Moderna | 2020 | N. 1-2

The introductory essay to the issue of « Moderna » dedicated to the Italian Diaspora Studies outlines a theoretical synthesis of the foundations of the new research field, underlining its global and comparative policy, characterized by the ambition to connect the various sectorial fields dedicated to specific diasporic cultures in a unitary transnational dialogue. It poses the role of Italian Studies and contemporary Italianistica as the gravitational centers in the field, albeit in a position that is not hierarchical but equal. For the latter, it hopes for the renewal of the canon in a multicultural and transnational sense, starting from a redefinition of the identity notion of «Italianess».

By and large Italian literary studies still show a considerable reluctance in addressing the question of the existence of a diasporic Italian culture. The essay summarizes the main points of the recent debate, and delineates some of the possible solutions. It is not by chance that studies on the culture of the Italian worldwide migration have developed, at least in the last three decades, while Italy moved from being a point of massive departure to some « destination country » (Parati). The full acceptance of the diasporic dimension within the literary canon would encourage new ways of looking at the Italian cultural identity, both in its historical and in its current configuration.

Can the intercultural perspective clarify the issues underlying the Italian diaspora and point to future sceneries, with the view to correctly manage – in terms of « civil reasonableness » – the ethnic-social-cultural plurality? Is it possible to by-pass assimilation and cultural relativism, rethinking identity clashes? By taking as case study the Italian diaspora in Germany, this paper aims at delineating the horizons of Italian-German Inter-literature. This bi/trilingual, committed literature helps stimulate processes of cultural interaction and hybridization of national literatures. This literature plays also an intermediating role between autochtonous and not-native readers.

In this article I argue the importance of a more complex approach to the study of Italian migration, which should take into consideration recent theoretical and methodological developments with regards to transculturation, decoloniality and intersectionality, These approaches will be presented through the analysis of key aspects of the Italian diaspora in Australia, but can also be applied to many other contexts of Italian migration. Without renouncing to the historicization of the specific contexts of migration, these approaches in fact allow an even richer and more detailed analysis of the complexity of such contexts. They encourage us to take into consideration those minorities within the Italian communities that have been too often excluded from the dominant narratives and rhetorical discourse about the Italian migration. From this perspective, these approaches are useful not just on a historiographical level, but also in the development of public history.

The goal of this essay is the analysis of the controversial presence of the memory of the Italian colonial history in contemporary Italian critical debate. Italy has not metabolized its past, both in regard to its external colonies and to the internal ones. The long history of Italian diaspora and the so-called Southern question can be considered today as the components of the same current post-colonial scenario. Italian postcolonial writers reveal a strong connection with the colonial history, whether they come from the former colonies or grew up in the colonies and then moved to Italy. Women writers are more numerous. The article reflects on the reasons that justifies their predominant presence.

This essay engages a transnational approach to the understanding of histories and cultures in analyzing autobiographical fiction by authors of the Italian Diaspora. My examination of the works of Pietro Delsano, from Australia, Elena Maccaferri Randazzo, from Canada, and Pietro Di Donato, from the United States draws upon the critical allocation of these texts within a rubric of multiculturalism, where they have come to be categorized as ‘ethnic literatures’ in their respective countries of publication. An interrogation of the juncture at which the ethnic and diasporic meet reveals how, through rhetoric and narrative structure, the texts resist the different cultures to which they refer.

The role of generations is an historical problem that has received little attention in literary criticism. The premise of my paper is that it is, on the contrary, a problem now almost impossible to ignore, especially if some attention is given to the presence of the various literatures arising from the experience of migration. These are literatures, I contend, which within the context of the discourse on the notion of generation, bring about new perspectives usefully refracting back on the notion of modern literature. In proposing my reflections on the subject, I will have as my primary backdrop Italian-Canadian literature, to my mind the literature of the Italian migration with the most compact corpus and thus the one most easily available to analysis.

This chapter aims to discuss the potential contribution of Translation Studies to the field of Italian Diaspora Studies and will analyse some translation scenarios related to Italian-Canadian writing and its translation into Italian, in order to illustrate the terms of such contribution. It argues that Italian Diaspora studies should be understood in translational terms, that is by taking into account the points of convergence/translation between different trajectories of migration into and out of Italy. As a consequence, Italian-Canadian writing and Italophone writing should be seen as part of Italian literature. Moreover, the chapter will also discuss the potential contribution of translation in forming and expanding canonical ideas about what constitutes Italian literature and Italian diaspora studies.

The editorial path of the autobiographical novel by Raul Rossetti, who emigrated to Belgium and later returned to Italy, is paradigmatic of the difficulty of reviewing and renegotiating the Italian literary canon with the inclusion of texts produced or conceived outside national borders. Presented to Adelphi for the first time in the 1960s, the work was only published in 1989, after having won the first edition of the National Diary Archive Award of Pieve Santo Stefano. Even the content, different from most of the texts written by Italians in Belgium, lends itself to a reflection on the problems posed by the novels of emigrants abroad. Starting from the work of Rossetti as a case study, we will begin to reflect on how the literary canon of Italian emigration is defined and how it communicates with the national ‘internal’ canon.

The essay investigates Pietro di Donato’s first novel, Christ in Concrete, and the political and cultural issues animating it. In particular, the analysis focuses on the novel’s critique of us capitalism as it emerges from the relationship existing between a sense of national identity, which evolves and mutates as a result of the author’s (and his characters’) migrant experience, and a Marxist notion of social class.

The literature review of Italian Diaspora Studies offers an overview and an appraisal of this field of study in the world, with particular attention on literary production and the research on the migration imaginary. The review is divided into sections covering large geographical areas affected by migratory flows (usa, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Germany), and highlights the comparative and cross-disciplinary nature of this field.