist imperial discourses is well-documented, with most academic work focusing on textual analysis and production mechanisms. However, the specific contexts in which colonial films circulated have received little attention. This study seeks to fill that gap by mapping politically sponsored initiatives displaying colonial films. I will first examine key events in Rome, such as those at the Teatro Augusteo (1924, 1925) and the Museo Coloniale (1927), where “scientific” films from early colonial expeditions were shown to cultivate colonial aspirations aligned with fascist policy—especially during the re-conquest of Libya (1928-32) and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-36). The proclamation of the fascist empire (1936-41) led to intensified propaganda efforts across Italian society, with major imperial films produced and circulated in Italy, abroad, and in the colonies. I will then focus on the role of imperial films in the fascist film showcase par excellence, the Venice International Film Festival, and in the pavilion of the Mostra Triennale delle Terre d’Oltremare (Naples, 1940), though systematic initiatives there were halted by WWII. By examining primary and secondary sources—including archival documents, cinemagazines, and newsreels—this study provides a fresh perspective on how the contexts for colonial film screenings became increasingly aligned with the fascist regime's aggressive, racist imperial agenda.
Mediating Historical Responsibility: Memories of Difficult Pasts in European Cultures, 2024
Italy’s colonial past has influenced the making of modern and contemporary Italian society in sur... more Italy’s colonial past has influenced the making of modern and contemporary Italian society in surreptitious yet significant ways. However, the political and cultural results of that extended chapter of Italy’s past (1890-1960) are seldom seen by scholars, politicians, and the Italian public as intrinsic to understandings of Italian history, culture, and society. Colonial legacies have likewise left enduring traces on those countries where Italy acted as a colonial power (Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Ethiopia). Our essay will tackle the transnational and transcultural dimension of those memories through the critical use of the metaphor of haunting. Starting from a reflection on the Italian buildings and spaces erected by the Italian settlers in Addis Ababa – during fascist colonization (1936-1941) as well as in the subsequent period (1941-1974) when Italians still played a crucial role in the life of the city – we will explore histories and memories of the Italian community in Addis Ababa, its self-perception, and the representations of its (post)colonial identity. The different stories of the Italian presence are clearly visible in those spaces (the Italian Cemetery, the “Piazza” area, the Juventus Club, the Italian Schools), which have been of course re-signified by postcolonial interactions and meanings, but which still bear the marks of a violent and unburied past. We will thus explore the interplay between material and immaterial memories, between living and dead elements – in other words, the liminal condition of the colonial memories, which are neither fully present nor fully absent, belonging to a "hauntological" domain (referring to Derrida’s pivotal work). Our aim is to point out the extent to which the “natural” transition from colonial to a postcolonial setting has been somehow suspended within these heterotopic sites, in which the boundaries separating the past and the present are uncertain, and where the ghosts of the Italian empire still question very roots of our histories and cultures.
Non-Fiction Cinema in Postwar Europe. Visual Culture and the Reconstruction of Public Space, 2024
At the end of World War II, newsreels and documentaries played a crucial role in somatising the t... more At the end of World War II, newsreels and documentaries played a crucial role in somatising the trauma of the dramatic loss of wealth, power, and pride caused by the end of the empire, whilst at the same time representing the re-structuring of (post)colonial relationship like the Commonwealth, the Union Française, and various forms of trusteeship administrations under the aegis of the UN. This contribution aims to shed a comparative and transnational light on the ways by which some European countries (UK in Togoland 1946-1956; France in Cameroun 1946-1959; Italy in Somalia 1950-1960) envisioned their new political presence under the guise of the UN trusteeship system. I will highlight common patterns in the representation mechanism of the former colonial world, thus conceiving the images of trusteeship administrations as a means to re-articulate an epistemic and political hegemony over the newly independent states.
The Fascist war in Ethiopia (1936-1941) is one of the lasts violent attempts a western country un... more The Fascist war in Ethiopia (1936-1941) is one of the lasts violent attempts a western country undertook to create a colonial empire. Moreover, that conflict had a prominent role in strengthening the axis between Nazism and Fascism that would have brought to the Second World War. As highlighted by a remarkable part of historiography, the greater part of public opinion in the UK, France, and the United States was against the Italian aggression of Ethiopia. However, a not completely negligible part of those public opinions France were sympathetic with Fascist claims over Ethiopia and justified it by addressing a peculiar transimperial discourse operating beyond the national borders of fascist Italy. This paper wants to shed a light on that transimperial discursive space by addressing cultural strategies used to inform non-Italian audiences (namely in United States, in France, and in United Kingdom) about the Ethiopian war, in a time frame between the October 1935 and the May 1936. Thanks to the study of original archival records, the article investigates how some foreign journalists, embedded in the Italian army, described the military conquest of Ethiopia to non-Italian audiences in radio broadcasts from Asmara. By going beyond the boundaries of nation-based colonial culture analysis, this transimperial cultural space straightforwardly addresses the very roots of the process that has built and reinforced the idea of the ‘West’ as bearer of civilization, even on the threshold of the global process of decolonization.
