The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy: An Oral [1 ed.] 9783030583255, 9783030583262

Table of contents :
Foreword
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Methodological Approach and Ethical Issues
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Diasporic Identities and Subjectivities
2.1 Seeking Revealing Movements
2.1.1 Playing with Subtraction and Addition
2.2 Ways of Being-in-Diaspora
2.2.1 The Italo-Somali Egg
2.2.2 Two Somalias and Two Italys
2.2.3 Being 2G, or Italian in Another Way
2.2.4 Italian, but My Mind and Heart Are in Eritrea
2.2.5 The Italian Missione
2.2.6 Italians but Eritreans
2.2.7 Recognizing the Eritrean Part, but Not the Italian One
2.2.8 Anfez
2.2.9 Hamar and the Italian Generation
2.2.10 The Egg’s Son: A Double Culture
2.3 Outside the European Map
Bibliography
Filmography
Chapter 3: Postcolonial Memories of Colonialism
3.1 Theoretical Framework
3.2 Remembering the Law that Discriminated Against People of Mixed Races
3.2.1 The Eaters of Cows
3.2.2 Are You of Mixed Race?
3.2.3 Black Eritrea
3.2.4 Being “Half and Half”; Being Sons of Italians: sciarmutte and asuk (the Lost People)
3.2.5 Carne d’uomo
3.2.6 Today’s Yesterday: People to Enslave
3.2.7 Gaal, terroni, and polentoni
3.2.8 Five Years of Fear
3.2.9 Patriotism and Corruption
3.2.10 Destruction, War, and Exploitation
3.2.11 Insabbiati, Slaves, and Masters
3.2.12 Mussolini’s Gas
3.2.13 Examining the ascaro’s Heritage: Yesterday and Today
3.2.14 Looking for Ghosts
3.2.15 Italian Apartheid
3.3 Colonialism as a Mirror
Bibliography
Chapter 4: The Black Mediterranean
4.1 Theoretical Framework
4.2 The Black Mediterranean’s Stories
4.2.1 As New Slaves in the Mediterranean
4.2.2 The Color Line at Lampedusa
4.2.3 Lampedusa-Brindisi, “Picking Tomatoes”
4.2.4 Europe Is a Culprit, in the Mediterranean
4.2.5 Lampedusa, Crossroad of Transnational Geographies
4.2.6 Imagery of Europe off the Map
4.2.7 Colonialism and Bodies of Desire
4.2.8 The Site of Responsibility
4.3 Blackness Across the Mediterranean
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Geographies of Emotions
5.1 The Autonomy of Migration and Counter-Geographies
5.2 Theorizing a “Geographies of Emotions”
5.3 A Geography of Fragments: Emotions in Diaspora
5.3.1 Homeland as Lost Land
5.3.2 Journeys as Metaphors of Feelings
5.4 Fragments of Memories for a New Europe
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy An Oral History Gabriele Proglio Introduction by Luisa Passerini

The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy

Gabriele Proglio

The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy An Oral History

Gabriele Proglio Centre for Social Studies University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal

ISBN 978-3-030-58325-5    ISBN 978-3-030-58326-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Jenny Matthews / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

Three voices animate this book: the chorus, often discordant but always informative and stimulating, of the experts in fields that go from postcolonial history to anthropology to border studies; the individual voices of the interviewees, which in spite of the singularity of each person compose a multifarious narrative displaying recurrences as well as contrasts; and the voice of the author, who appears in the double guise of the scholar and the researcher/interviewer in direct contact with the people he interpellates. The first voice testifies to Gabriele Proglio’s assiduous exploration of a body of expertise in the history of the relationships between the colonizers and the colonized; Proglio is at ease conversing with masters in the fields of cultural theory and history ranging from Stuart Hall to Ann Laura Stoler, extracting suggestions from their works for his own as well as criticizing some aspects of this entire body of research. The resulting documentation of secondary sources that is rightly limited in quantity is well governed by his approach, as of somebody who can be considered an intellectual heir, not uncritical, of that patrimony—a term that no longer merely represents the heritage of the father. In his re-visitation of this accumulated scholarship, the voice of the author sounds as autonomous. At the same time, his research concretizes some of the transmitted concepts such as the often abused term “imagined community” coined by Benedict Anderson, that is understood here not in a national sense but rather as the projection of a possible future in Africa (in the hopes of an interviewee, Winta, who told Proglio that her “heart is in Eritrea”). The dominant voice, I am delighted to recognize, is that of the other choir, composed of more than eighty women and men from the Horn of v

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Africa, who were approached by the author in a fieldwork campaign conducted between 2014 and 2016. These individuals, from all ways of life, ages and cultural positionalities, are highly vocal throughout the four chapters of this book that follow the introduction. We emerge from this book bearing the mark of their concise and striking statements. Some examples on the experience of crossing the Mediterranean are as follows: “the sea was inside the boat” (Ali); “there was only sea” (Amari); “worse than the Sahara…all you do is pray. There is no food, no water” (Belay); “…waves before us, and the boat that rides up and down, the horizon rising and falling. Nothing surrounding us, only sea.” These remarks stress the fact that this book is very much about language and languages: Italian, English, Arabic, Eritrean, and Somali. The significance of language is not only conveyed by the questioning of loaded terminology like “migrant” and “refugee,” but also by the highlighting of the centrality of language in the experience of mobility: “when we arrived [in Lampedusa], we didn’t believe it. They spoke a different language to us. And it was then, only then, that we understood that we had perhaps arrived in Europe, in Italy, maybe…” (Belay). “There is no Italian word” for certain states of mind and for positionalities such as “half-blood,” “lighter skin color,” “half and half,” meaning children of Italians; in this discursive context the term “half” recurs frequently: “we were sons of Italians, we were half” (Nino). “They [the Europeans] use ‘blacks’ because the dictionary has its rules, but in their minds they think ‘negro’” (Sarah). This book is interwoven not only with terms from many languages but also with the new lexicon of the diaspora, which includes words inherited from the colonial period (like insabbiato, meaning “covered with sand,” to indicate Italian soldiers who deserted the army in the 1930s to stay with Ethiopian women). It also includes terms elaborated by people outside the place of origin, such as the definition of Europeans as “eaters of cows” (Nuurta), namely not Muslim, not black and not natives. A book of sounds, and of visions. Oral memory, visual memory. The expansion of the study of memory from orality and writing to visuality and corporeality has been the central contribution to memory studies made by the “Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond” Project. I served as Principal Investigator of this European Research Council Project, which was hosted at the European University Institute in Florence from 2013 to 2018. Gabriele Proglio was part of the research team, and in many respects, this book originates within that project, in as far as it follows a methodology of intersubjectivity from the

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collection of oral and written memory to that of the visual memories of mobile people, currently called “migrants.” The novelty of the BABE Project lay in its establishment and practical realization of a strong link between different forms of interactive subjectivity, such as orality and visuality, the latter being the royal way toward including the crucial dimension of corporeality within the research. In this sense, Proglio’s book (as well as some of his other writings) made a notable contribution to the BABE Project, which I am glad to acknowledge. Proglio generously continued to participate in the project even when his formal attachment had to be terminated because he had taken up a university employment. At the same time, I do not intend to reduce this book to its practical gestation within the project; rather I consider it as the fruit of an individual genealogy that led the author from a focus on Italian postcolonial literature to his analysis of Italian colonial imaginaries during the war for the conquest of Libya, and ultimately to his works on the history of the Mediterranean. In the BABE Project, the enlargement of the collection of memory from orality to visuality entailed conceptual and methodological changes induced by the implicit as well as explicit criticisms that we received from our interviewees: Why were we posing these questions? What were our assumptions and objectives? Why did we ask for visual imagery rather than for talking and writing? Many of the 400 interviewees not only questioned our expectations but also often deluded them, delivering not the images of troubled journeys and victimization—as we had half-consciously expected—but rather triumphant figurations of the past greatness of the countries they came from, whether Albania or Egypt or Peru. One person even handed back to us a white sheet of paper, empty but for her signature. Halfway through our work, we began to realize that the most fruitful result of our search was to accept being challenged and to learn to question our approach, scrutinize our conceptual categories, and constantly re-examine and eventually modify our methods. It was an invitation to an emotional and intellectual mobility that we tried to accept, more or less consciously, besides questioning the binary division between mobility and sedentarism understood in a literal and material sense. In the BABE research project, the resistances on the part of the narrators were coupled by our difficulties in interpreting their visual replies to our requests. I therefore proposed the term “visual intersubjectivity” to designate the convergence between narrators and interviewers, in both a positive and negative sense. Conceptual and interpretative difficulties included coming to terms with previous conceptions of the relationship

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between the mental and the visual. We used the word “map” to indicate the visual replies that our narrators created in reaction to our questions for images of their trips, comprising many drawings as well as some photographs and short videos (produced with cell phones). Elsewhere, I have deconstructed the structuralist undertones of the mental map concept, but we retained the term “map,” while trying to evidence the individual ideation of every image we received, notwithstanding the medium. The visual memory approach to maps understood as individual elaborations is enhanced in this book in a telling way. I find Angela/Malaika’s map of an “egg” depicting herself as “one half in Somalia and the other in Italy” powerful and moving, with the graphic comment of a miniature of Italy and Africa vividly presenting her places of departure and arrival— Mogadishu/Milano. Convincingly, Proglio interprets this drawing as a metaphorical tool for defining a constructed “in between” identity. Three more maps illuminate this book, the one by Dabar that concludes Chap. 3, and the two by Meron and Rachid at the end of Chap. 5. A comparison of the latter two maps strikingly reveals their representation of the “inversion” of direction and perspective induced by the experience of forced mobility. In the four drawings, the writing—which of course is visual, especially in terms of the way the authors drew these maps—is dominant. I encountered the same expressive attitude in my fieldwork and I interpreted this gesture as one of the implicit criticisms of our methodology, restoring an affirmation of literacy in the face of a request that might have been interpreted by the interlocutors as bringing them back to a non-­ literate expression. I must add an observation to this discussion of visuality: I was struck by the sternness and essentiality—we could say the abstractness—of these maps compared with other maps collected during the BABE Project (https://babe.eui.eu/ and http://hdl.handle.net/1814/60164), which were often vividly figurative and colorful. I attribute this difference not only to the material and corporeal situations in which these visual memories were collected but also to their especially dramatic nature, in the context of an intersubjective dialogue between the descendants of the colonized and a receptive interviewer, who was knowledgeable and empathetic enough to accept, share, and try to interpret the images he asked for, taking the position no longer of an enemy but rather of a perceptive and collaborative interlocutor. This is one of the reasons why I appreciate this book. There are other ones: the interpretation of the Mediterranean Sea as both a remembrance

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site and a site of silence—given that my predilection for silences marked the very beginning of my oral history career; and the capillary attention to methodological procedures, both big and small. Not only are we informed of the interviewees’ pauses, silences, laughter, which may express embarrassment, sorrow, amusement, or indignation, but also called to share the author’s awareness of his position as a white male researcher on stipend and of his role in the co-construction of memory as an intersubjective act. He records the changes induced in his “rigid conception” of research methodology through his encounter with people from the Horn of Africa; for one thing, he shifted from face-to-face to collective interviews, a move whose fruitfulness I experienced myself through interviews in classrooms of adult education schools. From this self-recognized positionality, he enters into dialogues in which his voice and his aside comments sound sympathetic and genuinely interested, sometimes naïve, but always demonstrating his readiness to learn. For methodology to advance, the awareness of choices is crucial. Therefore, I apprize Proglio’s constant efforts to make explicit the decisions he took in his research itineraries and in the composition of this book. Similarly, he explains the motivations for his choice of locations (the places of these encounters mostly being railway stations, coffee bars, and public squares) and the composition of his “sample” (here between inverted commas to show awareness that this word is borrowed from the quantitative social sciences, and of course it does not fit properly with a qualitative approach). Furthermore, Proglio informs the reader of the steps through which he conducted his selection process: choosing stories that he considered representative (evidently in the sense of qualitative representativeness); extracting fragments of memory related to recurrent themes such as the ideas of home and the journey; and assembling the fragments within the diasporic context. He emphasizes that these three steps are linked through their connectedness within an intersubjective process of co-construction and transmission of memory. I also like the anti-mechanistic concept of “not immediate” connection: “I endorse the view that a diasporic condition is not immediately connected with a critique of the system,” writes Proglio, and in another passage: “[my] theoretical work is resonant with the oral narratives collected from individuals from the Horn of Africa.” Our common research project too established “not immediate” connections, first of all the one between visual memory produced by mobile people at our solicitation, on the one hand, and visual arts on European borders, on the other hand. The second

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was the nexus between the narrations of mobile people from all over the world and those of students born in Italy and the Netherlands, thus developing a research direction relating to schools, teaching, and didactic knowledge transfer. Third, the question of the archive that became central to us (as it is in this book too) in the sense of connecting our critical investigation on the concept of a European cultural archive with our effort to create an archive making accessible to the public the oral, written, and visual documentation we collected (now housed at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence). But above all I appreciate the central place given to intersubjectivity in the structure and content of this book. While all of us in our common project shared the experience of interaction with the narrators, this process led each of us to reconfigure the role of intersubjectivity between cultures, generations, classes, and social roles and to accord it primacy within specific configurations pertinent to our respective fields. Primacy here can be understood as a cognitive and ethical way of proceeding and as a methodological tool that implies the old concept of empathy, lauded as a theoretical category since the Scottish Enlightenment but seldom and partially translated into historiographical practice. On this point, this book offers a specification of particular relevance, since it grapples with the question of the relations between the present and the past of the country to which the majority of the project team members belong: Italy. The declarations of the interviewees in this book on the responsibilities of Italians and Europeans in the colonial and postcolonial periods shed light on this thorny question, helping us to understand and face this burden in our efforts to contribute to the collective task that it implies for our intellectual work. Before drawing this foreword to a close, I would like to signal two points of discrepancy between my perspective and this book’s: one is more theoretical and the other is political, if such definitions can still be used convincingly. The first point concerns the oscillations around the question of “counter” that appear in the text: counter-geographies and counter-­ narratives. These oscillations signal that the author is aware of the contradictory conceptualizations that have surrounded the scholarly debate on this issue and their political implications. The question is whether these terms bear within them the assumption that there is one hegemonic narration (including that of geography as a specific form of narrative) against which all counter-narratives and/or alternative geographies would be directed. I believe that the “counter” part of the narratives and

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geographies we collect is secondary, while the pro-positive one is the most important as it fuses the individual and the collective, the old and the new within a transitional reconfiguration of the experienced world. The state of the art in this sort of debate is subjected to backlashes of anxiety around the recognition of the role of the former oppressed and colonized as innovators and creators of their own narrations, whatever form these take. I am thinking not only of postcolonial and decolonial discussions but also of similar controversies that used to arise around the role of narrations collected from the “unheard,” “ignored,” “hidden from history,” which oral historians in the early stages of the oral history movement believed they had “discovered” and “given voice to” against hegemonic history. Such an approach is a reductive one that presupposes an authoritativeness and ubiquitousness of European/Western narratives that in reality were often challenged within both practices and theories. This book offers a valuable contribution to the debate by giving body (the body of words and images) to the thesis of the autonomy of migration, a contribution that can cohabit with oscillations of terminology and conceptualization, not in peaceful coexistence but rather in the recognition of contradictions that might evolve with further research and reflection. This perspective facilitates the acceptance and promotion of various types of pluralization: of geographies, imaginaries, colonialisms, racisms, and colors (“each one had his own type of black”—Amari). Therefore, not a single alternative geography but rather multidimensional geographies. My second point: the horror of colonialism—to use the gravid term that the protagonist of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utters on his death bed—is still with us. The words pronounced by the protagonists of this book help us—as Italians, Europeans, scholars, and last but not least citizens—to nominate the dark part of our heritage. Gabriele Proglio nurtures the hope that his and others’ work can “change the face of Italianness and Europeanness,” “shifting Europe from its barycenter.” I must admit that I no longer feel confident about this hope being realized, having grown pessimistic about the destiny of both Italy and Europe, and having largely lost the illusion of modifying the European scenery and its tragic defaults. However, it gives me solace and courage to hear that the efforts in that direction made by many, among whom I count myself, are being brought forward, perhaps with better foresight and success. It is high time for me to leave the word. In this foreword, I have deliberately not dealt with the question of emotions, given my desire to let the voices of the author and his interviewees speak freely of the emotionality

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they share. For the same reason, I have not touched upon the question of what Europe is and could be and why Lampedusa is considered by one of the interviewees as being both Europe and not Europe, for the same reason. Now, it is time to let the interlocutors of these dialogues speak for themselves. Pavarolo July 2020

Luisa Passerini

Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 The Methodological Approach and Ethical Issues 11 Bibliography 16 2 Diasporic Identities and Subjectivities 17 2.1 Seeking Revealing Movements 20 2.1.1 Playing with Subtraction and Addition 21 2.2 Ways of Being-in-Diaspora 25 2.2.1 The Italo-Somali Egg 25 2.2.2 Two Somalias and Two Italys 30 2.2.3 Being 2G, or Italian in Another Way 32 2.2.4 Italian, but My Mind and Heart Are in Eritrea 35 2.2.5 The Italian Missione 37 2.2.6 Italians but Eritreans 40 2.2.7 Recognizing the Eritrean Part, but Not the Italian One 42 2.2.8 Anfez 44 2.2.9 Hamar and the Italian Generation 46 2.2.10 The Egg’s Son: A Double Culture 48 2.3 Outside the European Map 49 Bibliography 53

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3 Postcolonial Memories of Colonialism 57 3.1 Theoretical Framework 59 3.2 Remembering the Law that Discriminated Against People of Mixed Races 61 3.2.1 The Eaters of Cows 64 3.2.2 Are You of Mixed Race? 66 3.2.3 Black Eritrea 67 3.2.4 Being “Half and Half”; Being Sons of Italians: sciarmutte and asuk (the Lost People) 69 3.2.5 Carne d’uomo 70 3.2.6 Today’s Yesterday: People to Enslave 72 3.2.7 Gaal, terroni, and polentoni 73 3.2.8 Five Years of Fear 74 3.2.9 Patriotism and Corruption 75 3.2.10 Destruction, War, and Exploitation 76 3.2.11 Insabbiati, Slaves, and Masters 77 3.2.12 Mussolini’s Gas 78 3.2.13 Examining the ascaro’s Heritage: Yesterday and Today 79 3.2.14 Looking for Ghosts 81 3.2.15 Italian Apartheid 82 3.3 Colonialism as a Mirror 83 Bibliography 89 4 The Black Mediterranean 91 4.1 Theoretical Framework 92 4.2 The Black Mediterranean’s Stories 93 4.2.1 As New Slaves in the Mediterranean 93 4.2.2 The Color Line at Lampedusa 95 4.2.3 Lampedusa-Brindisi, “Picking Tomatoes” 97 4.2.4 Europe Is a Culprit, in the Mediterranean 99 4.2.5 Lampedusa, Crossroad of Transnational Geographies101 4.2.6 Imagery of Europe off the Map103 4.2.7 Colonialism and Bodies of Desire105 4.2.8 The Site of Responsibility107 4.3 Blackness Across the Mediterranean110 Bibliography114

