Adrift in Time: Lived and Silenced Pasts in Calabria, South Italy

Abstract

The recent financial crisis has become a trigger for reflection on highly affective, shocking and upsetting silenced pasts in Reggio Calabria. Personal consideration of the present, as Benedetto Croce suggests, unlocks the archives of past crises such as the displacement of adults and children as a result of natural disasters—events which, for long periods, have remained shrouded in silence, inaccessible and well guarded. I argue that silence should be understood as a nonpathological transmission of knowledge of the past.

Keywords:

• Crisis
• Silence
• Benedetto Croce
• Displacement
• Italy

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Piero Bevilacqua, Loring Danforth, John Dickie, Victoria Goddard, David Henig, Daniel Knight, Maria Minicuci, Nigel Rapport, Charles Stewart, Christina Toren and Vasiliki Vourda, as well as the two reviewers for H&A, for valuable feedback and discussion. Research on child relocations in South Italy is facilitated by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (ECF-2014–698). The article is dedicated to the memory of Pippo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] Introduced in 1950 and dissolved in 1984, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno was an Italian state project aimed at stimulating economic growth and development in Southern Italy.

[2] The Ufficio Provinciale dell'Assistenza Post-Bellica was founded in 1945 for the aid of war refugees.