This essay centres on how filmic and media representations of colonial Asmara resounded in contem... more This essay centres on how filmic and media representations of colonial Asmara resounded in contemporary documentaries on postcolonial Italy (namely Aulò and Asmarina). In doing so, I engaged two main theoretical standpoints: I try to assess to what extent directors use old material (mainly produced by the Istituto Luce) to evoke old colonial rhetoric; then I address the dialogue between old and new images as originating representation in which Asmara emerges as an heterotopic space.
To carry on such investigation, the essay provides a brief overview of the role of the fascist colonial propaganda, with a specific attention paid to the institutional organisation that produced and spread fascist film in the Horn of Africa (the Reparto Africa Orientale of the Istituto LUCE).
Quel che resta dell'impero. La cultura coloniale degli italiani, Sep 26, 2014
Il paper indaga sulla volontà politica e sulla struttura istituzionale che governava l'attività d... more Il paper indaga sulla volontà politica e sulla struttura istituzionale che governava l'attività del Reparto Africa Orientale dell'Istituto LUCE. Creato direttamente da Benito Mussolini nel settembre 1935, il Reparto LUCE A.O. era chiamato a seguire l'avanzata militare delle truppe italiane in Etiopia, descrivendo la guerra coloniale in modo che concretizzasse i miti che animavano la cultura fascista. Emerge una dialettica tra le varie istituzioni che poterono influenzare l'attività del reparto (l'Istituto LUCE, Benito Mussolini, gli uffici africani del Ministero della stampa e propaganda, i comandi militari), dialettica che poi si riflette nei contenuti dei cinegiornali riguardanti la battaglia d'Etiopia.
Il concetto di "alterità", inteso in maniera orientalista, è plasmato in modo da poter costruire l'immagine dell'elemento africano (declinato nelle rappresentazioni del territorio e della società etiope) affinché esso sia funzionale al processo di ridefinizione identitaria operato in patria dal fascismo. I cinegiornali e i documentari LUCE, diffusi ossessivamente in Italia e in colonia, mostrarono elementi di un discorso razziale che subdolamente si inserirono nella narrazione di quegli anni, lasciando eredità che si sono inserite subdolamente nella società e nella cultura italiane, immagini e contenuti che paiono resilienti anche alla caduta della dittatura e all'avvento della Repubblica.
"Mare Nostrum. Il colonialismo fascista tra realtà e rappresentazione". Aipsa., 2012
The empire was a crucial myth for Italian fascism. For this reason, Mussolini's dictatorship spre... more The empire was a crucial myth for Italian fascism. For this reason, Mussolini's dictatorship spread politically oriented images in which envisioning fascist founding myths. Documentaries and Newsreels produced by the 'Istituto LUCE' were peculiar tools to both shape and spread the myth of the fascist Empire. In this essay, the analysis of emerging contents reveals an ideal link between the multifaceted myths of Italian fascism and the process of narration of colonial war. By screening its own idea of "African otherness", the fascism tried to affect the process of Italian-identity re-building; within fascist newsreels, in particular, the Ethiopian element is depicted as waiting for the Italian reclaiming action. In the LUCE newsreels, African landscapes are the perfect stage where the mythic action of fascism could act; moreover, the African people were showed as keen to become italian subjects. These racial-oriented contents reached most of Italians, and it seems that these images have affected the perception of the "other" still after the fascism fall, by reframing the dichotomy between self and others according to racial principles.
Thesis defended in January 2020 at the University of Warwick
PhD thesis submitted in May 2015 at the University of Cagliari.