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5 Geographies of Emotions119 5.1 The Autonomy of Migration and Counter-Geographies121 5.2 Theorizing a “Geographies of Emotions”122 5.3 A Geography of Fragments: Emotions in Diaspora129 5.3.1 Homeland as Lost Land129 5.3.2 Journeys as Metaphors of Feelings137 5.4 Fragments of Memories for a New Europe150 Bibliography158 Index

163

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Malika/Angela’s map Dabar’s map Meron’s map Rachid’s map

29 88 148 149

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Introduction

This book is the outcome of my efforts to elicit the oral tales of black people from the former Italian colonies in the Horn of Africa, namely Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, as well as those of “second-generation” individuals born in Italy to mixed families, or whose parents migrated to Europe from the Horn of Africa. It delves into this diasporic context, focusing on salient topics that emerged during the oral interviews that I conducted in Italy. My aim in writing it is to show how subjectivities and memories were and continue to be pertinent for the proposal and affirmation of new postcolonial positionalities and diasporic geographies across Europe, as well as globally. Within this interpretive framework, I consider Italy, specifically, not just as a national territory but as part of a transnational and global space of mobility. Through their narratives and within diasporic archives that reveal mobility, these black voices depict slices of life in Europe, centering on personal connections and social linkages operating across borders. In this sense, these stories are not only representations of particular places and times; they are practices that are actively changing Europe and its sociocultural territories, which are being crossed by black bodies and shared memories. Since 2014, as a member of a research project led by Professor Luisa Passerini, I collected in excess of eighty interviews conducted with men and women holding different citizenship statuses (refugees, asylum seekers, Italians, etc.), and of different ages (teenagers, adults, and elders), who are culturally affiliated with and/or from the Horn of Africa. The © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_1

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G. PROGLIO

interviews took place in a host of cities across Italy: Turin, Milan, Padua, Asti, Pavia, Rome, Bologna, Modena, Verona, Venice, Florence, Naples, and Palermo. The interviews focused on various topics, such as the respondents’ memories of their homelands, their journeys to Europe, their Mediterranean crossings, and the conditions they encountered in Italy. All of these fragments of memory were conjoined within the same narrative, entailing different objects of recall and different temporalities and experiences. Accordingly, in this book, the chronological time of the interview and its transcription can be understood as the field within which tales that deal with multiple aspects of being black in Europe have been gathered and translated within a scientific framework. It was necessary to preserve the multidimensionality of this process relating to time, space, feelings, practices, and expectations—which differed for each life trajectory, from person to person, and from interview to interview—within these operations. This approach and intersubjectivity, which are integral to the oral historian’s work, have important implications from the perspective of intersectionality, illuminating how each subjectivity is crossed by many positionalities according to the sociocultural contexts of reference, typologies of relations, and emotions and imaginaries evoked during an interview. The research project, “Bodies Across Borders in Europe: Oral and Visual Memories in Europe and Beyond” (known by the acronym, BABE), was based at the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence and was funded by the European Research Council through a starting grant.1 The project’s aim was to engage with both native and “new” Europeans in an exploration of intercultural connections within contemporary Europe. These connections, which focused on Italy and the Netherlands, were woven through memory, visuality, and mobility, which are the faculties of embodied subjects, and related to the movements of people, ideas, and images across the borders of European nation states, with a focus on Italy and the Netherlands. Within this framework, the research team developed several subprojects. All of these were interconnected and were implemented synergistically, based on a common aim of sharing reflections and theoretical thoughts. Intersubjectivity was both the context of meanings elaborated during the cultural exchange that occurred between the interviewer and the interviewee and a memory process entailed in the invention of new ways of staying and living in Europe as Afro-descendants. We, the researchers, were always connected with two kinds of intersubjectivity during our investigations. The first one was created through dialogue as an ongoing

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interchange of narratives and an exchange of meanings between subjectivities. By contrast, the second was indirectly approachable through relationships forged with the interviewees through the movements of meanings and practices that are reconfiguring the geography of Europe around the condition of being black and in diaspora. Parts of these acts of resignification were and are strategies and methods for providing a contrast to or resisting white hegemony and its genealogies in various contexts (societal, border crossings, the private sphere, and public contexts). Evidently, we were only able to engage with a small portion of this wider field of signification and to develop a limited understanding through the interview process. Focusing on two countries, Italy and the Netherlands—two countries bearing resemblances to each other in terms of migration and their colonial pasts, but also evidencing differences relating to their cultural policies and sociopolitical contexts—the BABE project explored relationships among borders, mobilities, and Europe from many perspectives. Many research pathways were created: Luisa Passerini and Giada Giustetto worked with students in the Centri Territoriali Permanenti (Italian schools for adults and migrants) mapping oral and visual memories of migrations to Europe through single and group interviews. Working with students at various Italian high schools across the peninsula from north to south, stretching from Turin to Palermo, Graziella Bonansea focused on the topic of the border in relation to bodies in movement, paying particular attention to the theme of generation. Liliana Ellena explored the idea of the colonial archive through an analysis of various works (documentaries, video-installations, and movies) by visual artists who have problematized European borders. She examined the story of Eva Nera, a movie directed by Giuliano Tomei that explores the postcolonial condition of those who were formerly colonized. Milica Trakilović investigated certain categories deployed in the Netherlands to describe the condition of migrant people. Iris van Huis’ research project was devoted to a study of migrations from Indonesia to the Netherlands through collected interviews. Lastly, Leslie Hernández Nova’s investigation focused on the Peruvian diaspora in Europe. Specifically, she examined the use of memory within migrant subjectivities in the narration of the history and geography of this South American country. My aim in this book is to illuminate a portion of Italy and Europe that has remained largely invisible—that of the Horn of Africa diasporas. In doing so, I show how the cultural memory of the interviewees is

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embedded in an intersubjective context and linked to cultural practices that could change, among other things, the face of Italianness and Europeanness. Therefore, these interviews should be read both as traces of a past that is either silent or largely unknown in Europe and as signs of an impending future that is not yet fully visible. In this future, Italy and Europe will no longer conform to the prevailing contemporary imaginary that is being promoted by white people across Europe of national and communitarian communities that are exclusively white, Western, and Christian. This is because despite the xenophobic rhetoric that has pervaded both the public and private spheres over the last three decades, transnational migration flows have redesigned and reformulated the geopolitical scenarios and have infiltrated cultures, bringing into question the centrality of key core concepts—nation, state, citizenship, and masculinity—mobilized in descriptions of who belongs to a community and the alterity of the rest. This book examines a cross-section of Italy and Europe that is linked in the collective imaginary to notions such as foreigner, non-EU, black/ African, asylum seeker, or refugee. The collected narratives reveal the existence of another Italy and another Europe through stories that cross national and European borders and unfold within transnational and global relational and affective networks. They tell of multiple identities within the diaspora and reconceptualize the geography of the continent—and, we might say, of the world—in terms of experienced emotions and close relationships. Adopting a shifting perspective, they reinterpret the history of Italian colonialism in relation to continuities and discontinuities with the present. Last, they map out the Black Mediterranean—a space of crossing between worlds and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe—which begins thousands of miles away and entails stories of escape from oppressive conditions, of violence suffered in Sudan, of detention in Libyan prisons, of illegal border crossings, of disguises and survival strategies, and, finally, the epic tales of those who made it but who face the constant worry of ending up like the identity-less thousands at the bottom of the sea. The book is organized into five chapters. The following chapter, which focuses on diasporic identities and subjectivities, opens with some theoretical reflections by Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall on the formation of cultural identities that simultaneously arise from an initial condition of subordination and relate to a subsequent condition in which rethinking the self, the imagined community, and the world is still possible. Here, Gilroy’s concept of “double consciousness,” which was firstly elaborated

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by W.E.B. Du Bois, finds a new application in a completely different context from that of the Black Atlantic, slavery, and the condition of African-­ Americans (Gilroy 1993). All of the interviewees described themselves as being poised between several cross-cultural, geographical, and relational worlds, revealing an abundance of positionings: Italian-Somalian, Italian-­ Ethiopian, Italian with a foreign-looking appearance, Italian-Tigrinya, Black African-Italian, second generation, Ambescià, Oromo-European, and so forth. Each of these definitions refers to a subjectivity that is articulated within two or more cultural contexts. In the last three decades, several social theories have attempted to approach and describe postcolonial conditions in Europe, positioned between assimilation and multiculturalism. The first is an ideological approach for France’s management of colonies and continuing migrations from former French domains. It entails reassembling the idea of empire, after its fall, through a process of inclusion within French society that requires migrants to conform with and adapt to specific criteria. This adaptation process begins with a moment of desocialization from the cultural context of origin, followed by resocialization framed by the norms, moral decrees, and ethical precepts of French society. By contrast, the English assimilation model is based on the colonial experience of the Commonwealth, which gathers together, under the Union Jack, diverse societies and cultures. The concept of multiculturalism has been introduced to describe a society that welcomes and includes people from other cultures, offering them the possibility of conserving their habits and traditions, if not in opposition with the general mandates of the community, while simultaneously involving them in a process of inclusion. Both approaches are characterized by a European idea of superiority, privileging the role of whiteness and the centrality of masculinity in defining the positionality of the “other” within society. It is possible to graphically represent these models, which, despite their different approaches, ensure that alterities remain far from the center—both symbolically and physically—in relation to their subjectivities and the combination of race, class, gender, sexual identity, and political and religious belonging. Since the end of the1980s, multiple migration flows have converged at the southern European borders and at Italian shores for millions of people coming from Eastern Europe—Albania, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia—and from Maghreb. Since that time, new trajectories for reaching Europe have opened up across the entire Mediterranean route. Libya has become one of the pivotal points for entering the European

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Union through Italy. Flows originating from the east and south have been contained through prevailing norms on citizenship, border protection mechanisms, and the expulsion and detention of non-Italian subjects. Following a first moment entailing the introduction of a procedure for regularizing illegal migrants in Italy through the Martelli law enacted in 1990, several normative measures were applied to define the status of migrants in Italy. The Turco-Napolitano law, which was approved in 1998, led to the establishment of “Temporary Residence Centers” (the Italian acronym is CPTs) where “illegal” migrants were jailed while awaiting repatriation. This and other aspects relating to both the acquisition of citizenship and the struggle around migration were at the core of further legislation such as the Bossi-Fini and Minniti-Orlando laws that entered into force in 2002 and 2017, respectively. In the last two decades, the situation has worsened with the criminalization of illegal migration, the progressive militarization of EU and national borders, and police deportations of migrants across the country, from the north to the south. Moreover, the last “left-wing” government, led by Matteo Renzi, refused to approve a citizenship reform that would have extended Italian citizenship to second-­generation family members of migrants. At the conclusion of the BABE research project in May 2018, the condition of migrants had deteriorated further, with the election of the new Salvini-Di Maio government, the introduction of a prohibition on the rescue of stranded people in the Mediterranean by nongovernmental organization (NGO) associations, and the consequent rise in deaths at sea of people trying to reach Europe through Lampedusa, and the closing of Italian ports to ships and makeshift dinghies. Moreover, two Security Acts (Decreto Sicurezza 1 and 2, in Italian) have been approved, and the Italian government, emulating the trend of anti-migrant policies in Europe (in Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia), has decided to withdraw from the Global Compact for Migration in Marrakech. Further, xenophobia, racism, and sexism in the public and private spheres continue to be on the rise as a direct consequence of the toxic narratives of politicians, journalists, and institutions. In spite of these continuities and the adoption of a common approach by governments of different political orientations toward migration originating from outside of the EU borders and toward non-white bodies in the EU and Italy, a unique Italian model of integration is still not discernable. Connecting this issue with Italy’s colonial past in Africa and Asia is at the core of my interest. The Italian empire, which was the last of the

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twentieth-century empires, was declared by Benito Mussolini on May 9, 1936. Reflecting on the history of colonialism in Italy, and its end after World War II, several historians—here, I would like to mention Angelo Del Boca (2008) and Nicola Labanca (2002)—have observed how memories of the colonial past were repressed (rimossa in Italian) in the post-war period. My approach has been to problematize this interpretation and to analyze the heritage of overseas territories in terms of representations and practices of discrimination imposed on new subjects and bodies that arrived as part of the first migration flows. I would like to put forward an interpretation derived from the theoretical concept of the archive produced through several narrative discourses and practices. Some of these discourses and practices were active before the colonial conquest, notably scientific research (anthropology, medicine, sociology, etc.), while public and popular narratives and practices resisted otherness and various forms of discrimination through oral tales and songs. As Antonio Gramsci has suggested, folklore “is a conception of the world and life” (Gramsci 1975), which could be counterpoised to an official conception of this word. Positing a separation between discourses and practices of science and folklore implies the position that there was no repression. There are several reasons why Italians forgot about the colonial empire, which include the difficult post-war context and feelings of embarrassment associated with recollections of the Fascist regime. At the same time, the archive of otherness and extracted representations and biopolitical practices of discrimination deployed in the subjectivation of the new not-white, and not considered Italian-European bodies arriving in the country through migration have been preserved. In this context, the approach I have taken regarding the oral interviews that I collected is aimed at decolonizing the narrative infrastructure that grounds scientific and academic forms of naming, nomenclature, and interpretation. I will not talk of “hybrid identities” in relation to the individuals whom I interviewed because that terminology is derived from a specific conception of what is Italian/European and what is not. My goal is to shift attention away from research on cultural identity toward subjectivity in order to analyze, in the case of each interviewee, individual and collective life trajectories and memories of moving from the Horn of Africa to Europe. This approach may reveal a new gaze on the world both as an actual perception of the present, a memory of the past, and imaginaries about the self and others along with practices of resistance toward border regimes and forms of segregation. From a historical perspective, mapping

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and tracing the relationships among subjectivities and human geographies may reveal connections with other life paths, national and diasporic communities, and forms of resistance concerning subjects who were subjugated by colonial powers in Africa and by postcolonial conditions in Europe. The third chapter investigates postcolonial memories of colonialism. The theoretical reflections of several scholars in different fields on the memory of colonialism—Ann Laura Stoler, Sandro Triulzi, Luisa Passerini, and Sandra Ponzanesi—serve to introduce the chapter. My aim in presenting these reflections is to construct a theoretical framework within which to situate the testimonies that I collected. This chapter is devoted entirely to a re-reading of colonialism by subjectivities that in all respects can be defined as postcolonial. Whereas the concept of memory repression has been applied within the historiography of Italian colonialism to explain how “the Overseas” was eclipsed in the memory of Italians after the period 1945–1960, I collected the testimonies of people who had experienced or heard about that period differently as ex-colonized peoples who formed a resilient and patriotic community that had been invaded but not conquered. In light of Hirsch’s (2014) reflections on post-memory, this chapter examines how a colonial past has been reworked by the sons and daughters of colonized subjects. My analysis of oral sources focuses on two key topics: the role of generational transmission in describing the heritage of violence inflicted by Italian soldiers on black bodies in the Horn of Africa and problematizing the role of the line of color in order to propose another way of remembering the colonial period, the decolonization process, and the postcolonial condition from the perspective of black subjectivities in Europe. I explore the embodied memories—both of migrant people and those of the second generation—to shed light on processes of recognition and identification, strategies for eluding border controls, and ways of organizing society and labor. Additionally, I explore the subversive role of these subjectivities in foregrounding other facets of history that up to now have been excluded from mainstream narratives. For instance, the embodied memories of these black subjectivities scrutinize another archive, namely one constituted by oral tales of oppression and resistance against the colonial invasion and forms of segregation enacted within postcolonial settings in Europe. This change in perspective is a powerful way of expanding and connecting the human geography expressed by a black subjectivity with a larger complex story constituted through my own life trajectory

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and experiences of black people. From a historical perspective, the reuse and resignification of a collective memory of a shared and violent event from the past—such as colonialism or slavery—could be considered a means of confirming belonging to the black diaspora in Europe and to the entire world. During the research process, many accounts of the genealogies of non-­ Italian subjectivities in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea emerged: those of differences between the colonialisms in the Horn of Africa; of metissage; of the paternalism inherent in Italian domination; of resistance against the invasion; and of the myth of a nation independent from Europe and attached to the Ethiopian royal family. This chapter presents a rereading of several imperialist myths, such as that of the Italians building roads, houses, and cities with the opposite aim, namely that of asserting the rights of the people of the Horn of Africa. The fourth chapter presents an analysis of memories of the Black Mediterranean. In light of some introductory reflections of Alessandra Di Maio (2012), Timothy Raeymaekers (2014), and several other scholars, I propose the notion of the Black Mediterranean as a site of the memory of crossings but also as the site of silence and forgetfulness surrounding those who did not make it to another shore. This “geography of emotions” (see Chap. 5) is particularly complex because it is not just about the physical sea but, more generally, it is about the journey that leads to Europe. In the accounts of my interviewees, the Black Mediterranean begins in areas of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, many of which are situated along migration routes. Each of these oral memories should be read along an intersectional plane that reveals possibilities contingent on sex, income, social class, religious and ethnic identity, age, and employment status. The Mediterranean emerges as the place where the legacies of colonialisms meet postcolonial conditions; a boundary that must be overcome to find salvation, that is, a present that is unattainable in the Horn of Africa but is hoped for in Europe. At the same time, the Mediterranean is also a site of silence and of the impossibility of speech. Its waves reflect the faces of the interviewees and, in their memories, the faces of those who did not make it, before or during the crossing. It is preceded by Libyan jails, the crossing of the Sahara, and sales of migrants transacted between smugglers—one to another—in Sudan and Libya. The Mediterranean is emblematic of a context in which everything is permissible and humanity reverts to its beastly form. But it is also the space of reunion with Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Somalian cultures in Europe; with Pan-Africanism and

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Pan-Islamism; with the idea of liberation from Europe; with identities proclaiming their blackness and Africanness; and with the myth of Ras Tafari and Ethiopian resistance. Here, the Black Mediterranean is understood as an “excess space of signification” (Proglio 2017) in relation to narratives concerning social unity and the diversity of cultures that have evolved in the region adjoining the Mediterranean Sea. As Edward Said (1979) and some other scholars who have engaged with postcolonialism and decolonialism have suggested, European nations have evoked and invented the colonial elsewhere: in literature, cinema, newspapers, novels, and the visual arts in order to conquer those lands and bodies. Hence, the narrative conquest preceded military actions. A similar process is unfolding in the contemporary context of the Mediterranean, which is managed for the EU by private organizations, such as Frontex, and embedded within a complex geopolitical context. Political and military instability in Libya, a repressive regime in Egypt, and a post-revolutionary society with glaring contradictions in Tunisia are just some examples of this complexity. My aim, once again, is to focus on those oral narratives that deal with or concern the journey to Europe; narratives that tell of violence in Libya and people drowned at sea. The fifth chapter, then, focuses on the geographies of emotions. It opens with a conceptual framing of geography, narration, and representation, drawing on reflections from the fields of cultural studies (Edward Said 1979), border studies (Anzaldua 1987; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013; Mignolo 2012), philosophy, and the history of emotions. In light of this discussion, “geographies of emotions” are defined as intersubjective representations of territories that do not conform to the canons of official geographical representation, wherein memory is articulated both orally and visually. I apply the concept of a “geography of emotions” in the context of the Horn of Africa diaspora to deprovincialize the place of arrivals and to describe Europe, and Italy as being among the first lands of arrival; as places where it is easy to go astray and lose sight of a future. Moreover, I use this term to describe emotions such as feelings of nostalgia for Asmara, fear of the Mediterranean, happiness and wonder at the sight of snow in Milan, the experience of disappointment in a long-dreamed-of country, Italy, which turned out to be hostile and racist and also the tragic irony of those who no longer have a country to return to.

