Series | Diaspore
Volume 18 | Monograph | Italy, Elsewhere
Italy, Elsewhere
Places, Spaces and Crossings in Cinema and Literature on Migration
open access | peer reviewed- Simone Brioni - Stony Brook University, USA - email
Abstract
This monograph is a meditation on how transnational migrations have influenced how the sense of place and the politics of space are represented in literature and film about migration to, from and within Italy. It examines work produced in Italian and English, and it emphasizes how culture and national identity can be reconsidered in a more inclusive way within a world marked by increased mobility. The text is divided into three main sections – “Places”, “Spaces” and “Crossings” – each of which contains two chapters. Chapter 1 argues that bridges, as they are represented in literature, movies and paintings about and by Italian Americans, are often used as symbols to highlight the social improvement of this ethnic group. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s definition of heterotopia, Chapter 2 analyses the filmic and literary representation of Termini station. The representation of Termini either as an isolated place in the urban geography of Rome or as a place that mirrors the multicultural reality of present-day Italy highlights a tension between different ways of practicing the same space. Moving from the analysis of “Places” to the analysis of “Spaces”, Chapter 3 examines how Pannone’s ‘American Trilogy’ (1991-98) and shows how memory of the myth of America in Italy rethinks ‘Italian’ history with a trans-national lens. Chapter 4 analyzes how Juhmpa Lahiri’s In Other Words (2015) dislocates Italy both linguistically and spatially by de-linking the experience of Italy from its physical spaces. “Crossings” focuses on reflections about moving through a space, and how the ways in which a space is practiced or experienced changes our understanding of it. Chapter 5 analyzes the ways Giuliano Santoro’s Su due piedi. Camminando per un mese attraverso la Calabria (On My Two Feet: Walking for a Month in Calabria, 2012) and Wu Ming 2’s Il sentiero luminoso (The Bright Path, 2016) describe walking as an activity which allows one to recognize the social modifications of space, and to rethink the geographies of suburban areas in Italy. Chapter 6 discusses how Elia Moutamid’s Talien (2017) reimagines driving as an activity that links physical movement through spaces to reflections about transnational mobility and national belonging. Moving beyond the analysis of literature and film about the representation of spaces of migration, the coda argues that finding new ways of inscribing the memory of the past in the present can be a way of rethinking subjectivity, memory and belonging.
Keywords Place • Space • Migration • Mobility • Representation
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-625-1 | e-ISBN 978-88-6969-625-1 | ISBN (PRINT) 978-88-6969-626-8 | Published Oct. 18, 2022 | Accepted June 19, 2022 | Submitted Sept. 7, 2021 | Language it
Copyright © 2022 Simone Brioni. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