'Identities in motion' engages with recent trends in Modern Languages research, aiming to be a fo... more 'Identities in motion' engages with recent trends in Modern Languages research, aiming to be a forum in which to discuss different methodologies and representational practices. In the context of discussing mobility, Italy offers an interesting case study due to the singularity of the colonial past, the complexity of the process of decolonization, the history of migration from and, in the more recent past, to Italy. All these historical and social phenomena need to be seen in a multi-disciplinary perspective that encourages a complex awareness of the different meanings of Italian identites and belonging.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/people/postgraduate/panzarella/identitiesmotion
University of Warwick, 21 - 22 June 2018 The ASMI Postgraduate Summer School provides a forum fo... more University of Warwick, 21 - 22 June 2018
The ASMI Postgraduate Summer School provides a forum for postgraduate students and early career scholars in the field of Italian Studies to share their research and test their ideas. We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of Modern Italian history, politics, society, and culture, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from any academic discipline
An interdisciplinary conference that will explore how peripheral colonial experience could help i... more An interdisciplinary conference that will explore how peripheral colonial experience could help in reframing both disciplines and methodological tools to understand global issues.
11 March 2017 - University of Warwick
Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 2018
In my PhD dissertation I try to answer to the question on how the Fascist regime in Italy represe... more In my PhD dissertation I try to answer to the question on how the Fascist regime in Italy represented its empire through the “Istituto Luce” newsreels, between the 1935 and 1942. Given the lack of a comprehensive work on the above mentioned subject, I’ve investigated on how cinematographic representations could shape or redefine the process of identity building during the “Ventennio”. In order to achieve a broad theoretical frame, in the first chapter I’ve analysed the roots of the Italian fascist’s culture. The discourse as conceived by Michel Foucault is a key concept to investigate about the relationship between power, knowledge and culture. I’ve used two theoretical evolutions of the Foucault’s discourse, namely the visual discourse and the Orientalist theory. In so doing I’ll be able to apply the concept in order to study the visual products about colonialism. Then I’ve investigated about the history of Italian colonialism, focusing on both the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and ...
Cinema e Storia, 2018
The article centres on the exploration of the fascist attempts to arrange the cinematographic aud... more The article centres on the exploration of the fascist attempts to arrange the cinematographic audience in Italian East Africa (1936-1941). Methodologically, it puts the study of original archival records issued by the fascist administration against the background of theories and discourses about cinema for colonial subjects well spread in fascist Italy and in other imperial countries.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,, 2017
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 37, 2017 - Issue 4
The Italian Cultural Institute is delighted to host Dr Gianmarco Mancosu, the second holder of th... more The Italian Cultural Institute is delighted to host Dr Gianmarco Mancosu, the second holder of the Luisa Selis Fellowship. Funded by the Fondazione di Sardegna in memory of anthropologist Luisa Selis, who specialised in the cultural memory of Sardinia, the fellowship enables researchers in this field (ethnography, anthropology and/or literature for example) to conduct research at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory at the Institute of Modern Languages Research and the Italian Cultural Institute London.
Sardinia, as other Italian regions, has experienced a massive emigration since the nineteenth century. This flux of people moving either to Italy or abroad allows to look at island’s identity ‘from the outside, and to take from the outside world whatever aids in renewing and developing its own roots’, as put by Roberto Esposito.
In this lecture, cultural memory and postcolonial approaches conflate against the background of the personal experience and positionality of the researcher, who uses different theoretical underpinnings to investigate the often-contradictory ideas nurturing narratives and discourses about Sardinian contemporary belongings. By taking the cue from preliminary fieldwork carried out in some Sardinian migrant associations based in Turin, Pavia, and Bologna, the talk will tackle how Sardinia is imagined outside the borders of the island and the intermingling of several forms of belongings (Sardinian, Italian, and European) in the social and cultural activities of those associations.
IMLR Seminar, 1 June 2018, room 246, 2-4pm
(organisation by Tamara Colacicco) In many European countries, the experience of the interwar dic... more (organisation by Tamara Colacicco) In many European countries, the experience of the interwar dictatorships and their bellicose enterprises – such as the Italian Abyssinia campaign during the mid-1930s, the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of Europe in the early 1940s – generated a wave of literary and visual ‘political memories’.
The case study of Italian ‘literary memories’ under Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship has been previously explored in terms of the attitudes among broader sections of Italian society towards Mussolini and the fall of his regime (Duggan 2012). However, there remain several gaps in the investigation of ‘memories’ of Fascism. For example, the ‘memories’ of Fascism understood as a European phenomenon have remained unexplored, as have the different forms through which Fascism has been remembered (or rejected) at a regional level in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.