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These geographies of emotions reveal the existence of another geography based not just on maps but also one that is constitutive of an axis around which revolve social relations within the diaspora; the movement of migrants across African and Asian borders on their way to Europe along with their notions of the past and of the future. My study of oral testimonies is intertwined with an analysis of visual representations—in particular, the maps drawn by the interviewees—with the aim of showing how such geographies are changing the faces of Italy/Europe as well as those of Africa and Asia.

1.1   The Methodological Approach and Ethical Issues I would like to focus now on methodology. I feel that it is pertinent here to discuss the role of critical theory in this book. Tools and reflections derived from oral history and critical studies were important—I would say essential—for sketching, projecting, organizing, and finally accomplishing this research. My perceptions changed with the theoretical lens that I adopted throughout the research process: collecting interviews was the first step in my attempts to rethink the present and past geographies of Europe. Here, geography has a wider meaning that extends beyond cartographic representation (Farinelli 2009). The meaning of this term, as it is used throughout this book, conveys a shared imaginary of the world. This approach is similar to that proposed and adopted by Edward Said (1979) in theorizing orientalism and perceptions of the West in Europe and by Europeans. Critical theories influenced the ways in which I conceptualized and developed my methodological approach. In this context, the typology of meanings and their movements from the realm of ideas to investigative practice is particularly striking, as it reveals a sort of correlation and reciprocal influence between philosophy and action upon the field. Whereas postcolonial studies and critical theory, more generally, have highlighted relevant lines of enquiry for rethinking the positioning of the subject between subalternity and agency, the question of how to combine theory and methodology in this field has not yet been explored in depth. In adopting this perspective, the focus of my attention is once again on subjectivity. Consequently, intersubjectivity reveals a scholarly path that enables an engagement with critical thought as well as with the tales of

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respondents that change the perspective that frames the investigation and that of the researcher. More generally, I suggest that the act of decolonizing the gaze performed by researchers in the humanities entails becoming aware of and seeking forms of resistance to the knowledges underpinning the double partitioned rule between the world of ideas and that of everyday life. In the course of my research, I have reconsidered this boundary, which is the place from where unofficial geographies of diaspora are elaborated and disseminated. An underlying premise of this work concerns the shared role of ideas and practices in interrogating hegemonic discourses and as important dimensions of the decolonization of universities (Boaventura 2017), which are unique sites of knowledge production. The introduction of critical thought and action beyond the confines of the academy can be successfully accomplished only after the scholar has undergone a process of mirroring relating to the subjectivity and positionalities adopted in the course of fieldwork. This ongoing process of delocalizing their centrality in the context of scholarly pursuits and instead choosing peripheral and liminal positions—deciding to listen rather than to ask, to stay connected rather than to extract private memories—is integral to the process of oral history relating to the creation of the source. To adopt this approach necessitates tuning into words and silences, gestures and gazes, while resisting the urge to organize and classify all of them within a clear collocation using categories and languages that belong to the scholar. Before conducting this fieldwork, I collaboratively developed a “grid of questions” with my fellow researchers, and especially with Leslie Hernández Nova, who worked on the same topic in the context of Peruvian migrants in Europe. The reasons for my choice of a semi-­ structured interview format are multiple. First, my aim was to approach people whom I encountered neither as informants nor as interviewees. Evidently, there is a disparity in the position of the individual who is in charge of a research project and those who are involved in interviews. In my case, this disparity was marked not only by my academic position but it was also “embodied” within me as a white man born in Italy, receiving economic recompense for my work. A central part of my reflective process entailed approaching this disparity with awareness. Subsequently, my intention was to lose myself in the other, symbolically forgetting and erasing topics identified before beginning the fieldwork, and following the discourse generated through dialogues as opposed to reproducing an aseptic context with “cold questions” and timid or embarrassed replies.

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I approached each interview as a dialogue, without asking questions and proposing a topic that I wished to focus on. This choice was the outcome of my reflection on the privilege that determines who can ask and the obligation of subjects to reply. In order to transform and subvert this unequal relationship, I began by attending to my own positionality, explaining to the person in front of me what my work and goals were, why I had decided to focus on certain topics rather than others, the locations of my interviews, and the other subjects with whom I had met. At that point, the interview was transformed into a dialogue with a new person whom I had met some hours earlier. Another important question concerned my choice of sample. I decided to live in the different places in which the diaspora from the Horn of Africa live and where their presence is more vibrant to develop a better understanding of them. For example, I spent several weeks in San Salvario and Porta Palazzo, which are two popular living quarters of this diasporic population in Turin; in the central railway station and Porta Venezia in Milan; and in the streets close to the Roma Termini Railway Station in Rome. In these contexts, it was important to talk with many individuals to understand the genealogical stratifications among people originating from the same country, adopting an intersectional point of view, that is, accounting for differences of gender, color, class, age, and variations in journeys and in religious and political beliefs. At that point, starting with some previous contacts within the diaspora that I had prior to conducting fieldwork and others that I developed on site, I decided who I would interview, trying to construct a larger composite panorama encompassing people with different positionalities both within the society and the diaspora. This approach enabled me to problematize an imaginary based on a unique vision of black people coming from the Horn of Africa and to foreground complexity relating to the social genealogy of diaspora. In addition, this practice could prove powerful for testing how various migratory paths as well as social conditions, and, correspondingly, multiple responses to the same topic coexist within the same national diasporic context. As I have previously argued (Proglio 2018), the role of empathy is closely linked to the approach adopted in fieldwork. My own approach during fieldwork was to meet people and talk with them to learn more about their expectations and lives. But, first of all, I prioritized people and relationships, setting aside my own research goals. This process of decolonizing history and its sources entailed reflecting on my own

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representations and stereotypes of the other. In particular, I tried to move away from the identification of the subject(s), constructed during the formulation of the research project, to an investigation of their subjectivity, first during the interview and thereafter in the interpretive process. For this reason, each interview is considered representative also of other people who share the same life trajectory and positionality within a particular social context (see Passerini 1985). I perceived the interviews as mutual exchanges. From an intersubjective perspective, the production of the source—historically speaking—entails more than the interactions between two or more subjectivities. Conducting an interview with empathy provides a unique opportunity to be led to unforeseen horizons of memory, which entails feeling the estrangement resulting from the loss of reference points within a dialogue with another voice. In this process, the body is in the real place—while also being an archive of subjective and collective memories—where connections with the other subjectivities, beyond words, may be experienced. For instance, when silence arises, several meanings can be imparted to the act of producing silence or remaining silent. Hence, empathy is an important research method within oral history: it offers an effective practice for calling into question categories and attributions of representations and interpretations that, as scholars, we are generally unaware of (Proglio 2018). Finally, I would like to highlight the connection that exists between the memory of the body, on the one hand, and the body of memory on the other. By “memory of the body,” I mean the role of the body in preserving and enclosing, concealing, and narrating, embodying and fragmenting personal and collective memories inherent within both the public sphere and in private contexts. In this sense, the “memory of the body” constitutes an archive, that is, a place designed for the preservation of narratives and practices, gestures and non-verbal discursive forms. By “body of memory,” I mean the interweaving of narratives derived from different archives and from the multiple memories of bodies. As noted above, each individual subjectivity is considered representative of a specific positionality and life trajectory. Concerning ethical issues, all of the interviews and related transcripts in this book have been included with the permission of the interviewees. I have used pseudonyms whenever I was requested to do so. I can recall the faces of the people whom I met, the tears and laughter during the interviews, and tales that were recorded but not authorized because they were too intimate, too detailed. Only a portion of the

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collected material was used in the writing of this book. I hope that the choices made, those that concern me as an oral historian and as a person, reflect, at least in part, those of the people whom I met during my fieldwork, and who generously opened for me the doors of their memory. Acknowledgments  First of all, I would like to thank Luisa Passerini, who, over the years, has taught me the trade of the oral historian not by affirming but by formulating questions. The academic freedom that she granted me is something profoundly revolutionary and disarming in light of what can be a stifling environment within the academy. From her, I learned that historical research is, first of all, an investigation of the self. In addition, I extend my thanks to her, and to the entire BABE collective, for offering me conceptual tools to reflect with, for placing my certainties in a state of crisis, and for giving me the keys to access reading and processing sources, strategies for approaching the “historical fact,” and methodologies for engaging with memory. Specifically, I thank Lilliana Ellena, Milica Trakilović, Graziella Bonansea, Leslie Hernández Nova, Giada Giustetto, and Iris van Huis. I also thank Laura Borgese for her work in organizing BABE activities. I would like to thank you Radhika Johari for her precious work of editing of this volume. I would like to thank my loved ones: my family comprising my parents, Angela and Giancarlo; my brother, Alessandro and his wife, Chiara, with their daughters—Irene, Lucia, and Susanna—and their son, Arturo; and my comrades and friends from yesterday and today, in Italy and across the world. Thanks to each of these individuals for what they have taught me, for staying close and supporting me in difficult moments when things were not going well, and for giving me the strength to smile at the end of a dark day. Above all, my heartiest thanks go to the individuals whom I met during my fieldwork, who chose to recount their stories to me, introducing me to some of their memories and to their ancestors, and sharing with me their emotions and time. I am deeply grateful to them for teaching me many things, ranging from profound lessons, such as how to stay in and to live in and with time, with all of its contradictions, to simple gestures affirming a connection and a relation between two persons through conversations shared over a cup of tea.

Note 1. For more information about the research project, please visit the BABE website: http://www.babe.eui.eu/. The BABE project was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement n. 295854.

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Bibliography Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Boaventura, S.  S. (2017). Decolonizing the University. The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Del Boca, A. (2008). Italiani, brava gente? Un mito duro a morire. Neri Pozza: Vicenza. Di Maio, A. (2012). Mediterraneo nero. Le rotte dei migrant nel millenio globale. In G. De Spuches (Ed.), La città cosmopolita. Altre narrazioni (pp. 142–163). Palermo: G. B. Palumbo Editore. Farinelli, F. (2009). La crisi della ragione cartografica. Torino: Einaudi. Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London/New York: Verso. Gramsci, A. (1975). Scritti. In Quaderno 27 (Vol. III). Torino: Einaudi. Hirsch, M. (2014). The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Labanca, N. (2002). Oltremare: storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino. Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2013). Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. (2012). Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Durham: Duke University Press. Passerini, L. (1985). Storia e Soggettività: Le fonti orali, la memoria. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Proglio, G. (2017). Introduction. In G.  Proglio (Ed.), Decolonising the Mediterranean: European Colonial Heritages in North Africa and the Middle East (pp. vii–xiii). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Proglio, G. (2018). Silences and Voices of Mediterranean Crossings: (Inter)subjectivity and Empathy as Research Practice. Revista Brasilera de Pesquisa (Auto) Biográfica, 3(7), 67–79. Raeymaekers, T. (Ed.). (2014). The Mediterranean Migration Frontier. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13(2). Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Verso.

CHAPTER 2

Diasporic Identities and Subjectivities

The impacts of mass migration, displacement, deportation, and relocation that are characteristic features of globalization have changed processes of identity construction. In their work on postcolonial vocabularies titled The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (1989) explain that the term “diaspora” is indicative of the role of colonialism and slavery in the construction of the post-Empire era. They state, “The descendants of the diasporic movements generated by colonialism have developed their own distinctive cultures which both preserve and often extend and develop their originary cultures” (Ashcroft et al. 1989, p. 62). In light of the fact that the rise of colonialism, entailing ideas of nation, Europe, gender, and race, was organized around and from the concept of the border, they argue that a diasporic culture necessarily questions essentialist models, “interrogating the ideology of a unified, ‘natural’ cultural norm that underpins the centre/margin model of colonialist discourse” (p.  62). Understood in this sense, the notion of a “diasporic identity” has been adopted by many scholars and writers as a synonym for hybridity. Ashcroft, Griffins, and Tiffin (1989) further note that “diaspora does not simply refer to geographical dispersal but also to the vexed questions of identity, memory and home which such displacement produces” (1998, p.  218). Postcolonial writers re-image the world through other gazes. Their texts are “the most powerful means of re-examining the historical past and re-configuring our contemporary world-wide cultural concerns” (p. 219). They cross borders through diasporic writing that “opens up the © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_2

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horizon of place” (p. 219). Past colonialisms and slavery are questioned and reinterpreted in novels and other writings by those whose subjectivities and bodies have directly experienced prejudices, racisms, and other forms of violence, exclusion, and differential inclusion. Some scholars have contended that their hybrid identity provides an antidote to the forces of globalization and capitalism. I endorse the view that a diasporic condition is not immediately and directly connected with a critique of the system. What is of salience is the positionality of “being-in-between” (Bhabha 1994) for producing knowledge and meanings that can disclose other visions of the world as a whole. More generally, the debate on diaspora and identity has made a significant contribution to understanding the “culture making” that occurs within a liminal space that belongs neither to contexts of the self nor to those of the other. Several scholars have attempted to problematize the role of the boundary and more generally the notion of a meaning that is generated in the realm of the “in between” (Bhabha 1994) within the folds of a world that is represented geographically as being smooth and linear (Farinelli 2009). The act of “writing back” to the center performed by diasporic intellectuals (Rushdie 1982) and postcolonial writers (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1989) entails a “conscious effort to enter into the discourse of Europe and the West, to mix with it, transform it, to make it acknowledge marginalized or suppressed or forgotten histories” (Said 1993, p. 216). The writings of several scholars on the relationship between mobility and identity have contributed to the debate on diaspora and identity. Paul Gilroy reflected on the identity of black people in diaspora beyond the color line (Gilroy 2000). Ali Behdad drew attention to the double relationship that exists between migrants and European states. Thus, on the one hand, individuals in diaspora reshape their identities at the transnational level, and on the other hand, the construction of “citizenship” and the notion of national belonging framed by nations—and I would add Europe—is contingent on the presence of diasporic groups (Bedhad 2005). Arjun Appadurai has emphasized that ethnocide is based on a specific perception of a community: it is triggered when an ethnic minority is perceived by a large majority as an obstacle to the creation of “a pure and untainted national ethnos.” This perception provokes what Appadurai refers to as a “fear of small numbers” (Appadurai 2006). A second notable aspect of Behdad’s theorization concerns the production of cultural knowledge by people who have experienced a journey of migration.

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Diasporic differences seem to be counterpoised to the world order (Behdad 2005). Thus, James Clifford proposed the idea of a culture in movement that has the ability to renegotiate its meanings and forms. Journeys and contacts “are crucial sites for an unfinished modernity” (Clifford 1997, p. 2). Moreover, “practices of displacement might emerge as constitutive of cultural meanings rather than as their simple transfer or extension” (Clifford 1997, p. 3). Within this theoretical framework, “the making and remaking of identities takes place in the contact zone, along the policed and transgressive intercultural frontiers of nations, people, locales” (Clifford 1997, p. 7). The condition of being-in-diaspora has been analyzed from many different perspectives. These include referential values, focusing on the reshaping role of the homeland (Clifford 2005; Safran 1991) and the culture of origin in the places of arrival; trauma, viewed as acts connected with displacement and forms of violence to which migrant people were subjected during the journey (Clifford 1997; Gilroy 1993); a sense of loss (Liao 2005; Dutta-Bergman and Pal 2005); and an ongoing reference to a sense of community (Peters 1999). Migration and mobility are two pivotal topics around which the concept of diaspora has been framed. Some scholars who were and are mostly engaged in the field of gender studies have approached the study of identities in diaspora through the concepts of liquidity and nomadism (Ahmed, Castaneda, Frotier, and Sheller 2003), postcoloniality (Spivak 1999), mestizia (Anzaldua 1987), womanism (Walker 1984), the inappropriate other (Trin-Minh Ha 1990), and the homeless and rootless (Appadurai 1994). Another central question concerns the role of memory in diaspora. A volume edited by Radha Sarma Hegde and Ajaya Kumar Sahoo on the Indian diaspora contains a collection of essays that includes a contribution by Vijay Mishra on the role of oral narratives in writing history (Mishra 2017). This author suggests that two different diasporic migrations from India have occurred, each characterized by specific ways of remembering associated with social status. Although historically separate, these two diasporas share a common connective memory and should therefore be considered as interlinked. A large number of scholars have claimed that a collective memory derived from a shared consciousness that is required to enable membership of a community (Werbner 2004) is typically found within diasporas along with a culture that opposes hegemonic and institutional narratives, as in the case of Thatcherite England (Gilroy 1993).

