Synopses & Reviews
While less explicitly racist than its Germany Nazi counterpart, Italian Fascism attached considerable importance to racial purity, both rhetorically and in real policies, culminating in the 1938 Race Laws. In this context, African-Italian mulattoes and Levantines—white Italians living in Alexandria, Egypt—posed a particular threat to the Fascist regime's pursuit of a homogenous Italian national identity. This cultural history of racial hybridity under Mussolini pays particular attention to popular works such as novels and feature films of the period, which frequently sought to stigmatize mulattoes, Levantines, and other hybrid individuals. As author Rosetta Giuliani-Caponetto shows, however, such attempts often undermined themselves by calling attention to what was supposedly absent or marginal. More often than not, the visual and textual presence of mulatto and Levantine characters stoked deep racial and cultural anxieties, forcing their audiences to uncomfortably examine, rather than confirm, their own collective identity.
Synopsis
While less explicitly racist than its Germany Nazi counterpart, Italian Fascism attached considerable importance to racial purity. Fascist Hybridities examines how Italian literature and cinema of the 1930s are traversed by hybrid figures, and how these works ultimately reveal biracial offspring and Levantines as interchangeable characters who, in the historical scenario under which Mussolini's Fascist regime operated, present unique and specific threats to notions of Italian racial and cultural purity. As Rosetta Giuliani-Caponetto shows, that more often than not, the visual and textual presence of mulatto and Levantine characters stoked deep racial and cultural anxieties, forcing their audiences to uncomfortably examine, rather than confirm, their own collective identity.
Synopsis
Under Italian Fascism, African-Italian mulattoes and white Italians living in Egypt posed a particular threat to the pursuit of a homogenous national identity. This book examines novels and films of the period, showing that their attempts at stigmatization were self-undermining, forcing audiences to reassess their collective identity.
About the Author
Rosetta Giuliani Caponetto is Assistant Professor of Italian at Auburn University, USA. Her work appears in Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literatures and Media; Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity; and Studi postcoloniali di cinema e media.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Meticci and Levantines in Literary and Cinematic Representations of Colonial Experience in Africa1. Art of Darkness: The Aestheticization of Black People in Fascist Colonial Novels2. The Dissident Literature of Enrico Pea and Fausta Cialente3. Fade to White: Cinematic Representations of Italian Whiteness4. Levantines and Biracial Offspring in Postwar ItalyConclusion