Linking with Duggan’s pioneering research but conducting its investigation through different frameworks, this event aims to promote interdisciplinary discussion on the connection between politics, political propaganda, literary and visual memories, and dictatorships. In so doing, it explores the different forms through which ‘political memories’ were produced and their different political meanings, leading to a contribution towards analysis from a fresh and more complete perspective of the political life of 20th century Italy, Europe and beyond, as well as a consideration of the impact of memory in interwar and post-war political ideologies.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2019
This Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy brings together scholars from the arts... more This Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy brings together scholars from the arts, humanities and social sciences to discuss historical constructions of Italian whiteness and national identity in relation to the current xenophobic discourse on race and migration, stressing their rootedness in as yet unchallenged modern notions of scientific racism.
Building on postcolonial historian and anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler’s definition of the colonial archive as a ‘site of knowledge production’ and a ‘repository of codified beliefs’ in Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009: 97), the discussants conceive the archive as a multi-layered, collective repository of aspiration, dominance, desire, self-aggrandizement and fear through which the development of society’s self-image can be revealed but also – through a systematic and critical approach to the (visual) archive of coloniality – contested.
Based on the analysis of visual cultures (photographs, news footage, advertisements, propaganda, fiction film, etc.) the Roundtable addresses and connects wide-ranging issues such as: the gaze from above and below in colonial-era ethnographic film; the depiction of migration in the Far Right’s rhetoric; representations of fears and fetishisms towards Others in Federico Fellini’s work; and the exploitation of the colonial past in the Italy–Libya Bilateral Agreements on migration.
Mondo Contemporaneo, 2023
The essay explores several initiatives and events through which post-war gov- ernments tried to m... more The essay explores several initiatives and events through which post-war gov- ernments tried to mould the public discourse about the loss of the Italian colonies and the efforts for a “return” of Italy in those territories. Specific attention will be paid to the analysis of diverse sources, stored in several archives, through which the African Office prompted and influenced textual and audiovisual products of various kinds (newspapers, publications, newsreels and documentaries) dealing with the diplomatic efforts to maintain a hegemonic role in the soon-to-be former colonies, the beginning of the Trusteeship Administration of Somalia, and with other events concerning the former dominions. The analysis of such a multifaceted corpus will reveal either continuities or discontinuities not merely in propaganda contents, yet also in the personnel and in the management of the (colonial) political communication. Therefore, the historical analysis of production and circulation mechanisms will be revealing both of the tortuous transition from dictatorial to democratic institutions, and of the equally convoluted passage from the colonial to the post-colonial setting.
Anabases, 2024
Cet essai explore l’intersection entre les ruines, l’archéologie et la propagande cinématographiq... more Cet essai explore l’intersection entre les ruines, l’archéologie et la propagande cinématographique fasciste pendant le fascisme italien. En mettant l’accent sur la signification idéologique et esthétique des ruines dans l’expérience politique fasciste, j’explorerai comment le régime cherchait à contrer la décadence morale et politique en appropriant et en resignifiant les vestiges matériels du passé. L’analyse des images de l’Istituto Luce sur le sauvetage des navires romains dans le lac Nemi révélera comment ces représentations cinématographiques ont favorisé l’idée d’un passé glorieux et d'un avenir plus radieux sous le régime fasciste. Dans ces films, la juxtaposition entre les ruines et la machinerie permettra de réfléchir à la manière dont la technologie moderne a été utilisée pour construire et visualiser le mythe du régime en tant que défenseur de la gloire de l’Empire romain. La reconstruction inclut une réflexion sur l’activité de l’archéologue Roberto Paribeni dans l’orientation de la production de films de propagande archéologique, en particulier ceux traitant de la ville de Rome et des fouilles dans les Fori Imperiali. L’essai se conclut en examinant la racialisation des populations autochtones dans le contexte de la propagande cinématographique impériale, mettant en évidence le discours du régime sur la généalogie de l'identité impériale italienne et ses ambitions impériales. En démêlant la relation entre les ruines, les efforts archéologiques et la propagande cinématographique, cet essai met en lumière non seulement la manipulation méticuleuse de l’histoire et de ses vestiges par le régime, mais souligne également l'importance des récits cinématographiques dans la formation des perceptions d'un passé glorieux, d’un avenir resplendissant et des fondements idéologiques d’une identité impériale sous le fascism.