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2.1   Seeking Revealing Movements Common to the above described theorizations around diaspora is the attempt to change the paradigm of identity, culture, and knowledge production, with the aim of shifting Europe from its barycenter. This strand of critiques can be considered to offer a revealing movement for two different reasons. First, prevailing norms and rules are rendered visible, disclosing connected genealogies and dichotomies, such as those of North/ South, white/black, West/the rest of the world, and heterosexuality/ homosexuality. Second, diasporic subjectivities invent and lay claim to a narrative space that did not previously exist. I would like to demonstrate revealing movements that relate to the diasporic identities of people from the Horn of Africa who now live in Europe, where they are not considered totally—or even partially in some cases— European. This state of being suspended between there and here is entailed in the act of being-in-diaspora. Such identities are considered out of place; they are interpreted as unexpected and sometimes unacceptable in light of common sense and within the public imaginary. They exceed European dichotomies (e.g., native and foreign) and are located outside of the map of what is considered possible and known through national languages (i.e., citizen and migrant, refugee, asylum seeker). In fact, these identities are generated through a process of re-signifying and inventing words used to define an individual’s condition. From the perspective of the “norm,” however, these identities are irreverent or even insolent. To render visible such revealing moments, I will “work theoretically” with the writings of Stuart Hall, who personifies the diasporic intellectual. Moreover, he himself devoted a significant proportion of his research to investigating this topic. My aim is to extract some parts of Hall’s theorization to construct a paradigm for reading and interpreting the diasporic identities of the individuals whom I interviewed. Before proceeding further, however, I would like to clarify at the outset that this theoretical work is resonant with the oral narratives collected from individuals from the Horn of Africa. However, whereas the former entails efforts to approach, translate, and decodify the world through dialogues on knowledge and its forms, the latter reflects the shift of individuals’ subjectivities from holding a status within a society to actively taking a position in the world. It is useful to direct these different gazes on to the same topic to discover what is moving outside of the confines of a mapping of what is

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already known and codified through a language, with its entailed dichotomies. 2.1.1  Playing with Subtraction and Addition Renowned as a theorist of cultural studies, Hall’s research on the diaspora in the UK was introduced in two of his works: The Young Englanders (1967) and Black Britons (1970). These works are dedicated to illustrating how young people live in a context of exclusions and inclusions in Great Britain. As Claire Alexander has pointed out, they are situated between “formal acceptance and informal segregation” (Alexander 2009). In light of his investigation of the place of newly arrived settlers within a postcolonial nation, Hall suggested that black youth were “stranded ‘between two cultures.’ ” Hall expressed this theorization, which is clearly linked with the idea of double consciousness espoused by W.E.B. Du Bois, as follows: There is an identity which belongs to the part of him that is West Indian, or Pakistani or Indian… there is also the identity of ‘the young Englander’ toward which every new experience beckons… somehow he must learn to reconcile his two identities and make them one. But many of the avenues into [the] wider society are closed to him… The route back is closed. But so too is the route forward. (Hall 1967)

In Policing the Crisis (1978), Hall shifted his attention from the “discourse on migration” to the concept of crisis. He explained that the book “tries to examine why and how the themes of race, crime and youth—condensed into the image of ‘mugging’—also come to serve as the articulator of crisis, its ideological conductor” (Hall et al. 1978, p. VII). From this point on, he worked to elaborate useful tools for mapping the multiple identities of diasporic subjects in Europe. In Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (1986a), he applied some of the ideas conceptualized by the Italian politician and intellectual, such as the distinctions between state and civil society, and between hegemony and subalternity and common sense. In particular, Hall proposed a conceptualization of discourse as a body of intertwined narratives, always lacking a prearranged order. He explained this as follows: He [Gramsci] shows how the so-called ‘self’ which underpins these ideological formations is not a unified but a contradictory subject and a social

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construction. He thus helps us to understand one of the most common, least explained features of ‘racism’: the ‘subjection’ of the victims of racism to the mystifications of the very racist ideologies which imprison and define them. He shows how different, often contradictory elements can be woven into and integrated within different ideological discourses; but also, the nature and value of ideological struggle which seeks to transform popular ideas and the ‘common sense’ of masses. All this has the most profound importance for the analysis of racist ideologies and for the centrality, [and] within that, of ideological struggle. (1986a, p. 27)

I would like to consider all of these theoretical reflections for conceptualizing diasporic identity as elaborated through processes of subtraction and addition, when not in juxtaposition, to the hegemonic narrative in and of Europe. By “subtraction and addition” I mean that the meaning associated with this identity does not respect what Foucault termed the “order of discourse.” Specifically, Foucault emphasized that discourse is not simply “what shows or hides desire,” “what translates fights and domination systems” (Foucault 1972 [1970], p. 10). In his opinion, the production of a discourse is simultaneously controlled and selected to avoid potential danger. To suggest that diasporic identities are elaborated through processes of subtraction and addition to the order of discourse is to affirm that the production of meanings does not adhere to the role of a language. In more concrete terms, individuals and groups in diaspora formulate a new lexicon, giving new meanings to common words (black, migrant, European, etc.) or introducing terms from their cultures of origin, as I will show in the following pages. This is strictly connected with the condition of migrants in diaspora which has been analyzed in depth by Abdelmalek Sayad, in La double absence (1999). The self can be considered an “unstable subject” that engages with numerous discourses that are diverse, entailing forms and representations that are not necessarily uniform and homogeneous. For instance, diasporic subjects could potentially have access to multiple identities, sometimes for reasons relating to strategic essentialism (Spivak 1988). Within this theoretical framework, Gramscian “common sense” may be understood both as a sense of belonging to a group/community and as reflections of the self through the daily interactions of people in diaspora. A final point to be considered is that this is an ongoing, continuous, permanent and “non-linear” process, as described by Hall in The Problem

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of Ideology (1983). In his discussion of the work of Gilroy, Grossberg, and McRobbie, he coined the term “determinacy” as a way of conceptualizing research by applying an “open horizon” perspective and an approach “without guarantees” (p. 43). This last definition can be interpreted both as a reference to the fallibility of the scholar investigating the diasporic identity and as a way of approaching the study that does not entail a modelizing approach. Hall proposed the concept of “articulation” in relation to this second meaning, which he described as “a complex structure in which things are related, as much through their similarities as through their differences” (Hall 1980, p. 325). “Articulation” differs markedly from Marc Bloch’s concept of “context” (Bloch 1949). It focuses on the narrative process, conceived as “a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage that is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time” (Hall 1986b, p. 53). Hall simultaneously introduced another insight connected with the positionality of the subject and of subjectivities. Writing about the new cinema of the Caribbean, he explored the question of enunciation. In his opinion, there are at least two different ways of thinking about “cultural identity.” The first conception is one of a shared culture, a sort of collective “one true self” that reflects a common historical experience such as colonialism or slavery. The second one, conversely, is based on differences, or, more accurately, on differences within the same unity. Hall specified that these differences are connected with “what we really are… and what we have become” (Hall 1990, p. 225). He elaborated further as follows: Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (Hall 1990, p. 225)

In Minimal Selves (1987), Hall argued that identity is “formed at the unstable point where the ‘unspeakable’ stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture” (Hall 1987, p. 44). In particular, “the

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trouble is that the instant one learns to be ‘an immigrant,’ one recognizes one can’t be an immigrant any longer: it isn’t a tenable place to be” (Hall 1987, p. 45). Hence, he discovered what it was to be black through the insight that “constituting oneself as ‘black’ is another recognition of self through difference” (Hall 1987, p. 45). This kind of identity is conceived as fiction and as a production of a self-reflexivity that is constitutive of “politics in the recognition of the necessary arbitrariness of the closure around the imaginary communities” (Hall 1987, p. 45). In the following excerpt, Hall demonstrates how it is possible to have a shared identity based on the idea of being black: The fact is ‘black’ has never been just there either. It has always been an unstable identity, psychically, culturally and politically. It, too, is a narrative, a story, a history. Something constructed, told, spoken, not simply found. People now speak of the society I come from in totally unrecognizable ways. Of course Jamaica is a black society, they say. In reality it is a society of black and brown people who lived for three or four hundred years without ever being able to speak of themselves as ‘black’. Black is an identity which had to be learned and could only be learned in a certain moment. (Hall 1987, p. 45)

In New Ethnicities, Stuart Hall shifted from the idea of difference as a way of recognizing the self as other in relation to something else to the Derridian concept of différance in which the deliberately misspelled “a” connotes a “sliding” of the signifier that leads to the idea of the other being multiplied within many others. Whereas Derrida had intended the term to convey an infinite sliding of the signifier, Hall reconceptualized it as a strategy for demonstrating the process of attributing meaning based on a binary system, as described by Spivak, Fanon, and many other intellectuals. He elucidates this as follows: We still have a great deal of work to do to decouple ethnicity, as it functions in the dominant discourse, from its equivalence with nationalism, imperialism, racism and the state, which are the points of attachment around which a distinctive British or, more accurately, English ethnicity have been constructed. (Hall 1996, p. 257)

He coined the term “diaspora-ization” denoting a cultural process relating to the politics of representation of black people in diaspora “and the consequences which this carries for the process of unsettling,

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recombination, hybridization and ‘cut-and-mix’” (Hall 1996, p.  257). With reference to the question of memory, I have already pointed out how, in Stuart Hall’s theorization, the past is reshaped in unstable and uncertain ways, with the subject suspended between the loss of the homeland and an inhospitable place of arrival; between the dream of roots and the nightmare of the present. Diasporic memory plays a role in the production of subjectivity, which, in turn, is involved in the production of memory (Proglio 2020) and operates within multiple temporalities, subverting the nomenclature of the hegemonic discourse.

2.2   Ways of Being-in-Diaspora Following this introduction to the theoretical framing and pathways of interpretation that I will apply in this work, I will now analyze the oral narratives and their revealing movements relating to the diasporic identities and subjectivities. In this section, I would like to highlight some descriptions of subjectivity that emerged during the interviews. As I have noted above, these identities are elaborated based on a “discourse” that is reinterpreted through processes of addition and subtraction as a new language of being-in-diaspora. As the following pages will reveal, some individuals like Angela/Malaika reinvented themselves using external categories. The concept of identity played an important role during the production of the drawing that I asked each interviewee to make at the end of these meetings. We, members of the BABE research project team, referred to this artifact as a “map,” but perhaps a more useful conceptualization is that of a geography of emotions associated with each interview as I explain in more detail in Chap. 5. Our intention in the project was to ask interviewees to depict various typologies of memories evoked during the interview. Representations of cultural memory assume various forms and representations when depicted on a sheet of paper, most of which are determined by feelings and emotions. An appropriate interpretation of the resulting “map” requires a combined consideration of this source of cultural memory along with interview transcripts. 2.2.1  The Italo-Somali Egg I met Angela in a bar, not far from Milan Central Railway Station. The trip I took to reach our meeting venue was a short one: I boarded the metro from the railway station, arriving after two stops. During this short

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journey, I had the opportunity to reflect on what I had witnessed just before undertaking this trip. Upon arriving at the station in Milan, the traveler leaves the boarding area and goes down to the ground floor of the station where the entrance of the metro is located. I knew from documentaries and articles that Milan Central Station is a key hub for people seeking to reach and cross the Italian border, namely the great majority of migrant people. Hence, I decided to make a detour. I went downstairs and, on the middle floor, I saw many people camped there with blankets, water bottles, t-shirts, shoes, and socks. Five feet away from me lay two sleeping bags. On the white marble floor, I saw the remains of the last meal providentially distributed by Caritas, an association working to provide aid to migrants. I was struck for two reasons that related neither to the condition of these people nor to the place. My attention was captured by the silence; the silence that prevailed between Italians immersed within the chaotic metropolitan rhythms and these other individuals, who were black-skinned and dark-skinned: so visible as to be rendered invisible within the white person’s gaze. The second observation that struck me, which was connected to the first, was the lack of empathy. These people resembled ghosts with a large majority of white Italians avoiding contact and proximity with them. I remember speaking to Amal, a pregnant woman from Eritrea. I spent some minutes with her, during which she recounted her journey across Africa to Europe. Her eyes were clear. She uttered one sentence that will remain etched forever in my mind and in my heart: “We have left our future behind in Africa.” * * * In the metro, I was thinking about Amal. Her pain was evident when she told me about her experience of leaving her country and her concerns about the future. When I arrived at the stop, I wanted to turn back and go home. I hardly know what force—or perhaps simply the inertia of my present—led me to the meeting with Angela. I had connected with her through some contacts I had within the Somali community, who provided me with a conduit to the diaspora. I reached the bar first and asked the barman for a large coffee and a glass of water. I then sat down at a round table across the room in a corner. From this location, I had two views: to the left, I could see a large part of the square outside the window, which was located just a few feet away from me. I could also see what was happening inside the bar.

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This double view is of particular salience for understanding what happened when Angela and Nuurta arrived. The two women, both of whom I had arranged to interview, spent a few minutes greeting someone at the entrance of the bar. Inside, a group of white men began making sexist and racist comments about the “black women,” calling them faccette nere (“little black face”); an expression derived from a popular marching song associated with the Fascist regime. One of them, in particular, quoted a line from a song composed by Faccetta Nera that spoke about aspetta e spera (“wait and hope”) as a way of marking the superiority of the white man in relation to black colonized people. The words “wait and hope” in the song refer to the conquest of Ethiopia, alluding to the body of the Ethiopian woman that is compared with the land of Ethiopia. Specifically, the “wait” is for colonization by Italy that brings liberation from the oppression associated with conditions of barbarism; “hope” is for the masculine predatory action of conquest, the implications of which extend beyond the sexual domain. I was horrified by these people and all the more by how they were reshaping the colonial past in the present. This process reverberated across every aspect of daily life, entering directly into the ambit of my research even before it had commenced. –– Good morning, my name is Gabriele! –– Hello, Gabriele, I am Angela and she is Nuurta [these were her first words as she shook my hand]. * * * We sat down at the table and I began to introduce myself and my research. Within a few minutes, we had jointly decided how to organize our time. First, I would interview Angela and next I would interview Nuurta. Angela began to tell me about her past. She was born in Mogadishu and now lives in Milan. She said to me: “Mogadishu is the city where I was born and lived for several years.” She was fifty-two years old at the time of the interview, which took place in October 2015. “I was raised . . . let’s say . . . within a culture . . . [where] we had the possibility to travel; to visit other parts of the world, during holidays.” She went on to explain that it is the place of origin, and especially the neighborhood where she lived for fourteen years, that was important in shaping her identity.

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Then it was eh . . . behind the Juba Hotel . . . this Juba Hotel was the most important hotel in Mogadishu. . . . Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia and . . . there were gatherings, that is, they came . . . there were parties, those that they did not have in the various embassies . . . it was an international context and we were . . . let’s say . . . we lived behind the Hotel Juba. At the back, there was a main road and . . . that was an area . . . let’s say . . . rich in consulates and embassies . . . full of offices, it was a very, very lively center. But beyond that, the most beautiful memory that I have is this eh . . . the place where I was born . . . an ultra-fancy condominium.

She continued to talk to me about her neighborhood using words that defined her positionality: There were two- or three-story buildings where we lived . . . a lot of Italo-­ Somali families, eh . . . I told you, I’m Italo-Somali . . . Italian father and Somali mother . . . and some Somalis too, very few, but elite people . . . let’s say the owners of real estate. The Italo-Somali families were doing a little . . . let’s say . . . it’s like they were a small tribe.

I remember the “and” that followed after she said that her father was Italian, which sounded like an attempt to dislocate herself within the two different contexts. At the time, I was struck by her usage of the term “tribe”: although we were having a conversation outside of Somalia, she was reproducing an essentially Somali way of classifying people based on their ethnicity and clan membership. Specifically, she went on to note the condition of women in Italo-Somali families: “They were . . . I don’t know how to say it . . . [they were] sidelined from their tribe of ownership. I don’t want to say outcasts because it is a very heavy term . . . but it was basically like that . . . because, obviously, the white man was still seen as a colonizer, a former colonizer.” When we talked about the colonial period, the theme of the Italo-­ Somalis remained important: “Italians had that small [sexual] vice . . . and we were all Italo-Somali.” In this case, I interpreted “all” as signifying the ability of a colonial power to control people’s bodies and, through them, the entire imagined Somali community. I was therefore very upset when she uttered the word “all.” Later, upon reflection, I understood that my feelings were not only about Italy’s colonial past. Angela was producing an emotional geography, which is the topic of Chap. 5, simultaneously working on the past and the present. I should note here that in her conception of “my ‘past’ and ‘present,’ ” the colonial past and postcolonial present

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inhabited the same place within her memory. After discussing colonialism, she told me about her present life in Milan. She spoke of her love for Milan and all of the opportunities it offers, but in the final part of the interview, she pointed out that she—like other Italo-Somali people—is neither white nor black. She asserted that “first of all, I am Italo-Somali.” In her “map” (see Fig. 2.1), she illustrated the Italo-Somali concept. There is a circle; she used two colors—brown and black—and drew an “S” between them. Commenting on this, she said, “I used the brown color because it is the intersection of black and white, as I am.” For her, the “S” is a metaphor of her identity. She wrote Malaika/Angela in the center. Malaika is her Arabic name that she used in Somalia and means “angel”; Angela is its Italian equivalent. Then she explained that the circle also represented an egg: “something that can protect me.” She continued: “The white part is the Somalia in me; the black part is the Italy.” I was struck by her reversal of the colors: “Don’t you mean the white is Italy and the black is Somalia?” She confirmed that she meant what she had said because “I

Fig. 2.1  Malika/Angela’s map

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am always out of place, as all Italo-Somalis were and are out of place in the present, and in the past, when Italians ruled in Somalia.” Then she added: “The future belongs to the pallidi.” The Italian word pallidi cannot be translated simply as “pale-skinned.” From a medical perspective, the word describes people who are sick (it is equivalent to “pallid” or “sickly” in English). However, I understood that she was not using that interpretation because of the silence that preceded this sentence. She paused. After a few seconds, I looked down because I was embarrassed, not because of the color of my skin but because of the situation that she and other Italo-­ Somalis faced. Perhaps understanding how I felt, she began to talk again in order to end the awkward silence. In my view, this part of the interview signaled our connection. She said: If you are colored, you have a place, always, here in Somalia, in every part of the world. Some people call me meticcia [‘mixed race’], others nera or negra [‘black’ or ‘negro’]. But I don’t want to accept these classifications. I am Angela and Malaika at the same time. Why not? This means being Italo-­ Somali. It is not a sort of place in between, between Africa and Europe, Somalia and Italy, between past and present; it is a game of strategies and I, we—as Italo-Somalis—tip the odds in our favor.

We were silent for several seconds. Finally, she said, “I am not half of something, half black, half Italian, half woman. I am a unique subject, a sort of unity, which is as complete as the egg in my drawing.” 2.2.2  Two Somalias and Two Italys Nuurta was born in 1970. I interviewed her after interviewing Angela. She sat down facing me. Nuurta belongs to the generation after Angela’s. “I grew up in Mogadishu even though I was born in a small town,” she stated, and continued, “Mogadishu is everything for me.” She lived in Valdigli, in the central western part of the capital city. She lived in this social context from the ages of eleven to twenty-two. She studied music, learning to play the flute for two years and then the violin for one year. She remembered the first time women played music in public, in the theater. She was one of them. Her comment is powerful for understanding the period of change that she experienced: “There was a new spirit.” It was the Somalia before the Nineties. She reflected: “Today, it is different after twenty-five years of civil war . . . all is unrecognizable.” She arrived in Italy

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by plane, traveling on a Somali Air Lines flight after acquiring her passport and visa at the Italian embassy. That was made possible because a clerk and a visa officer decided to help her and to reward her knowledge of English. Newly arrived in Italy, she tangibly experienced the contrasts with Somalia: the snow, the food, and the way of dressing. In Somalia, the civil war was exploding. “I remember people walking . . . in a different way . . . the heels of the women making a noise.” In Somalia, she told me, the ground is not made of cement as in Italy. She was really struck by the new context. At the same time, she began to settle down in the new place, resuming her studies in English and looking for and then finding a job. She waited for fifteen years to become an Italian citizen. During that period, “I did high school here in Italy, and I enrolled in a nursing degree program.” This choice was dictated by the labor market; the possibility of finding a full-­ time job. Then, she decided to move to Milan: N: I decided to come to Milan because I loved Milan G: Really? N: This was my idea since my departure from Somalia G: Okay . . . N: It is said that in Milan there are blonde men [she laughs as she says this]. And the other part of the saying is that in Naples, there are people who cut off your hands if you are walking with your handbag. She decided, then, to move to Milan and to rent an apartment along with four other women of the same age. It was a one-bedroom apartment that sometimes accommodated more than ten people at any one time. These difficult conditions, which were simultaneously deeply connected with the idea of freedom, prompted her to talk about her past, and especially about her family. At this point, there was a shift in the narrative connecting the two temporalities of the Italian and Somali pasts, both of which shared the same topic in common: the idea of “home.” We began to talk about her family in Somalia. Her father died when she was five years old, so she grew up alone. She told me: “I never had someone to help me . . . I was alone up to when I was seventeen.” In this story too, the clan is central. She is aberghir. In her opinion, belonging to this or any other ethnic group in Somalia had negative effects on people: People were confused . . . and the consequence was that those people who were close to you did not help you . . . because of the clan.” She added: “It

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is something that developed during the war. . . . We had twenty-three years of military government, without democracy, without a president. . . . There was only one form of power based on people’s lives . . . or better, on death . . . power until death.

