Of pink (and red) paint, Black lives (that matter), and intersectionality in Italy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who contributed to this Special Issue in different ways and in different roles: Djarah Kan and Leaticia Ouedraogo, for sharing their compelling reflections in the interviews; the contributors, for their hard work, commitment, and brilliance; and all our colleagues who put their competence and expertise at our disposal to meticulously review the articles. We would like to thank the editors of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Janet Wilson and Christopher Ringrose, for enthusiastically welcoming our project. Our warmest gratitude goes to the Special Issue editor Paul Veyret, for his continuous support and generous collaboration. Last but not least, we are deeply grateful to Francesco Gentile for allowing us to use his beautiful photograph for the front cover.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Although the authors conceived and developed this introduction jointly, Caterina Romeo wrote the section titled “Intersectional Italy: Preliminary considerations”, while Giulia Fabbri wrote the section titled “Structure and articles”.

2. Montanelli had bought a 12-year-old Eritrean girl from her father and later in life had repeatedly boasted about it, invoking cultural differences – or, rather, the lack of any culture in Africa – in order to justify his behavior that would have been considered unacceptable in Italy (Bisiach [1969] 2020; Biagi 1982).

3. Here and throughout this Special Issue, we have adopted the policy implemented by The New York Times and the Washington Post in 2020 to capitalize Black and Blackness (Coleman 2020; WashPostPR 2020), as “a recognition and acknowledgment not only of the cultural bonds and historical experiences shared by people of African heritage, but also the shared struggles of the descendants of enslaved people, families who immigrated generations ago and more recent immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and other corners of the world” (WashPostPR 2020, para. 1). Unlike the Washington Post (and like The New York Times), we choose not to capitalize white, as it “has long been capitalized by hate groups” (Coleman 2020, para. 18) and “white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style, which in itself is reason to avoid it” (Baquet and Corbett 2020, para. 5).

4. We, the authors of this introduction and of two articles and editors of this Special Issue, consider our writing about race and processes of racialization as a way to expose racism, create awareness, contribute to the critical debate on these issues, and promote the work being produced in Italy by Black women and women of Color. As “white” women, we acknowledge that racism is not part of our everyday lived experiences – although sexism is – and therefore we do not claim to be theorizing as part of the racialized community; rather we consider ourselves as active allies of the racialized community in the fight against racism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caterina Romeo

Caterina Romeo is an Associate Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, where she teaches Literary Theory, Gender Studies, and Migrations Studies. She is the author of Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature (2022), Riscrivere la nazione (2018), and Narrative tra due sponde: Memoir di italiane d’America (2005). She has co-edited the volume Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (2012), and a Special Issue of the journal Postcolonial Studies titled “Postcolonial Europe” (2015).

Giulia Fabbri

Giulia Fabbri has completed a postdoctoral fellowship in gender studies at Sapienza University of Rome, where in 2020 she obtained a PhD in gender studies. She is the author of Sguardi (post)coloniali. Razza, genere e politiche della visualità ([Post]colonial Gazes. Race, Gender, and the Politics of Visuality) (ombre corte 2021) and her research interests include gender and racial representations in visual culture, social media activism, and the cultural production of Italian women of African descent.