Journal of Contemporary History, 2024
The latest historiographical trends are revealing how the end of colonialism has influenced the p... more The latest historiographical trends are revealing how the end of colonialism has influenced the political and social configuration of former metropolitan centres. In particular, the return of former colonial settlers has raised a series of issues that have resonated in European political debates and societies. In Italy, these processes were shaped by a peculiar decolonization pro- cess, coinciding with the equally tortuous transition from fascism to the Republic. Drawing on recent historiography on the return of colonial settlers, and expanding the chronological span and methodological scope of previous works through original archival sources, my interven- tion aims to reconstruct how imperial nostalgia became a political resource exploited by both repatriate associations and conservative political factions. Although similar to contemporan- eous cases, in Italy colonial commemorative practices had peculiarities linked to the role of Catholicism and to the fact that far right and even neo-fascist movements exploited the demands of repatriates for their own political benefit. This article thus broadens the historio- graphical understanding concerning the decline of Italy’s empire and deepens the analysis of its lasting impacts on the politics and society of Republican Italy.
Modern Italy, 2021
This article aims to expose the political and cultural processes that contributed to the eradicat... more This article aims to expose the political and cultural processes that contributed to the eradication of problematic memories of the Italian colonial period during the national reconstruction following the Second World War. It offers a systematic examination of newsreels and documentaries about the Italian former colonies that were produced between 1946 and 1960, a film corpus that has largely been neglected by previous scholarship. The article first dissects the ambiguous political scenario that characterised the production of this footage through the study of original archival findings. The footage configured a particular form of self-exculpatory memory, which obstructed a thorough critique of the colonial period while articulating a new discourse about the future presence of Italy in the former colonies. This seems to be a case of aphasia rather than amnesia, insofar as the films addressed not an absence, but an inability to comprehend and articulate a critical discourse about the past. This aphasic configuration of colonial memories will be tackled through a close reading of the voice-over and commentary. In so doing, this work suggests that the footage actively contributed to spread un-problematised narratives and memories about the colonial period, whose results still infiltrate Italian contemporary society, politics and culture.
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2021
This article examines film consumption within the Fascist empire of Italian East Africa (1936–194... more This article examines film consumption within the Fascist empire of Italian East Africa (1936–1941). In dialogue with recent scholarship exploring social and cultural aspects of the Italian presence in the Horn of Africa, it draws on original archival research to investigate the stories, theories and practices underpinning the Fascist intervention. The implementation of itinerant screening by state authorities as well as the organization of distribution, censorship and consump- tion’s spaces concerning movie theatres will be interpreted within a broad critical framework, which will highlight the impact of the Fascist intervention in the field of colonial culture compared with previous or coeval experiences and projects of film consumption in Africa. Analysis reveals the difficulties in arranging a racially segregated cinematic experience and the related imperfect level of Fascistization of the imperial society, in part because the Fascist empire was short-lived and, especially in Ethiopia, it was constantly threatened by local resistance. However, the article argues that the substantial failure of the Fascistization of film consumption primarily stems from the unsuccessful rela- tionship that Fascism established with pre-existing theatre owners. It also reveals how the transnational nature of film practices de facto inhibited their seamless adaptation to the Fascist’s imperial agenda.
Diacronie (n. 45), 2021
This article contends that the resentment against other European empires that would have constrai... more This article contends that the resentment against other European empires that would have constrained Italian ambitions in Africa was a pivotal rhetorical device within the Italian colonial and postcolonial discourse. The methodological sections will pave the way to tackle how the resentment toward foreign countries was used to elicit an emotional involvement of Italians audiences with decolonial topics. The proposed analysis will study a film corpus that has been largely neglected by previous scholarship, that is newsreels about the Italian former colonies (1946-1960). The rhetoric of the resentment surfacing from the footage will be interpreted as part of the mnemonic strategies which engendered unproblematized narratives and memories about the previous colonial period.
Africa&Mediterraneo, 2020
My contribution looks at the artistic production of the Italo-Ethiopian writer, singer, and perfo... more My contribution looks at the artistic production of the Italo-Ethiopian writer, singer, and performer Gabriella Ghermandi. Mostly known for her literary production, Gabriella Ghermandi has addressed the history of Ethiopian resistance against European invasions via the Atse Tewodros Project, a musical performance which blends Italian and Ethiopian influences. The analysis of Ghermandi’s multifaceted activity will foster a reflection on how different forms of anticolonial and antifascist resistance can be appraised in a common, transnational framework. Furthermore, the blurred boundaries between different artistic practices and languages will allow us to reflect on the cultural legacies of colonialism still present in Italian society today.