The theme of the aberghir clan is repeated in the narrative of her journey. “My goal was [to reach] Europe, not Italy . . . only in a second moment, as I said, I decided to move to northern Italy.” At this point, she multiplied the “two Italys” into two Somalias. I told you about the two Italys, the northern one and the southern other. . . . Hence, there are also two Somalias . . . the contemporary one and that one where I come from. . . . Today, people arrive because of the famine and escaping from war. . . . I left my country with the desire to do something more. We are completely different. . . . Today, young people arriving across the Mediterranean Sea have lived through more than 20 years of civil war. . . . It is different from [the experiences of] people like us, who have never seen a rifle.

We began to talk about her identity. She applies the same duplicate scheme—in which the two Somalias and the two Italys are components of the same object—to talk about herself. G: N: G: N:

How do you define yourself? Hmm, I define myself as one half in Somalia and the other in Italy Why do you say “in?” Because I spent my life . . . half in Somalia . . . and half in Italy

Her conception of duplication relates to the temporalities in her oral narrative, in which her private memories of her life in Somalia and Italy center on the idea of home as well as on her identity, which is divided across two countries: Somalia and Italy. 2.2.3  Being 2G, or Italian in Another Way I interviewed Medhin—born in Italy in 1975—in a bar in Porta Venezia. I introduced myself and apologized for the delay caused by traffic congestion on the Turin–Milan highway entering Milan. She told me: “I had my first concert in Turin, at the Hiroshima Mon Amour,” which is a popular

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club in Turin. For her, music was and continues to be very important, even fundamental. “For ten years, I was a folk musician. My goal was to bring to the present the tradition of the popular song in central Italy . . . the female voices . . . all of that tradition that . . . comes from mondine.” Mondine were women who worked seasonally in paddy fields in the Po Valley in northern Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When these women were working they would sing popular and traditional songs, an example being Silvana Mangano, who featured in Riso amao (1949), written by Giuseppe De Santis. The name of Medhin’s electronic folk music band was Fiamma Fiumana. “We were an ensemble made up of four or five sections.” “All from Milan?” I asked her. She replied, laughing, “Not at all. I was the only Milanese.” Medhin began this project when she was nineteen years old and made the following remarks about the initial period: I had just taken Italian citizenship. Luckily, they gave it to me because if it had not been granted to me, I could not have done nor had all of my experiences of life and work, and also the relationships that still fortunately endure. . . . It seems like something that is nonsense. . . . You say, okay, it is a piece of paper . . . eh no, I would have done something else.

At the time of the interview, Medhin was thirty-four years old and an important filmmaker who had jointly directed Asmarina (2015, sixty-nine minutes), a documentary on the Eritrean diasporic memory in Milan with Alan Maglio. Medhin’s experience with Fiamma Fiumana was important in relation to memory connecting her past and present as she explained: Asmarina has its roots in the Fiamma Fiumana project. . . . Even if we talk about other things, the reflection on memory is exactly the same. Exactly the one there and also the idea of self-representativeness . . . that is, I made this film with Alan who is an Italian boy. Even for him, this is self-­ representation because we are not talking about . . . Eritrea or Ethiopia. . . . We are talking of a certain community in certain areas of Italy.

My interest in the movie, which had a great impact not only in Italy but also in America and in Europe, lay in its depiction of Medhin’s perception of identity. Hence, I asked her how the project influenced her identity. She replied, “Look, the path started a long time ago . . . with a personal reflection. . . . I simply started to understand that I was born in a place that was

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not exactly or should not have been mine.” She grew up in Milan with the myth of the place of origin, or in her words, “the fable of what it could have brought or given to me.” Her emotional geography remolds this conception of Eritrea after two journeys that she made to this country in the Horn of Africa. Following that vivid experience, she mentioned two other experiences: high school and her membership of a scout group. This last experience seems to be highly pertinent to her reflections on self-­ identity. “Youths in that scout group came from bourgeois families . . . bourgeois, yes, not all, of course, but almost all. . . . It was one situation where I was unique.” By “unique,” she meant having a non-Caucasian skin: “I was the only one [who was] not Caucasian.” Skin color has been a salient factor in her life. In particular, the media, for example, cartoons, TV series, movies, or advertisements, have had considerable impacts in producing a public imaginary about race: “Even if you do not realize it, you react afterwards in certain ways, and look at the authority in a certain way.” Medhin defines herself as a “black woman,” jokingly likening herself to “a small Angela Davis. . . . I was also Afro, and cared a lot about it . . . and I had no idea who Angela Davis was at the time . . . but I had this idea of black power.” Her dialogues with other girls, whom she referred to as “Afro” and “Italo-black,” centered on the skin color of the characters in their drawings, which they made when they were young. She recalled: “they drew themselves . . . themselves, not other people . . . as white people, or with pink skin . . . I have this memory . . . I drew myself as black; I drew all people as black.” On another occasion, also at school, she created a puppet out of a brown box. “I had a positive perception of what I did. . . . I know other people considered that as negative.” However, to render herself visible, she insisted that her avatar should be black, and from this difference she discovered other differences from the norm, such as her gender identity as a lesbian. At a certain point, our dialogue seemed to become condensed, as indicated in the following passage: G: Tell me . . . how you would describe your country. M: My country? My countries, you could say. G: Okay, yes . . . so, let’s change the question. . . . Where do you position yourself? M: I am here. G: Yes, but what is this here?

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M: My here is different from yours. I am not Italian [in the same way] as Mr. Mario Brambilla is Italian, but I have my Italianness G: Yes, tell me something about this. M: I am part of the Second Generation (2G) network. . . . We all have different cultural backgrounds and many typologies of Italianness [A pause in the conversation] G: M: G: M:

Okay, but where do you position yourself? In the middle-Earth! Where all of us are. And is it difficult to say where, exactly? It was more . . . more [difficult] when nobody was there . . . because nobody understood what this land was . . . right? It is like never land, right? As the song goes, ‘second star on the right’ . . . and when you understand that it is real, you can find ‘there’ in everything and more.

At this point, Medhin began to talk about the regime of visibility connected to the process of forging a cultural identity. In her opinion, there were some elements that derive from physical aspects and others connected to a choice. She described this as follows: My skin has been visible . . . since my birth, I have been forced to create, for good or bad, an armor, or at least to learn how to manage various situations that I found myself in, both positive and negative. It’s been so long, I’m managing to handle them. I know when to rebuke myself and when it’s possible to laugh, and when, maybe, there was no intention to hurt me. It’s just a matter of experience; you have no choice: you have to learn to swim. The question of gender and sexual preference is different, because it is a choice to hide or not to hide.

2.2.4  Italian, but My Mind and Heart Are in Eritrea Winta was born in 1995 to Eritrean parents in Gratosoglio, a small town located on the southern periphery of Milan. We met in a bar near the Central Railway Station. Immediately after expressing her love for her hometown, she made a specific reference to Porta Venezia, whose people she considered her people; her fellow countrypeople. It is the place where

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she spent each Saturday, year after year, with her relatives eating the typical food of this area and meeting friends. In her opinion, her people have two negative traits. First, whereas they were previously proud and ready to help their neighbors, now they are indifferent to those in need of aid. The second trait, which is connected to the first, is that Eritrean people are afraid to say no; to take a position against something. During our conversation, Winta recalled an episode that occurred in her youth, when, during a meeting of the Eritrean community, she spoke up against the regime, advocating democracy and freedom. A few people scolded her, telling her that she was not allowed to be a politician because she was only fifteen years old. However, most remained silent. “I am proud of what I did, I was alone practically. . . . I think of my people who are sick because of the government,” she said. Her activism against Iasias Afewerki’s dictatorship is an important marker of her identity. Following her narrative is like discovering or unveiling all of the contradictions existing between Europe and Africa and between Italy and Eritrea. An example is the situation of those who escaped from Asmara because they consider the country to be an open-air prison but who become intransigent supporters of the regime immediately upon their arrival in Italy. If, as Winta suggests, “the future is escape from Eritrea,” then people within the diaspora demonstrate a selfish attitude and are divided into a myriad of small parties—more than thirty-five. Moreover, a section of the resistance is more interested in ruling the post-­ regime country rather than attempting to create a real alternative. But, as she continues to narrate, the regime controls everything: internet, mobile phones, mobility, and Eritreans in Europe. Once, she recalled, her father, who was in Asmara, happened to be talking on the phone to a friend in Milan. He told him that the condition in the country was really bad. “A voice, at that point, said to him, ‘Look, we heard you! Stop that!’” she recounted. In Winta’s opinion, the diaspora is ethnicized: “People who had the possibility to change the situation, such as my parents, didn’t do it.” The “2%” tax that Eritrean must deposit as retribution in order to be allowed to return to their homeland is an exemplary illustration of this contradiction. Eritreans abroad have to pay a tax as their retribution to the government. Thus, although they now live in another world, the Eritrean diaspora economically supports the regime; the same regime from which several millions of people escaped. Not paying the tax means losing the possibility of returning to the homeland.

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In addition, people in diaspora have started to attend festivals and to eat ethnic food as ways of expressing their collective upholding of a national identity rather than protesting against the regime. Winta gave an example of the response to the Lampedusa shipwreck that occurred on October 3, 2013: “Our fellow countrymen, instead of doing something, organized fests and parties. . . There is egoism; there is no respect for people who died in the Mediterranean. . . There is no longer any fraternity.” In her opinion, there are no more people such as Hailedru, an Eritrean politician who “first understood how the situation in our country had changed.” In 2001, Isaias became a hero: “nobody messes with Isaias.” She continued: “the opposition could do something . . . unite and fight together.” Following our long dialogue on past and contemporary situations in Eritrea, I introduced the topic of her personal identity. She framed the worlds, described below, which explain her idea of being in-between, as if she was floating between Eritrea and Italy; between the overbearing presence of the regime and a possible new future for Asmara; between her life in Milan and within the diaspora as a whole: I am . . . this is Italy, and this is the country where I was born and grew up in, but my heart and my mind are always in Eritrea. . . My country is far away from me, but at the same time, it is always with me.

2.2.5  The Italian Missione G: N: G: N:

Why [the name] Nino? I’m . . . let’s say . . . the son of Italians Hmmm . . . Eh, my mother is Somali. I was born in the period between the fifties and sixties, during the [time of] the Trust Territory of Somaliland under Italian administration, so I was born as a mulatto . . . and an entry was made for me in the population register some days before my birth . . . In my case, there was no one able to give me a name and, probably, in my opinion, the employee in that office did it . . . I guess my mother was not there. . .

I met Nino at his home in Milan. He was born in 1953 in Mogadishu. The interview took place in a room in which we were surrounded by drums and pictures of places somewhere in Africa, which, I would guess,

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were in Somalia or elsewhere in the Horn of Africa. There were also African black masks and paintings on the walls. Nino made some tea, which he served to me with honey. After the interview began with the question posed at the beginning of this section, he immediately explained that his Somali name is Fanan, which means “happy.” His surname, which is Malzerri, conveys another story. Before he reached the age of twenty-one, his surname was Malzer. Malzerri is a dummy surname, it is fictitious . . . because during that period, it was necessary to protect Italians who also had families in Italy . . . it is not like now . . . one is with a woman . . . most of the time, they were minors, aged fifteen or sixteen . . . those young men were military officers during the A.F.I.S.

Nino used the term “mulatto” on several occasions during his narrative to define the condition of those people born as a result of a mixed-race union. He added that there was an association in Rome that was working to obtain recognition of the refugee status of such children as an exploited minority. “Those sons caused pain to their moms . . . and also to us . . . Italy asks for forgiveness.” He continued: “The term used by Somali people to define our condition was Italian missione, namely the boys of the mission, because the Italian government decided to entrust to the Propaganda Fide all persons who were—we can say in quotes—nobody’s children.” This positionality gave him strength. Sometimes, during his stay in Somalia, the nuns would read out letters to him written by his mother. Only later did he understand that they did so to make feel him better. Through these letters, he received news about the births of other sisters in Florence and Rome. His mother, in fact, decided to leave the country and to travel to Italy. At the age of fourteen, he was one of the best students at the institute. Therefore, the principal offered him the opportunity of moving to Brescia, in Italy, to attend a high school managed by the same Salesian group. He did not pass the first-year exams because of his bad writing. That first negative experience changed his perception of studying. He developed a method for doing his work; a method for learning. “Other mulattos in the college escaped . . . or didn’t make it . . . others left the institute.” He further recalled that he was with three other mulattos. Nino directly experienced the “68” movement and its impacts that included changes in the Catholic world too. He recalled three evocative

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mental images: the Vatican II Council, “the monks did not wear only pants”—an image used to portray a section of the clergy that questioned the secular precepts of the Vatican relating to dress codes and daily relational practices—and songs sung in Italian. It was a cultural change that also impacted his life. He attended high schools in Varese and underwent a new experience as an athlete, especially as a runner. It was during this period that he wanted to return home to Somalia. Then, when he graduated, he decided to continue his education at a university in Milan, enrolling at ISEF, a special school dedicated to gymnastics and sports in general. By now, he was twenty years old, and expressed his desire to meet his mother. He contacted the monks in Brescia and asked them to search for her. After a few weeks, they received important news: Nino’s mother was living in Rome and was ready to meet him. N: G: N:

She said to me, “why did you come here?” What did you say? For me it was like a refusal . . . so, I closed myself . . . In Rome, I met my brothers and little sister, Mina. I don’t know . . . this is a huge hole in my memory . . . After a month, I didn’t like the situation . . . so, I decided to escape . . . I left Rome and came back to Brescia by bus and train.

Another important event shaped Nino’s life. Shortly afterward, a notary contacted him at the request of his father and through the Brescian monks. After a few days, he signed documents recognizing Nino as a natural child. We went to the notary . . . and ratified the citizenship . . . I mean, the recognition not the citizenship . . . only after I received my identity card . . . and I restarted ISEF . . . I remember . . . in class, my professor called me Malzerri, and I didn’t move a finger . . . At that point, I said that my name was not Malzerri . . . my name was Raddi.

Our discussion then moved on to his identity. He began by defining himself as follows: There were parts of my life story when I was Cuban, Jamaican . . . what the other would see in you . . . I was [seen as] Brazilian . . . for instance, a bank employee said to me ‘Were you really born in Africa? You were born there or here?’

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He replied to the bank employee that he was born in Africa. She said: “Look, you are an Italian with a foreign face.” Nino, at this point, comments: “I paused for a moment . . . and then I said: Wonderful . . . now, if I talk with my lover, I can say, I am Italian with an African pulse.” 2.2.6   Italians but Eritreans At the beginning of my fieldwork, I had a rigid conception of how to conduct the research. Despite the methodological approach used in oral history, which comprises semi-structured interviews, I applied a rigid concept of dialogue during my meetings with the interviewees. For instance, my favorite technique was face-to-face individual interviews. Then I met Sara—born in 1993—and Helen—born in 1997—in a bar in Milan. As was customary, I scheduled separate interviews with each of them. However, they both requested me for a joint one. I acceded to this request, bearing in mind the fact that after transcribing these interviews, I would need to resolve any issues relating to the interactions among three subjectivities: my own and those of Sara and Helen. From the onset of the interview, differences between the perspectives of Sara and Helen were indicative of two ways of being “in between.” I asked them the following question: “First of all, I would like to ask you about a place you love very much!” Sara responded: “I would like to point out that I have never been in Eritrea.” By contrast, Helen stated: “I have visited Eritrea four times.” Their family backgrounds also differed. Helen’s father is a hero of the Eritrean resistance movement and arrived in Rome after the country achieved independence. The story of Sara’s family is different: her mother arrived in Italy when she was sixteen years old, and her father never reached Italy and is living instead in the United States. The line of color constituted the basis for questioning identities in both cases. Sara states: I was born in a small town, in Italy, in Peschiera Borromeo. In my town I was the only black girl. It is a place where all the people have money and rigid norms . . . I don’t want to say that I didn’t have a good time because I had my friends . . . but when I was young . . . there was a boy at the elementary school who called me ‘little nigger’. . . and I immediately started to cry. . . . Maybe I was resentful . . . I don’t want to say that I was bullied . . . because my childhood was wonderful, but when I was a child I felt this discrimination deeply because Peschiera was my world.

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Her perceptions, however, changed when she moved back to Milan to attend high school. She met another black girl and felt embarrassed on her past. She explained, “I was completely Italianized, 100% . . . For me, Eritrea didn’t exist . . . I was aware that I didn’t feel comfortable. Today it is the opposite . . . I am proud and love very much to be . . .” At this point Helen laughed and a dialogue began to unfold between Sara and Helen: S: It is true. Now it shows. H: Your hair? S: Yes, my hair which is so beautiful [laughing]. To me it is now normal. Helen then began to tell me about the relationship between her story and identity. “I was born and grew up in this part of the city. . . It is a place where there are rich people . . . I had no problems. . . . I had Italian friends.” Some individuals addressed her using racist terms and her subjectivity was illuminated in her reflections during the oral interview. This is my country . . . I was born here . . . I lived among . . . I mean, I am Italian, as well as, I am . . . Eritrean. Probably, I was more Italian. Now, on the contrary, I would like to be Eritrean . . . so, I don’t know exactly what my position is. I live in Italy . . . and I am happy for that . . . but certainly there is something . . . something more . . . connecting me with my origins. H: For me, by contrast, I am fine in Italy. G: Okay . . . H: But if I had the opportunity to choose to live in Eritrea or to remain here, and if the situation in Eritrea was fine, I would immediately go back to Eritrea . . . I felt that Eritrea was my country while I was growing up here . . . maybe it is because my father is in Eritrea— maybe it is the lack of the father—but I feel that place as my place. G: How do you define yourself? H: Hmm . . . I don’t know . . . I feel myself to be both Eritrean and Italian, but my desire, inside of me, is to live there.

