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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to inquiry nationalistic populism in Italy, using an intersectional perspective - feminist and postcolonial - and proposing some possible articulations between feminist and racial struggles as a response to the contemporary advance of the racist and misogynist far-right. Using the theoretical frame of Critical Studies on Whiteness (Giuliani 2013), the hypothesis is that this specific articulation of racism and sexism represents the basis of affirmation of alt right hegemony in contemporary Italy – where the political and cultural context is characterized by a capillary diffusion of racial, misogynist, homophobic and xenophobic feelings. The text focuses on the emotional dimension of nationalist populism (Ahmed 2004): this theoretical framework is necessary for the analysis of the history of Italian nationalism as a phenomenon based on the obsession with the production and maintenance of the whiteness of the Italian people (Petrovich Njegosh 2012). The last part of the present paper is dedicated to the examples of articulation between feminist and racial/postcolonial struggles in contemporary Italy, focusing on the case of the feminist “vandalization” of colonialist monuments, i.e., the statue of Indro Montanelli in Milan, on the 8th of March 2019 (Panico 2019).
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The interpretation of the Southern Question offered by the so-called “Neo-Bourbonism” sees the process of national unification as a violent case of internal colonialism. This reading focuses on the colonial massacres allegedly carried out by the Sabaudian Northern army, while celebrating the heroic resistances of the locals. Even if it does not ignore the episodes of violence that occurred in the process of Italian unification, the postcolonial turn in the Southern Question provides a more articulated interpretation of this historical process, by examining the element of cultural hegemony and blurring the simple opposition of violence/resistance.
2. Laclau took this concept from the French philosopher Althusser. According to Althusser, every society is comprised of repressive, ideological state apparatuses, which are instrumental to the constant reproduction of internal relationships. “Interpellation” is the process by which we encounter cultural and ideological values and internalise them.
3. All translations from the Italian are by the author.
4. I use the definition “Black Italians” as a political category more than a legal one. As Italian law still establishes the right to citizenship according to the principle of ius sanguinis (right of blood) – which I discuss in the body of the text – , there are a large number of young people who have been born and/or have grown up in Italy with non-Italian parents, who are not legally recognised as Italian citizens. A new citizenship law is a central demand of contemporary anti-racist movements in Italy. Therefore, “Black Italians” is a strategic and political self-definition, regardless of the legal status. On this topic, see Hawthorne (Citation2021).
8. https://www.dinamopress.it/news/montanelli-colonialismo-italiano-gli-intellettuali-orfani-del-padre/.
9. Ni Una Menos [Not one (woman) less] is a grassroots Latin American, fourth-wave feminist movement, which was founded in Argentina in 2015 after a series of cruel violations of young women, in particular, the assassination of fourteen-year-old Chiara Paez. The movement spread across Latin America and then across the word. It campaigns against gender-based violence. Although Ni Una Menos is considered to be primarily a white feminist movement in Latin America–Argentina is one of the most “white” Southern American countries – , it has had a great impact on Europe, opening up new debates about the colonialist heritage of feminist movements and reframing race inequality in feminist terms. See Gago (Citation2020).
10. This quotation and the following one in the same paragraph are transcriptions that I made from the 1969 television interview with Gianni Bisiach; the video of the interview is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYgSwluzYxs&t=8s.
11. See footnote no. 5.
12. See footnote no. 5.
15. Referring to Ni Una Menos and to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, Hardt and Negri (Citation2017) elaborate on the notion of “leaderless movements,” stressing their revolutionary character in comparison to previous social movements. In particular, the fourth wave of feminist movements that has come out of the Global South has changed the conceptual frameworks that were applied to the study of European social movements. New non-hierarchical forms of organisation, innovative uses of social networks, and strong emotional and empathetic components belong to the creation of political subjectivities. For an overview of these innovations and a critique of classical social movement theories, especially in relation to the southern European context, see Panico (Citation2018) and Panico (Citation2020).
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Carla Panico
Carla Panico is a doctoral student in Postcolonialism and Global Citizenship at Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, Portugal and a FCT scholarship holder. She is a member of ITM - Inter-thematic Group on Migrations and an associate researcher in the project “(De)othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness”. She holds a master’s degree in Contemporary History from the University of Pisa, Italy. Her research interests include migrations, nationalism, Whiteness and precarious belongings in Southern Europe (i.e. in contemporary Italy). She is currently a collaborator in the international research network Compoliticas for the project “Cibermov” and a member of the “Societá italiana delle Storiche” – Italian Research Society of Women History.