Journal of Transcultural Studies, 2020
A selection of Italian nonfiction films produced in the aftermath of the Second World War represe... more A selection of Italian nonfiction films produced in the aftermath of the Second World War represent Cagliari, the capital city of the autonomous region of Sardinia. Taking into account the city’s accumulation of transcultural memories, this article examines the role these newsreels and documentaries played in crafting an image of Cagliari that was intended to be spread across Italian society. The concept of liminality, both in its anthropological and in its postcolonial contexts, is mobilized to explore the extent to which these films re-elaborate the suspended temporality and spatiality of Cagliari’s transcultural memory in relation to Sardinia, the Italian peninsula, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Western world.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2019
This Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy brings together scholars from the arts... more This Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy
brings together scholars from the arts, humanities and social sciences to discuss historical constructions of Italian whiteness and national identity in relation to the current xenophobic discourse on race and migration, stressing their rootedness in as yet unchallenged modern notions of scientific racism. Building on postcolonial historian and anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler’s definition of the colonial archive as a ‘site of knowledge production’ and a ‘repository of codified beliefs’ in Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009: 97), the discussants conceive the archive as a multi-layered, collective repository of aspiration, dominance, desire, self-aggrandizement and fear through which the development of society’s self-image can be revealed but also – through a systematic and critical approach to the (visual) archive of coloniality –contested. Based on the analysis of visual cultures (photographs, news footage, advertisements, propaganda, fiction film, etc.) the Roundtable addresses and connects wide-ranging issues such as: the gaze from above and below in colonial-era ethnographic film; the depiction of migration in the Far Right’s rhetoric; representations of fears and fetishisms towards Others in Federico Fellini’s work; and the exploitation of the colonial past in the Italy–Libya Bilateral Agreements on migration. The Roundtable was organized in response to the surge in xenophobic violence sparked by the Italian Parliamentary elections of March 2018 and to mark the publication of Gaia Giuliani’s monograph Race, Nation, and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture (2018).
Seminario SISSCO-Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea con il patrocinio dell... more Seminario SISSCO-Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea con il patrocinio dell'ASMI-Association for the Study of Modern Italy, 16-18 giugno 2022 Università di Cagliari
SISSCO (Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea) Research Seminar Supported b... more SISSCO (Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea) Research Seminar
Supported by the ASMI (Association for the Study of Modern Italy)
SEMINAR 1: COOPERATION AND MOBILITY
University of Palermo, 19-20 November 2021
Organised by Donato Di Sanzo, Beatrice Falcucci, Gianmarco Mancosu
By Beatrice Falcucci, Gianmarco Mancosu Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies “Scienc... more By Beatrice Falcucci, Gianmarco Mancosu
Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies
“Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narratives” 13-15 maggio 2021
Pisa University Press, 2023
Il progetto Repositories scandaglia l’archivio della colonialità non semplicemente per ricostruir... more Il progetto Repositories scandaglia l’archivio della colonialità non semplicemente per ricostruire le storie degli imperialismi nella loro complessità fatta di scontri e interazioni, usurpazione e negoziazione. Esso indaga come le società coloniali si siano auto-immaginate in relazione a quei processi, come siano state costruite convinzioni, narrazioni e memorie, e come relazioni di potere nate durante l’età degli imperi si siano riprodotte – o siano state criticate – nel contesto post-coloniale. Se questo archivio ancora oggi influenza tutta una serie di discorsi e fenomeni socio-politici, le pratiche
artistiche e di ricerca che popolano questo volume mettono in discussione visioni e conoscenze stereotipate o marcatamente razziste che ancora oggi popolano il nostro presente. ISBN 978-88-3339-790-0
Dai primissimi anni del Novecento, il cinema e la fotografia divennero tra i mezzi più popolari p... more Dai primissimi anni del Novecento, il cinema e la fotografia divennero tra i mezzi più popolari per rappresentare le terre d’oltremare nei centri metropolitani. "Vedere l’impero" ricostruisce organicamente l’intreccio tra storia dell’espansionismo, politiche culturali e rappresentazioni foto- cinematografiche delle colonie italiane, focalizzandosi sulla produzione dell’Istituto Luce ma abbracciando vicende e immagini prodotte prima, durante e dopo il ventennio fascista. Le fascinazioni esotiche dei primi filmati “dal vero” girati in Africa, i resoconti sulle esplorazioni scientifiche, la propaganda del regime e infine le rappresentazioni della fine dell’impero ci racconteranno di incontri e scontri tra culture, ma anche di contenuti parziali e razzisti. La mole di documenti analizzati e l’originalità delle riflessioni rendono il saggio un riferimento per riflettere sull’asservimento delle idee e delle immagini alla necessità di definire un’alterità funzionale alla costruzione dell’identità nazionale.