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2.2.7  Recognizing the Eritrean Part, but Not the Italian One During my travels across Italy, I visited Padua several times. There, I conducted several interviews in the neighborhood of Arcella. This locality was developed as an industrial area at the end of the nineteenth century and quickly became a working-class neighborhood. During the Fascist era, hundreds of men from Arcella were enlisted in the Italian army and left their homes to participate in wars in Italy’s colonies in Libya and in the Horn of Africa. This is the reason why some streets still bear the names of former Italian colonies and their cities (e.g., Via Somalia, Via Amba Lagi, Via Libia, Via Eritrea, Via Asmara, and Via Adua). In Arcella, I met Viviana Zorzato, who lived there in an apartment with her family. She was born in 1964. Her father had been an Italian soldier who was sent to take part in the conquest of Eritrea. When she arrived in Italy, she began to seek information about the history of Eritrea: My political interest began with the history of my country. I started to collect documents and every kind of material on colonialism. I was looking for books and reviews of the period that talked about what was a part of me; a part that hurt me a lot. And I felt involved in the bad treatment . . . so terrible . . . talking about Eritreans, Blacks as people to . . . educate, to correct; as primitive and uncivilized people.

When she arrived in Italy she found her own reference points. Because of the different ways of approaching people and expressing sociality in Italy, she said, “I had problems with people my own age.” She did not feel connected to others during her adolescence: it is difficult to empathize with other people during adolescence. “I was off my game,” she told me, “because of . . . it was like I left my story . . . because I wanted to keep my story private, and I had the impression that I was categorized in some situation or in the imaginary.” For these reasons she felt distanced from other people. “When I was in Eritrea, I thought there were many things [there] in common with Italy . . . many more compared with those I found here.” After a long pause, she resumed talking and began to speak about her father. “This interest led me [on a quest] to know my father, even if I was unable to recognize him in the narratives on colonizers. I was not able to recognize him because the thought in my mind was ‘no, my father is not like that!’ ” During her inquiry, she discovered new meanings of words such as “slavery” and “subjection.” She began to critique the term “colonial adventure” because of the violence that was imposed on African

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people. Her imaginary relating to her father was of a man who decided to desert the army and marry an Ethiopian woman (Eritrea had not yet come into being at the time). The Italian term for such individuals was insabbiato, which can be translated as “deserter.” From one perspective, all insabbiati soldiers can be viewed as those who decided to break with Fascism and war, discarding the military uniform for a “normal” life with a bella abissina (“Abyssinian beauty”), an expression that was in vogue in Fascist Italy and was used to convey the exotic aesthetic attributed to Ethiopian women. She thought of him as an “outsider” in contrast to the colonial ruling class. When I questioned her about her cultural identity, she connected this memory to her own subjectivity: I am Italian, yes, because that is what I write on documents. When we were children in Eritrea, they had to write down our names, surnames, and nationalities. One had to write the citizenship and Italian nationality. So, yes, on forms and in papers I am Italian despite having the ID . . . the Eritrean citizenship. I understood my Eritrean part well, but I am not sufficiently. . . I have had a hard time recognizing my Italian part because I am not aware of what being Italian means.

I asked Viviana to define her positionality in relation to Italy and Eritrea. The dialogue below reveals her notion of diasporic identity: V: It is a unique identity . . . I hope to have reached that awareness because I also had this feeling of a split personality. . . G: What is your positionality in relation to Italy and Eritrea? V: In between. G: There “in between” is this something swinging and fluctuating or is it a fixed point? V: No, it swings . . . it swings because . . . [a pause] not in a nationalistic sense, but in the sense that when I moved toward the south, I felt myself ‘opening,’ and conversely, [moving toward the] north, I felt myself ‘closing.’ . . . I had a different lightness . . . moving toward the south; I felt almost free inside and outside myself.

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2.2.8  Anfez I also had the opportunity to interview Enrico Zorzato, Viviana’s brother. He was forty-seven years old at the time of the interview, so he was born in 1968. He recalled how climbs and descents had had “a metaphysical meaning” in his life. When he was young and living in Asmara, there was a climb known as Abraha Zucchini. The first name was derived from that of a well-known Eritrean man living in the street, and the second name was an Italian one. He explained: “For each climb/descent, you can’t see what there is behind.” When we began to talk about Italian colonialism, he introduced the world of myth into the conversation. “I remember that fantastic world that my father talked about,” he told me, adding, “A world made through epic endeavors. You can tell a child what you want, but the child can perceive tragedies.” His father spent a lot of time outside the house because of his work as a driver and considered himself a “white African.” Enrico’s experience of going back home to Eritrea was similar to that of his father, who returned home at the end of colonial rule and before the onset of the civil war to separate from Ethiopia. In fact, when Enrico returned home to Eritrea, the world that he had known was gone. This sense of loss and disorientation—albeit from two different perspectives in Italy and Eritrea—characterized the lives of father and son. His father continued to look for ghosts in the years after his arrival in Italy. Conversely, when Enrico had the opportunity to return to Eritrea, he decided to use his memory in a different way. There is no place in the world where there is not an Eritrean; an Eritrean community. There are many more Eritreans abroad than in Eritrea. Nowadays in Eritrea, I think there will be a few million inhabitants, but maybe ten billion or more are abroad and [belong to the] second generation. So, I did not find the people I had left behind, but I found the places that I had to recompose in my memory and to combine their presence in my remembering. I maintained in my memory streets and avenues. This [happened] even when I travelled across the city and saw how things had changed. What remained in my mind was a fossil.

He retained these memories as well as those about life in Italy. When we talked about subjectivity, he expressed the opinion that we needed to introduce a new category. “I belong to the category of ‘fifty–fifty,’ mulattos, creoles, or half-bloods.” This connotation was initially associated with

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“a strong sense of bewilderment.” Starting from this state, “people try to elaborate an identity as a half-blood using a certain language and specific gestures which are a mixture of both cultural contexts. So, we will never be neither white nor black.” He laughed as he said this, and his laughter was followed by silence so that the meaning of this statement remained ambiguous for me; it was something I understood only outside of my body, marked on other bodies through intersubjectivity. But it was also something that originated in the whiteness that I too embodied. He added that Italian people do not understand what it means to be half-and-half in terms of culture: “It is a sort of hybridity.” Specifically, in the Eritrean language, the word anfez means “half-­ blood.” Enrico explained that this word belongs to an Eritrean imaginary. In Italian, it does not make sense because “the middle-Italian need to be sure and know if you are Eritrean or Italian.” Thus, it is not possible to be “half and half.” He added, “They can understand this from a physiological point of view, not from a cultural one.” This is because, “the black Italian does not exist; nor does the white African, such as my father.” Sonia deployed the same term but from a different perspective. Understanding this usage requires taking a step back in time to Bologna. Since 1974, which is the date of the first international Eritrean festival that took place in the Emilia region in central Italy, this city has been one of the most important sites for the Eritrean diaspora. There have been several changes within the Eritrean community over the past four decades. For example, as in other parts of Italy, there is currently a heterogeneous section of the community that is opposed to Isaias Afewerki’s regime and another group that supports the Eritrean dictatorship. Three generations of Eritreans have been born in and lived in Bologna. Sonia belongs to the last generation. She was thirty-five years old at the time of the interview, so she was born in 1980. Asmara is the city of her “father and family,” whereas her mother is Italian. Keren is her paternal grandmother’s place of origin. She visited the country just once. When she got off the plane, she felt “a strong sense of belonging.” Her memory of Eritrean history is connected to some documentaries on video that were carefully hidden by her parents. These documentaries were about the war actions of the Eritrean Liberation Front. When we talked about colonialism, Sonia ascribed responsibility for the violence as well as what is happening in the Mediterranean to Italy. She told me: “there is a legacy of the colonial period that is used by Italian institutions.” This statement referred to the relationship between the

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colonial past and discriminatory stereotypes of black people used in the public space. We then shifted from talking about colonialism to discussing the postcolonial condition, focusing on her subjectivity. Throughout her life, her identity has oscillated between two cultural poles: Italy and Eritrea. She defined herself as meticcia (mestizia) and mulatto. She explained further: “This is not linked to the cultural field but to the aesthetic one; to the color of your skin.” “I am anfez.” In her opinion there is no Italian word that can convey the meaning of the term. She elaborated on her understanding of the word as follows: We can say that all of this is caused by the fact of my fluctuating position, of [how I am] feeling myself. . . My Eritrean part never made me feel a stranger within the community; my Italian part many times. . . I placed myself near and at the same time I distanced myself progressively from feeling Italian through my feeling [of being] Eritrean. As I said to you, it has never been a question of being half and half or of feeling partially one part and partially the other part: at the same time you feel yourself; you feel total and complete; both one part and the other.

At the end of the interview, she emphasized that she was very proud of her identity: “It has many facets, and I would like to be more within my Eritrean part.” 2.2.9  Hamar and the Italian Generation I met Raha in a square in Padua. After our initial introductions, we decide to drink something together in a bar not far from the River Brenta. The interview began with the following statement that she made: “I am part of the Italian generation. I studied Italian at home and have an accounting degree.” She was born in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 1965 and spent her childhood there. She was married to an Eritrean man who, she explained, “thought like a Somali.” Accordingly, the woman “has to be home to take care of the family.” After a pause, she continued, saying, “My generation is different. My generation thinks as European people because we studied with Italians.” The dialogue centered on a pivotal gender-related question, in which she positioned her identity between two focal areas: Europe and Somalia. Italy was part of the first category. Before she lost her first child during pregnancy, she decided to move to Italy in 1985 for medical treatment. In 1986 she gave birth to her son, Davide,

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and came back home to Somalia. “I had seen what the situation was like. . .There was a civil war and a dictatorship under Siad Barre . . . there was no electricity and food,” she explained. Hence, Raha decided to move to Italy. She settled in Padua and embarked on a new relationship with an Italian man with whom she had another child, her daughter, Sofia. To bring out the salience of belonging to a diasporic community, she introduced the world hamar. In the Somali language, the term means a lighter skin color. She said: It means. . . there are people. . . In Somalia, we have dark and white people: white people came from outside the country as migrants; they were born there, grew up there. . . They are Somalis like we are, but they are white, they are whiter than us. This is the reason why we are different from other African people. Somalia is mestizia, it is not pure African such as those people in Congo. . . Those people are pure African. . . On the contrary, we, as well as [the people] in Sudan . . . we are part Arabs. . . We are a mixture.

Raha used the term hamar in our conversation to explain the difference between Italy and Somalia. As I have previously pointed out, gender and sex were especially salient factors. In particular, the fact that Raha is whiter than other Somalis influenced her positionality. She criticized the subjection of women in Somalia: “The woman has to stay at home; she can only go out with her mother.” She referred also to strictures on dress imposed on women as well as to the violence that they endure along with the experience of psychological inferiorization. At the same time, hamar conveys movement toward freedom. The lighter skin color represents a positionality within Europe of those who were not born in Europe but who live on the continent and have adopted European values. Our final dialogue powerfully conveyed how hamar is deployed to affirm a diasporic identity in movement. G: R: G: R: G: R:

Could you please say something more about hamar. Hamar means. . . they were from Mogadishu. Ah, those people coming from Mogadishu. They were not born there. I see. They were. . . are. . . This world means they were not only born.

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Raha’s use of the words “not only born” was intended to convey the fact that hamars are also the descendants of people in diaspora who were born in Mogadishu. When, at the end of the interview, I asked her a question about her identity; whether she feels Somali, Italian, or Paduan, she replied: “No, no, no, I am Italian. I am not Somali: I am Somali. . . Somali [she paused to reflect]. I also love Somalia, but at the same time. . . Sofia. . . I am Italian because I think like you. I don’t think like a Somali woman.” 2.2.10  The Egg’s Son: A Double Culture The voice of Michele Fassina is well-known to listeners of a local radio station in Padua. We recorded the interview at his home. Michele’s father was Italian, and he left Eritrea when he was thirteen years old. After some minutes of dialogue, he expressed his gratitude to the Italians who decided to remain in Eritrea, “such as my father and other people” for their entrepreneurship and craftsmanship—“not to the Italian government,” he emphasized. During the “68” movement he felt that he had a double culture that was simultaneously Eritrean and Italian. The new winds of change that buffeted him between hopes and contradictions served to remold his identity. “This revolution also concerned citizens like me of mixed race [meticci in Italian] with this double culture. . . an Eritrean part, because my mother is Eritrean and Italian for my father,” he declared. The movement fostered a change in his political vision and perceptions of colonialism, prompting him to reinvent his identity discursively, questioning his relationship with his father and, in a more metaphorical sense, with Italy the colonizer. The rebellion that was opposed to a certain view of the world led him to reflect on the times when he had been bullied because of his mixed race. As he commented: “it was a reaction against the Eritreans’ idea of thinking of themselves as pure.” A major part of our dialogue centered on his grandfather, a solder, who arrived in Eritrea at the end of the nineteenth century. There are parallels between what is unfolding right now in Europe and what transpired during that period. Numerous families sent out one or more members to foreign lands to generate income. His father’s family comprised nineteen members and his grandfather, who was railroader, was unable to take care of all of his daughters and sons. Hence, at the age of sixteen, his father left home for Libya, initially working as a volunteer. He was a painter, at the time. After the outbreak of war with Ethiopia, he was recruited by the air

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force and sent to fight. His plane was attacked and crashed. “Farmers saved my father, giving him shelter in a baobab tree, hiding him in the trunk and giving him eggs to eat. That is why I say I am the egg’s son.” I comment on this story, observing that he has a hybrid identity. “Yes, there are two words in Eritrean. . . darala, which is offensive and means bastard, and anfez.” However, Michele preferred to use the term mixed race (meticcio) to define his position, explaining his choice as follows: Mixed race is a. . . an in-between situation. . . It is very difficult because you will be discriminated against from both sides: by Italians because you are like a “second class” citizen . . . and by Eritreans because they are jealous. . . because you are luckier than others. . . because, perhaps, your father has a car. These things give you the awareness of being neither Italian nor Eritrean. . . You have a position in between that absorbs both cultures. It is a condition of privilege because you have a double culture.

2.3   Outside the European Map In this chapter on diasporic identity, I have introduced a theoretical framework, indicating my intention to focus on what I have called “revealing movements.” Clearly, I selected the interviews and excerpts from transcripts for inclusion in this chapter to achieve my purpose. There were three stages of the selection process. The first entailed choosing some stories that I considered representative of “being-in-diaspora.” The second was extracting some fragments of memory, that is, portions of some of the transcripts that related to subjective life itineraries and topics, such as the journey, memories of colonialism, and positionality within both Africa and Europe. The last stage entailed the assemblage of these coherent memories into a wider context, which is the theoretical framework that I outlined in the first part of this chapter, and which has to be considered applicable to individual memories. In fact, each memory elaborated in diaspora is also part of an intersubjective process. This important topic requires further clarification. Intersubjective is central in the transmission of memory. It influences how individuals position themselves as well as define their positionality in relation to their lived social contexts, temporalities (past, present, or future), and ways of connecting with other people (Italians, Somalis, mixed-race individuals, etc.) or with ideas to which they can or cannot ascribe (e.g., Italianness, Europeanness, and Blackness). All of these

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dimensions of identity, conceived as mobile and floating rather than as unique and fixed, hinge on the act of self-recognition. This process is very similar to that described by Stuart Hall. There is also some resonance with Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1991). However, a key difference is that the cases considered here are not about nationalist groups within a state. All of the individuals who participated in this research project and were interviewed are in fact displaced and dislocated between mythical, real, or idealized roots in Africa and their current lives in Europe. Intersubjectivity could also be questioned from another perspective; one relating to the diasporic context as the material conditions experienced by thousands of people and its representation in daily conversations. In all likelihood, language is the most important organized field of social memory (Middleton and Edwards 1990). Thus, the introduction of a new lexicon with terms inherited from the colonial period, or elaborated by people outside the place of origin, which is also the country of mythical roots, can be discerned. This terminology is unknown to most, and some of the words and definitions that are applied, in all of the constructions of identity considered in this chapter, could be interpreted as having contradictory and incoherent meanings based on a superficial or inattentive inspection. However, from a diasporic perspective, this language is the tool through which each positionality in diaspora is elaborated. More generally, it offers insights into the worlds and knowledges that are crossing borders and frontiers as well as the historical hiatus and the notion of a unique temporality. By “crossing,” I do not mean that this gaze does not cover boundaries (physical, temporal, spatial, etc.); rather, it reveals another conception and perception of the world starting from the self; from a way of being in between (Bhabha 1994). In light of these reflections, I would now like to comment on and discuss the diasporic identities that emerged during the oral interviews selected for consideration in this chapter. First, all of them depicted and were part of an unofficial geography of the world; one that is based on emotions. This topic is examined in Chap. 5. Here, I suggest that the elaboration of a diasporic language is characterized by feelings that are closely connected with the condition of being-in-diaspora. While its meanings may appear ambiguous and ambivalent, it actually expresses a positioning that is not unique and exclusive to Europe. This is a positioning between the ideas of loss and hope, melancholia and rage. The geography of emotions anticipates as well as follows the language of the diaspora, given that it is simultaneously the condition for and the

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consequence of an individual and collective state both there and here, in the Horn of Africa and in Europe. Diasporic identities offer the opportunity to focus on the relationship between social, physical, geopolitical, and economic positionalities and the language used to define the self. For instance, two interviewees used the metaphor of the egg to talk about their identities. Angela was born in Somalia to Somali parents. By contrast, Michele is the son of an Italian soldier and an Eritrean woman. In spite of these differences, the egg serves as a powerful metaphorical tool for defining their identity. In Angela’s case, it encloses internal dualities, such as being black and white and being a woman in Somalia and in Italy; dualities that contribute to a unique identity. However, in Michele’s case, the egg is the food that sustains the father and keeps him alive. At the same time, his declaration that he is the son of the egg reveals his recognition that he was born from the encounter between his father, an Italian colonizer, and the Eritrean (colonized) people, who helped him. He produces a meta-­ narration that is able to bypass categories without denying the roles of the characters in his story. In particular, the egg is the point of connection, a tool and a metaphor for the encounter between different cultures, societies, genders, and political positionalities. Being “the son of the egg” appears to signify an important variant of identity in relation to what has been historically categorized as a mixed race. There is neither a negative connotation associated with being the offspring of an Italian man and an Eritrean woman nor the idea of a positionality that is in the middle from the perspectives of skin color, culture, gender, and so forth. The egg is not the outcome of the average; it is a metaphorical tool for reinventing a positionality outside of the nomenclature offered by historical narratives. Nuurta’s revealing movement is a different one entailing her use of temporalities to duplicate the space between Italy and Somalia. She stated that in her mind, there are two Somalias and two Italys. In her memory, she associates the distinction relating to the imaginary between northern and southern Italy to the Somalia of her departure—which she remembers as positive—and contemporary Somalia, where civil war is wiping out the entire population. Her identity is simultaneously connected to Somalia and Italy. She used the preposition “in” to define a state in place that has reverberations in terms of her memory. The Somalia of her past is evidently connected to northern Italy. At the same time, her duplication of the two countries reveals the association in her mind between the civil war in Mogadishu and violence in southern Italy. Thus, a dual notion of the homeland—between peace and war—is evidently embodied in her identity.

