(DOWNLOAD) "Italy and Its Invaders: A Case for Re-Reading" by Forum Italicum # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Italy and Its Invaders: A Case for Re-Reading
- Author : Forum Italicum
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 67 KB
Description
While the 19th century has been called the age of colonialism, the 20'h century is often identified with processes of de-colonization and postcolonialism inasmuch as this time coincides with the creation of post-independence states emerging in vast number after World World II. (1) However, colonialism and post-colonialism became contested sites very early on. The debate on the use of the term post-colonialism has been particularly lively, both with regard to the use of the hyphen and especially the prefix "post" which carries a temporal but also an ideological meaning. While in its temporal use, the prefix reflects the formal end of the age of colonialism, as in the formation of post-independence nations, it also implies that the relations of power of colonial rules have been supplanted, something that, as Loomba reminds us, is not the case.(2) But besides the use of problematic prefixes, the terms colonialism and post-colonialism have come to exert something of a homogenizing effect. As Hodge, Mishra, Chrisman, and Williams (3) have rightly argued, these terms bring, within a single field of enquiry, experiences and relationships of colonization and post-colonization which vary greatly among different cultures and therefore demand precise attention to locality and context. It is in the spirit of the need to uncover the multiplicity of modes of colonialism and its presumed aftermaths that I would like to make a case for a re-reading of Girolamo Arnaldi's Italy and Its Invaders. Published in 2002 by Laterza and issued in English translation by Harvard University Press (2005), this is a work that merits careful attention. At a time when colonial and post-colonial studies are gaining ever wider currency among scholars of Italianistica on both sides of the Atlantic, Italy and Its Invaders contributes in significant ways to a reflection on the complex cluster of meanings that the terms colonialism and post-colonialism imply in an Italian context. In ten chapters surveying the history of invasions of the Italian peninsula, Arnaldi's study foregrounds Italy's centuries--long existence as a colony, rather than focusing on 19th and 20th century colonialism and the post-colonial era that followed the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. (4) Otherwise stated, this work does not aim to uncover the hidden episodes of the Italian colonization of Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Albania and, partially, Greece in the tradition of historians Nicola Labanca, Giorgio Rochat, Angelo Dei Boca (5) and their ever growing American disciples. (6) Rather, Italy and Its Invaders reconstructs the many layers of invasions that took place on the Italian peninsula from the sack of Rome to Unification while accounting for the ways in which violent encounters between people and cultures led to that inevitable mix constituting what we have come to know as Italian culture and civilization. In this sense, then, Arnaldi's volume achieves several objectives: On the one hand, it brings to the fore centuries of foreign domination that must be taken into account in any discussion of the shapes and forms of Italian colonialism and its aftermath. On the other hand, the frequent reminders of the interaction between invader and invaded carries with it a subtle but important message for contemporary Italy, where the arrival of migrants is leading to a dangerous resurgence of myths of an Italian identity based on cultural and territorial belonging and, at times, even ethnic purity. I will return to both of these points later on, but for the moment, let me describe Arnaldi's work more closely.
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