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Medhin elaborates a contrasting idea of herself. Her subjectivity does not exclude other people who belong to the second generation. In a certain way, she defines a place where an individual who does not recognize himself or herself with reference to the terms and categories applied in the order of discourse can find a place. Accordingly, in response to my question about her positionality, she replied that her place is “in the middle-­ Earth where all of us are in.” This place is, in fact, the “never land.” Following its nomination, it becomes real and opens up to accommodate subjects outside the nomenclature of the language, in terms of gender, color, race, class, and so forth. She starts from this point to reflect on visibility. There are various ways of leaving never land in terms of her representation of herself. Here, Spivak’s theorization of strategic essentialism seems pertinent for interpreting Medhin’s views, given her invention of a symbolic and metaphorical space for constructing her identity and those of all individuals who are considered out of place according to prevailing norms and categories. The narrative artifice that she develops is intended to include and not exclude subjectivities. The narratives on the Self, in this sense, are important for crossing epistemological barriers about the representation and identification. Thus, there are many positionalities that can be occupied in relation to notions of being Italian, Eritrean, or Somali. For Winta, the condition of being in Italy is a temporary state of belonging to an imagined community. Her thoughts are projected into a possible future in Eritrea. In particular, this part of an emotional geography is signified by an embodiment: her mind is in Italy and her heart is in Eritrea. By contrast, Sara explains that how she thinks of herself has changed over the course of her life. Earlier, she was totally Italian. Now, she would like to be Eritrean. It is important to point out that this condition is without an imagined place, as she observes that “I don’t know exactly what my position is.” Helen is happy being Italian. However, if she had the opportunity to choose between Italy and Eritrea, she would not hesitate in her choice. Winta, Sara, and Helen show how there are many ways to be both Italian and Eritrean. Evidently, there are other positionalities that are located outside of the map. The one relating to the Italian missione, Nino Ratti/Malzerri, is particularly evocative. He changed his surname and only found his family roots with his mother after his arrival in Italy. Following his positionality in Somalia as an Italian missione, he was initially a black youth in Italy, finding his way of being only during the “68” movement. His floating

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identity changed after his father legally recognized him: it appears to be unstable to requests coming from outside, such as that by the bank employee. He could be Cuban, Jamaican, and Brazilian too. Being “Italian with an African pulse” seems, in his case, to offer a way of affirming a strategic relationality with the norm, with whiteness and power. Enrico and Viviana provide two more interesting narratives. That of Enrico reveals that there are other words, such as anfez, that define the condition of individuals who are, for some reason, connected with the colonial past. To be anfez is not the same thing as being of mixed race; rather, it entails an internal gaze and defines an in-between condition. In her story, Viviana points out how difficult it is to elaborate a memory of colonialism for subjects who are the offspring of Italian soldiers. In fact, she recognizes her Eritrean positionality without having the same feelings for her Italian one. Raha’s positionality is the reverse of Viviana’s, or appears to be so. Her use of the term hamar offers a radically different perspective. As she asserted at a certain point in the interview, being hamar does not mean being exclusively Italian; it means being aware of being Somali and born to Italians or other colonizers. A skin color that is lighter than that of other Somalis reveals the possibility—real or theoretical—of accessing power, which should be accessible—according to the order of discourse—only to white people.

Bibliography Ahmed, S., Castaneda, C., Frotier, A. M., & Sheller, M. (2003). Introduction. In S.  Ahmed, C.  Castaneda, A.  M. Frotier, & M.  Sheller (Eds.), Uprooting/ Regrounds: Questions of Home and Migration (pp. 1–19). New York: Berg. Alexander, C. (2009). Stuart Hall and ‘Race’. Cultural Studies, 23, 457–482. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York and London: Verso. Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderland/La Frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Appadurai, A. (1994). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In P.  Williams & J.  Scott (Eds.), Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Appadurai, A. (2006). Fear of Small Numbers. An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke University Press. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature. London/New York: Routledge.

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Bedhad, A. (2005). A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press. Bhabha, K. H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bloch, M. (1949). Apologie de l’histoire ou métier d’historien. Paris: Armand Colin. Clifford, J. (1997). Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, J. (2005). Diasporas. In A. Abbas & N. Erni (Eds.), Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Antology (pp. 524–558). Malen: Blackwell Publishing. Dutta-Bergman, M., & Pal, M. (2005). The Negotiation of U.S.  Advertising among Bengali Immigrants: A Journey in Hybridity. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(4), 317–335. Farinelli, F. (2009). La crisi della ragione cartografica. Torino: Einaudi. Foucault, M. (1972 [1969]). Archeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilroy, P. (2000). Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hall, S. (1967). The Young Englanders. London: Community Relations Commision. Hall, S. (1970). Black Britons. Community, 1, 3–5. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding and Deconding. In S.  Hall & B.  Gieben (Eds.), Formations of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press/The Open University. Hall, S. (1986a). Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 5–27. Hall, S. (1986b). The Problem of Ideology. Marxism without Guarantees. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 28–44. Hall, S. (1987). Minimal Selves. In Identity: The Real Me. London: ICA Documents. Hall, S. (1990). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hall, S. (1996). New Ethnicities. In Hall, S., New Ethnicities’ Black Film, British Cinema, London: ICA Documents 7. Hall, S., Cricter, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., & Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis. Mugging, the State, and Low and Order. London: Macmillan Press. Liao, P. H. (2005). Introduction. In A. Abbas & N. Erni (Eds.), Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Antology (pp. 501–510). Malen: Blackwell Publishing. Middleton, D., & Edwards, D. (Eds.). (1990). Collective Remembering. London: Sage. Mishra, V. (2017). Writing Indenture History Through Testimonios and Oral Narratives. In S.  R. Hegde & A.  Kumar (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora (pp. 39–50). New York: Routledge.

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Peters, J. (1999). Exile, Nomadism and Diaspora. In N. Naficy (Ed.), Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and Politics of Place (pp. 17–41). New York: Routledge. Proglio, G. (2020). Conceptualizing Diasporic Memory: Temporalities and the Geography of Emotions in Eritreans’ Oral Tales. In L. Passerini, M. Trakilović, & G. Proglio (Eds.), The Mobility of Memory. Migrations and Diasporas Across European Borders (pp. 131–151). New York: Berghahn. Rushdie, S. (1982, July 3). The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance. Times. Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Diaspora, 1(1), 83–99. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. Sayad, A. (1999). La double assence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré. Paris: Seuil. Spivak, G.  C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In L.  Grossberg & C.  Nelson (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Houndmills: Macmillan. Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Trin-Minh, H. (1990). Woman, Natinve, Other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Walker, A. (1984). In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. London: The Women’s Press. Werbner, P. (2004). Theorising Complex Diasporas: Purity and Hybridity in the South Asian Public Sphere in Britain. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(5), 896–911.

Filmography Asmarina, by Medhin Paolos. And Alan Maglio, 2015 (69 min). Riso Amaro, by Giuseppe De Santis, 1949 (108 min).

CHAPTER 3

Postcolonial Memories of Colonialism

This chapter presents an analysis of memories of colonialism(s) conveyed in oral tales that were collected during interviews. As Nicola Labanca has exhaustively explicated in Oltremare (2002), each occupation of a colony had a different ending. Antonio Morone, who has worked extensively on this topic, stated: In the period between the occupation of colonies and [the] independence of the last Italian colony, political and institutional transformations combined with a process of memory repression concerning the historical condition of colonialism and rewriting of the past in positive and sweeten[ed] terms. (Morone 2016)

Here, I argue that Italy’s colonial memories have not been repressed (rimosso in Italian) (see Proglio 2018 for an explanation). I propose to problematize the connection between colonialism and the postcolonial condition in varying ways while attempting to account for power relations of race, gender, color, and class. In a previous contribution, I proposed the concept of ellipsis as another interpretation of the legacies of colonialism within the public discourse (Proglio 2015). According to this theoretical framework, colonial memories were not repressed; rather, they remained active over a long period, commencing from the fall of colonialism and enduring through new migration flows within and across Italy. When migrants, first from Albania and later from Africa, arrived in Italy, the cultural heritage of colonialism was reactivated and inscribed on other bodies © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_3

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that were both white (East Europeans) and black (Africans and Asians). The subjectivization of these bodies was accomplished by extracting richness through the production of several overlapping genealogies of power relations (Mezzadra and Nielsen 2013). As Wekker (2016) and Stoler (2010, 2011, 2016) have proposed, the colonial archive is a tool that can provide important information on the relationships between power and subjects. In this chapter, I would like to theorize categories, stereotypes, and practices of domain-making elaborated during the colonial period that were continually re-signified and inscribed on the bodies of new Others. This approach yields insights into the reasons why new forms of racism are connected with the colonial past and serves to explicate how memory was reshaped for the purpose of imposing new forms of subjectivation. This topic will not, however, be analyzed in this section of this book. On the contrary, my intention is to focus on my interviewees’ memories of colonialism. This perspective along with an approach in which the historical gaze is shifted from the nation to the diaspora has enabled me to investigate and understand how colonialism features integrally in a reconsideration of black subjectivities coming from or connected to former Italian colonies in Africa. As noted in the introduction to this book, I elaborate this postcolonial view of the Italian past in the Horn of Africa in the context of intersubjectivity, namely memory exchanges that occurred between my interviewees and myself during interviews. It is important to declare two key points at the outset. This typology of memory was elaborated after the historical fact by those belonging to two or sometime three successive generations. The act of remembering the violence and systems of exploitation imposed by colonialism is therefore decontextualized from colonization and rooted in the social conditions of the postcolonial context in Italy/Europe. This decontextualization implies that oral memories, imaginaries, and representations are used to reshape the condition of being-in-diaspora through the heritage of the memories of those who experienced the violence of Italian colonialism. In this sense, I do not intend to attempt to determine whether these narratives are compatible with history as sequence of events, battles, laws. Instead, my investigation focuses on the role of tales in order to propose a positionality within Italy and to illuminate an enduring archive of resistance to colonialism (see Srivastava 2018), which was generated at the time of the invasion of the Horn of Africa. This archive remains operational in the denouncements of other forms of violence inflicted by Italian institutions and

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people who have inherited the experiences of colonialism. Oral memory is important for preserving the colonial archive, which belongs to those subjects who experienced, in first person, the violence of colonialism. In particular, as affirmed by several writers who have cultural ties to the Horn of Africa and now reside in Italy (Ghermandi 2007; Scego 2004; Ali Farah 2014), women were and continue to be the keepers of this archive and of the memories passed down from one generation to another through narratives and stories. Thus, the main goal of this chapter is to delineate Italy’s postcolonial condition through a mapping of memories of colonialism deployed in the field of intersubjectivity from the perspective of the diasporic archive.

3.1   Theoretical Framework This chapter pivots theoretically on the topic of the archive. One of the most incisive expositions on this topic is that of the historian and anthropologist, Ann Laura Stoler. In her works, she frames the archive as a theoretical object, drawing on the differing perspectives of Foucault and Derrida. In Along the Archival Grain, she conceptualizes physical archives “not simply [as] accounts of actions or records of what people thought happened” (Stoler 2009, p. 4). Having explained her focus, she returns, a few pages later, to the same topic, introducing the concept of the “archival form” comprising the principles and practices of colonial governance. This formula is comprehensive, encompassing “prose style, repetitive refrain, the arts of persuasion, affective strains that shape ‘rational’ response, categories of confidentiality and classification, and not least, genres of documentation.” (Stoler 2009, p.  20). Stoler is interested in studying the archive-as-process rather than the archive-as-things. This attention to the voluble and mobile use of records to impose power on lands and bodies is useful for analyzing political anxiety and other forms of pathological fear that are innate and intrinsic to the colonial domain. In Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times (2016), Stoler explores the colonial heritage in Europe. Her perspective is striking because she considers the colonial period as an experience that has direct consequences in the present. She states: I choose to avoid the artifice that makes the ‘cut’ between the colonial and postcolonial before asking how those temporalities are lived. I prefer ‘(post)colonial’ studies to emphasize a colonial ‘presence’ in its tangible and

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i­ntangible forms and to acknowledge that there are colonial ‘presents’—as those who work in Australia and the Americas would argue and those concerned with a Palestinian/Israeli context would contend. (Stoler 2016, 8)

Thus, the colonial era is not just a heritage; it continues to be operative in the present because of the close relationship that exists between the concept of an archive as a canon—a repository of properly colonial memories—and as a gaze through which the world is represented. In White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016), Gloria Wekker elaborates Edward Said’s (1978) concept of the cultural archive. She notes that for Said an archive is a “storehouse of a particular knowledge and structures of attitude and reference.” In her view, a “cultural archive” is located in many things: “in the way we think, do things, and look at the world, in what we find (sexually) attractive, in how our affective and rational economies are organized and intertwined” (Wekker 2016, 19). She concurs with Stoler that a cultural archive is “a repository of memory (Stoler 2009, 49) in the heads and hearts of people in the metropole, but its content is also silently cemented in policies, in organizational rules, in popular and sexual culture, and in common sense everyday knowledge” (Wekker 2016, 18). Therefore, a colonial archive can be theorized as a repository of memories, practices, and imaginaries through which many subjectivities represent the world. This kind of device is essential for imposing hegemonies and power. Focusing only on this part of the question, we could say that the subaltern could not speak yesterday and still cannot speak today (Spivak 1988). Spivak’s theorization certainly holds true in terms of producing another insight into the past. However, here it is important to specify in what contexts the subalterns are not allowed to speak as well as who are the present-day subalterns. It is very difficult to respond to these questions for several reasons. The first reason is that in her writing, Spivak intended a subaltern to be a brown woman in colonial Bengal during the period 1784–1883. A postcolonial interpretation of her paper could reveal other subaltern subjects confined at the margins within contemporary Europe. “At the margins” has a double meaning: physically, individuals who are thus situated are invisibilized or hyper-visibilized by the same gaze of society that considers “migrants” as inferior subjects because of their skin color, gender, place of origin, faith, or habits. Sandro Triulzi has reflected on how the memories of migrant people can be deployed to

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deconstruct the hegemonic narrative of the self and other. He makes the following statement: I will also suggest that the present reconfiguring of colonial memory in Italy, endorsing a sanitized ‘shared memory’ of the past, is confronted by a parallel displacement of memories in ex-Italian Africa, particularly Eritrea, which is calling for new prospects of partnership and joint agency with the ex-­ metropolis. (Triulzi 2006, 432)

In another contribution, Triulzi points out that it is “thanks to the high number of migrants in Italy, a part of them coming from former colonies and sometimes also former Italian colonies, that Italy faced its past” (Triulzi 2011, 3). His words convey a significant reflection: there is a close relationship between the “the lack of elaboration of the colonial past and racisms now mounting in Italy” (Triulzi 2011, 6). Taking this debate on memory of colonialism as my starting point, my intention is to focus on how memories of colonialism have been handed down the generations from mothers to daughters and sons. Applying this perspective, I aim to analyze memory without attempting to compare the transmitted memory with factual events. My goal is to understand how memories of colonialism can be deployed to interpret racism and prejudice that are experienced in the postcolonial context. In other words, I am interested in mapping the strategic deployment of memories of colonialism by those subjects who experience discrimination. Accordingly, I will divide this chapter into two parts. The first part presents oral stories in which colonialism is used to reshape or interpret the postcolonial condition. The second part examines the specific features of this memory and its role in positioning the interviewee and his or her subjectivity in Italy/Europe.

3.2   Remembering the Law that Discriminated Against People of Mixed Races I begin this section by returning to my exchange with Angela/Malaika, who was introduced in Chap. 2 of this book. She mentioned the Italian colonial period several times during our conversation. In particular, after talking about the Juba Hotel, which, as I earlier noted, was a place of white privilege, she began to speak about the Italian “vice,” namely the sexual conquest of Somali women:

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In short [she laughs], they want to get beautiful women . . . just beautiful women, because Somali women are recognized as beautiful, eh . . . all over the world . . . and afterwards, they are abandoned because unfortunately there was a strong . . . a strong, Italian racial law . . . during the Fascist period, there was a law saying ‘you must couple with your . . . to vent your animalistic instincts [she laughs] . . . but you don’t have to recognize the children as yours; don’t get married.’ And if by chance you give him [the child] a name . . . because there was the church taking care of those people; a multitude of abandoned children who lived in the colleges . . . if you recognize them, you don’t give them your real name.

She was recalling a specific act, the Royal Law n. 880, which was enacted on April 19, 1937. Several scholars and historians have analyzed many aspects of this law, which introduced, for the first time, discrimination on the basis of race. As pointed out by Fabio Levi in a debate on the persecution of Jews in Italy, since the inception of Fascism, active attempts to strike this community had been ongoing in Italy (Levi 2009). Although this continuity and red thread across the regime can be traced to the late nineteenth century, 1937 is a key date. Measures against individuals of mixed race in the colonies had been introduced against the Jews during the previous year. Their goal was to avoid the contamination of the Italian race around which Fascism had constructed its propaganda and consolidated consensus, and the Ethiopian Other, belonging to the category of Negros and Africans (Deplano 2015). Several works have investigated the impacts of this law, focusing on military issues (Labanca 2002), genealogies of race (Poidimani 2009), and production of genealogies of race (Giuliani 2018). According to Angela/Malaika, Italian colonialism left behind “positive and negative things” in Somalia. This statement was preceded by her recounting of the story of her father, who decided to remain in the Horn of Africa after the fall of colonialism and during the AFIS period. Her opinion about colonialism was shaped by her mixed race family origins and by the decision of her father to remain in Africa. She said: “During the AFIS period, you know, a lot of infrastructure was built: schools, bridges, aqueducts.” This narrative seems to evoke and re-signify the myth of the “good Italian in Africa” (Del Boca 2005) as the builder and bearer of civilization from a diasporic perspective. “There were many Italians working there with their families. They helped one another and had good relations with the Somali people.” This statement was immediately followed by an

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observation that provided a counterbalance: “There was a sort of creeping racism . . . indeed, it was not so creeping. . . . This aspect, for me, is the outcome of colonialism.” She remembered experiencing this prejudice at the school she attended; an institute managed by nuns. G: What happened during your educational path? A/M: Many teachers had this explicit racism against Somalis, and Italo-­ Somali people in particular, because they considered them an inferior race. Italo-Somali people were children of Italians who decided to abandon them . . . many of them lived in the college. G: I understand. . . A/M: There were many rebellions . . . my sister, for example, was combative. . . G: Was it difficult to be Italo-Somali? A/M: Yes, because your identity was basically not accepted . . . because Italians considered us an inferior race, because we were bastardized from our black blood, and because this racist attitude was transmitted from parents to children. Parents taught this attitude to their children. About the Somali part, they said to us ‘you are bastards.’ The term used by Somali people is uaele uaele, which literally means ‘bastard.’ I asked her about the meaning of this word uaele because I wanted to understand whether it has other hidden meanings. “It means that you are not pure,” she explained to me. She recalled being called this by a girl in front of the teacher. Although this girl was older and bigger than her, she decided to teach her a lesson and to face her after school. She called an Italo-Somali friend who was strong enough to tackle this girl. In her recollection, she described the Italo-Somali group as a tribe, a coalition against racism. Her recollection then switched to the postcolonial context in Italy, where she moved to with her sister at the age of eighteen. Her first impression was connected to skin color. “Oh, here there are all white faces [she laughed]. Where is the black color?” This question prompted her to reflect on her positionality as an Italo-Somali woman in Italy. “It was the beginning of September, so people were tanned . . . but they were white, so, I said, ‘oh my God, they are all white!’ ” On the few occasions when she met “colored people,” “they seemed very tanned; they seemed mixed, I mean.” She would ask such individuals, in a hushed tone “sorry, are you

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of mixed race?” Angela/Malaika then spoke about the new positionality that was imposed on her in Italy: because mixed race (meticcio in Italian) is the term that was given to us; a term given by the Italians, which was improper because the mix between black and white has always been called mulatto but the mulatto is really the Southern American . . . South African . . . mulatto is a mix between white and the black . . . and since we, as people of the Horn of Africa, are not really black–black, the term meticcio was coined because, you know, the half-breed is the intersection between . . . who are mixed eh . . . they are the intersections between . . . between . . . East and far-East. . . .

While listening to her, I had the impression that she realized that the rationale for the use of this terminology was weak. Her narrative conveyed a sort of self-awareness. She continued, explaining that meticcio comes from the French world métis. Thus, she was attributing a specific connotation to postcolonial subjects in relation to the typology of colonization. She confirmed this, saying, “in Italy the term used was mulatto.” A/M: There were very few. I arrived at the end of 1975. We went to these people and asked if they were meticcios, and instead they [said they] were Italians (they said this laughing). In Italy, we approached women more than men. G: Of course I understand. A/M: Excuse me, madam, what is a meticcio? What does it mean? We were the first ones for which we were mostly well accepted, but there were already derogatory terms used. The term negro or negretta [little negro woman] was used; it was what they called us. It was not as derogatory as today. They said ‘oh, look, a negretta is arriving’ [she laughs].

3.2.1  The Eaters of Cows Nuurta, who was introduced in a previous chapter, is a friend of Angela/ Malaika. We talked about Italian colonialism with reference to her past experiences. Her high school thesis centered on the role of Italian colonialism in Somalia. She told me, “Truly, it has made me laugh a little.” I did not immediately understand what she meant. Was this way of

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presenting the collective memory of a tragic past as a strategy of some sort? In my view, to laugh is a sign of a violence that has left an indelible trace in the narrative of the Italian occupation. This happened during my interview with Angela/Malaika, who laughed during the most sensitive parts of the interview in which violence against women was the main topic of discussion. When Nuurta articulated this sentence, my immediate impression was that there was nothing to laugh about at all and that this action was symptomatic of something that had not been digested and deconstructed; something that remains in the public and collective consciousness in Somalia and abroad in the diaspora. My intuitive impression was confirmed in the second part of the interview when Nuurta used an image to explain the difference between Italian and English colonialism. “An old man in Somalia said to me, ‘are you from Italy? Do you know what happened?’ ” She replied affirmatively to this question, telling him that she was living in Milano at the time. “English people”—the old man continued—“went into the woods and took camels and cows. They took them in groups without asking anyone. When English people gave up Mogadishu to the Italians, something changed. Italians didn’t take things by force; they asked permission.” At the end of this anecdote, she explained to me that she did not agree with the old man: in her opinion, it is not possible to differentiate between colonialisms. To render visible her idea of invasion by other nations, she evoked an image that she conceived as being connected to slavery; that of a white man carried on the shoulders and back of black man. She then affirmed that “It made no difference whether one [the white man] was Italian or English.” This metaphor could well be applied to black people, and to an entire country that was brought to its knees, figuratively, through European expansionism. Speaking of the AFIS period, she recalled that a lot of people and many newspapers discussed the important role of Europeans, especially the Italians and the British, in leading Somalia to independence through the design and implementation of infrastructure, such as streets, bridges, and hospitals. However, at a certain point in the conversation, she made the following statement: “I have never seen anything they built.” I believe that her intention in making this declaration was to assert that in reality, the postcolonial state afforded another opportunity for Europeans to acquire a grip on the country following the violence inflicted during the colonial period.

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3.2.2  Are You of Mixed Race? “It was a cowardly [type of] colonialism.” This was Medhin’s opening statement on Italy’s invasion of Eritrea. She explained that history is replete with similar situations, and that all colonialisms “stormed a place” in pursuit of specific interests and benefits. “But there is no respect . . . without audacity to talk about what happened,” she continued. In her opinion, although many years have passed since that moment, there remains an inadequate understanding of what colonialism actually entailed and its implications for Italian society. At the same time, as Medhin subsequently clarified, a close connection between colonialism and what is happening now in Eritrea is not perceptible because of several events that occurred in the interlude. She observed that if the Italian silence regarding colonialism was associated with cowardice, then “invisibility” was “a characteristic feature of the postcolonial condition.” The reason for her use of this term was once again linked to memories of colonialism: “No one has heard about that . . . fable, only fables.” She reflected that this way of approaching the legacy of that period produces two different responses: on the one hand, there is the public notion that Italy did not inflict much damage in the Horn of Africa, and on the other hand, a romantic sentiment prevails within the public sphere that relates to the loss of something beautiful and exotic. “History must be told,” she said to me. This is actually the only way of developing public understanding of what transpired in the past in Eritrea. At this point, I asked her about the legacy of colonialism in the postcolonial present. She replied as follows: Do we want to talk about the beautiful Abyssinian woman? [She laughs]. We faced criticism for using the song in our film. But the man you see in the film mentions it; it’s his memory. We wanted this passage in the film because it’s not a story[−based] film; it’s a film about people’s memories.

In her opinion, some traces of this memory remain in the public imaginary. She observed: “Nobody knows from where these images come, but they are present in our everyday lives.” This section of the interview revealed that there are many approaches that differ according to the subject’s gendered positionality and relations:

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M:

They say, ‘what a beautiful girl [you are]!. . Are you of mixed race? Are both of your parents African? G: Really? Do they ask you that? M: If you spend half an hour with me you will hear that sentence. G: Yes? M: This is a stereotype that also concerns African beauty, such as frizzy hair. Our dialogue then turned to how these images came into being in the present through the archives. Here, the concept of the archive, applied in a broad sense, comprises a collection of images, practices, and representations dealing with sentiments relating to beauty in the private and public spheres. At this point, Medhin suggested that the postcolonial condition is the place of arrival of narratives that originate in both Italian and Eritrean material and mental archives. 3.2.3  Black Eritrea “Coming to Eritrea, one can see colonialism”—this was the first sentence uttered by Winta when we began talking about the Italian presence in her country. Winta was born in Italy in 1995 and lived in Milan at the time of the interview. She continued: “It is aesthetically clear . . . I can say that without Italians many things were not possible . . . for instance, Asmara would not exist.” Like Angela/Malaika, she articulated the theme of Italians as builders, and, at a certain point, clarified that she was opposed to colonialism. “Eritrea always was on their knees.” Her use of “their” may have referred to two different subjects: Italian people at the time of the first conquest and Fascism, or Italy and the United Kingdom, indicating that her country was unable to achieve independence and freedom. “I have never seen my country free,” she added. When I asked her about the main images evoked by colonialism, her response was immediate: W: Mussolini, first! G: Okay. W: The cathedral. G: Okay. W: And the city of Asmara.

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Her responses indicated that she was subconsciously tracing an imaginary that spreads through the idea of body. First, Eritrea is conceived as a woman on her knees in front of other European nations. Next, when the topic of colonialism came up, she directly invoked Mussolini as the main image in a depiction of the Italian invasion and the cathedral as a place that represented Italianness. The city of Asmara invoked the entire colonial context. Italian colonialism appears to have been embodied within her as a hidden presence that surfaced during discussions about identity in relation to the public and private spheres. This feeling of an unwelcome presence in her memory evidently clashed with her Italian friends’ views and knowledge of the colonial period. She observed with concern and disappointment: “If you ask them where Eritrea is, they are not able to reply.” I asked her how this was possible in her view. She replied: “It is a question of ignorance, in my opinion.” W:

I noticed that when you explain things . . . the history, why people come here, why these migrant people behave in a certain way . . . they understand. They think . . . they see the African as that person who steals jobs because of what the television says. On the contrary, it is normal: there are good and bad Africans. G: I see. W: As there are good and bad Europeans. Racism is normal here. I cannot accept racism. I was born here and I speak Italian; I observe that people accept racism. G: Why? W: ‘Why are you talking Italian? Were you seriously born in Italy? Oh, God, you are speaking Italian fluently.’ I noticed in Italy people are like outdated; they are not ready to accept anyone foreign. In the UK, for instance, there are black people working in banks. In Italy they are all white males. G: What aspects enable them to define the foreign? W: Skin color; it is the skin color. G: Why? W: If I was white they would not question my Italianness. They are frightened of the difference, in my opinion.

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3.2.4  Being “Half and Half”; Being Sons of Italians: sciarmutte and asuk (the Lost People) Nino, who was introduced in Chap. 2, recounted a story that re-­connected Italy and Somalia through colonialism. His mother was Somali and for a long period, he was an Italian missione. The topic of colonialism provided an opportunity for us to talk about his identity. He stated: “We were sons of Italians” and then went on to say “but we were not completely Italians because we were also the sons of Somali people . . . we were half.” Following this declaration, he noted how he, like all other individuals in the same situation, would go to parties organized by the Home of Italians, a prestigious institution catering to all Italians in Somalia. During these festive occasions, he remembered drinking orange juice and receiving some balloons and candies or chocolate. All of these and objects, such as socks, pants, and shirts, were collected for them in Italy. On another occasion, he repeated, “We were sons of Italians”; “we were half.” Because of the recurrence of this sentence, I decided in that moment, to focus on it and to try and understand whether there were meanings attached to memories that were associated this repetitive statement. I asked him to clarify his thoughts and what he meant by “half and half.” His reply unveiled a genealogy of Otherness in Somalia: N:

G: N: G: N:

We were not recognized as [the] sons of Italians, by [the] Italians. In fact, we did not have passports. We were sons of Italians only if our fathers recognized us. Now I will say a word in the Somali language, which is sciarmutta . . . sciarmuttas are bitches. . . . We were the sons of those women. Okay, but not all Somali women. . . . We were considered in that way. . . that was an Italian ambiguity. Hmm. . . Italy never said sorry for that. . . thousands of children without any help. . . Some of them arrived in Italy and become alcoholics; they got lost in bad stories. Italy didn’t do anything. This is the mark of Italian history. . . Italy encourages them to believe in the myth of the great country; the country where one can eat every kind of food and wear shoes, with good pants, [go to the] cinema, [have] money. . . When I arrived in Italy, in Messina, I realized that was a dream. I was fourteen, and my eyes started to open.

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Okay, do you remember your thoughts about that period? I said to myself, “no, there are poor people in Italy too.” We called them asuk; [those] people who live on the street. To us, the white was the image of candor. In that way, I imagine people who are arriving now in Italy . . . migrants and refugees! There is a sort of ambiguity in using these two terms. . . . The Constitution requires that these people who are refugees be helped. On the contrary, the migrant’s journey is determined by economic flows. So, these are different questions. But in Italy, [the word] ‘migrant’ is usually used synonymously with ‘refugee.’

This part of the interview was striking. Starting with a symptom—the repetition of a sentence—I tried to investigate a hidden memory. I was not sure exactly what I would discover in this process. A genealogy of Otherness arose out of a simple question that was aimed at elucidating whether feelings or facts where connected to his way of expressing himself. By pointing to different typologies of Otherness—lost people, sciarmutte, and asuk— he brought together the colonial past and the postcolonial condition both in Italy and in Somalia. 3.2.5  Carne d’uomo Kaha Mohamed Aden was born in Mogadishu, in Somalia, in 1966. When she was twenty years old, she left the country because her family was subject to political persecution. Following her arrival in Pavia, she began to study economics at the university. During this period, she also began to write her first book, Fra-intendimenti (2010a), and to work as a cultural mediator within some migrant communities. I met her in Pavia at her home. We began our discussion with the first interview topic: Somalia’s colonial history. I introduced the topic as follows: “I would like to ask you if there is still a memory of colonialism within the diaspora.” She replied: “It is not an important thing, I guess.” I remember being surprised by this answer. She continued: “Yes, because I never heard anyone talking about that.” “For young people, Italy is Italy and wait . . . for adults . . . eh, adults . . . also in this case, the clan is central in the Somali view. And there is also a part of the colonial question in this view.” I did not reply to her, instead making an encouraging sound. She told me about a statue of legendary character in Somali history: “the creasy mullah” “He is [for

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Somalia] what Garibaldi is for Italy,” she said, adding that “Garibaldi; I never connected him with a clan.” Through this portrayal of overlapping figures, she was conveying her view that clannism is part of the ongoing problem of fragmentation of the Somali people’s sense of cultural and political belonging, making it impossible to elaborate a unique national identity. “Garibaldi belongs to Italy,” she stated and then began to talk about the Northern League, the racist party led by Umberto Bossi, which is anti-immigration. In her view, the League used the composition Va pensiero by Giuseppe Verdi, a famous musician who was active during the Risorgimento and the nation-building period, to oppose to the nation state and promote the North’s secession from the rest of Italy. There is a parallelism in this overlapping of memories between clans and xenophobia. According to Kaha, colonialisms are something of the past, “something close” she explained. “It was a sort of dominion based on the idea of making the Other an object . . . one could dominate and make what he wanted to of the Other . . . it is a monster which was not a theme of discussion at home . . . because the issue was faced and overcome.” The conversation now began to engage with the topic of colonialism being synonymous with paternalism. “Dad, in his book, wrote that . . . Somalia is not a Caribbean island, he said . . . in order to explain that it is not possible to say that we are ignoring our past.” (see Mohamed Aden Sheikh 2010b). The colonial past cannot be analyzed because—our dialogue continued— its memory is consciously elaborated. At this point, she started to tell me a story from Fra-intendimenti, which revealed how memory is reiterated in mistakes and misunderstandings: I went to the supermarket with my sisters. They ask me what I wanted to buy. I replied that I would like to buy a spice called cardamomo [cardamom]. And I said to them, okay, I will look for cardamomo because I am having some guests over in the afternoon, and I would like to offer them a cup of tea. We go together to the supermarket and I ask the shop girl about this spice . . . and she replies to me: “carne d’uomo” [Italian for ‘human being’s meat’]. She had in her mind the idea of me, of us, as something dangerous, inferior, and bestial. Elena and Daniela, who became friends of mine, asked me questions, for instance, they asked me what is cardamomo. They do not associate this word with my body and think ‘carne d’uomo.’

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3.2.6  Today’s Yesterday: People to Enslave Gabriele: Sara: Gabriele: Sara:

Let’s talk about colonialism: what is your idea about it? Actually, I am not so prepared for these discourses. Okay. . . Colonialism is always bad: this is my idea. From one angle, I question that. . . also some events that are occurring now in Asmara are caused by Italy. Anyway, my mom, my parents said that streets and many other things were made. . . In the beginning, there was the illusion of. . . then the division between whites and blacks. . . and some parts of the city were only for whites and others for blacks. I don’t want to use bad words, but. . . they conquered a land that did not belong to them. Gabriele: Okay, I see. . . Sara: Some of colonialism’s traces are evident in Eritrea. It is not difficult to see it from an architectonic point of view. But colonialism is not a positive thing. It could be positive for what colonialism left after its fall, but it is not a positive thing because . . . it is an imposition on a people. This was my dialogue with Sara who was introduced in Chap. 2 of this book. Given her mixed identity, she recalled the colonial past not only as a period of the past, entailing vicissitudes that are confined to history. She also shifted her gaze to the present, attempting to discover how Italian dominion during the Fascist era has influenced Asmara’s present. Following the initial illusion of benevolent actions performed by Italian armies and institutions, the Eritrean people realized that a new order was under construction. That order was based on a conception of human beings being unequal and on racialized divisions of space. According to these memories, Asmara, the symbol of Eritrean identity, was divided into two areas: the first was completely dedicated to the Italians, and the second, the rest, was for the native people. This regime of segregation has impacted in the collective memory of the Eritrean diaspora. At this point, our dialogue moved to the condition of black people positioned between Africa and Europe. The trajectory of the narrative shifted from colonialism to postcolonial Asmara, subsequently returning to the apartheid regime during the period of the Italian occupation and

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then shifting forward in time again to the condition of black people in Europe. G: Earlier, you talked about the division between whites and blacks. S: Yes, once there was this division. I don’t want to doubt that. . .Right now, with all of the circumstances happening with migration . . . perhaps, yes, there are some left . . . it’s been a while . . . but in my opinion, that stereotype of the African people is still present, right now; they are considered people to enslave. . . . There is an idea that . . . Italian people have to control and command Eritrean people because they were colonized.

3.2.7  Gaal, terroni, and polentoni During my stay in Padua, I met Faaduma and Mohamed, a mid-fifties couple from Somalia. When I arrived at their home, they were finishing their prayers for Ramadan and starting the iftar, which is the break of fasting. I introduced myself, and they led me into the living room. There was valuable furniture in the room, with paintings on the walls. The weather was an entry point into our dialogue: “hot . . . cold . . . we have travelled a lot, and we have never ever rediscovered Somalia’s climate. We have lost it.” This first exchange opened up a dialogue on the condition of being in between; between Somalia and Italy, which is explored further in Chap. 5 on emotional geography. When I introduced the topic of colonialism, Mohamed immediately made the following point: “I have not lived under colonialism. I cannot say anything; I can say something [based] only on hearsay.” After I acknowledged this point, he began to produce a dual narrative: on the one hand, “Somalis were proud of Italians,” he told me, and on the other hand, “Somali people were treated badly and because . . . they [the Italians] beat them . . . there was a place called Bufù; there, after these here [the Italians] arrived, when they saw someone with a high rank, they forced them to get down on the ground and they walked over them.” This image could have been evoked from an oral narrative to convey the conditions of subordination that were imposed on the Somali people. Faaduma immediately exclaimed, “That is not possible!” After this intervention, Mohamed again stated that his account was based on hearsay, as he was not in Mogadishu, or in Somalia, during the colonial era. He added: “This could

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be true, or not, but . . . in any case, Somalis were fond of Italians.” Faaduma opined: “There was no racism against white people . . . there was a difference in terms of religion . . . the white person was considered a person to be put under quarantine . . . that person was a Christian.” “A gaal” I affirmed. Gaal is a word used in countries in the Horn of Africa to define the condition of the white person. This word brought back for Faaduma a memory of colonialism, which she shared as follows: Yes, right, a gaal, but . . . some women married them . . . and they—after the initial period—became accustomed. We are hospitable people; Somalia is very hospitable. We treat a person who comes from abroad well. Some saw white people as Christians, as gaal; some loved them. Everyone had different ideas but always with some distance. We never ever looked at them in the wrong way, as happens here and now. . .

The discussion then turned to the condition of Italians in Somalia. Both Faaduma and Mohamed observed that Italians had business opportunities in Somalia, and many of them were also teaching in primary schools. “When I arrived here”—Mohamed moved ahead, connecting the colonial past with postcolonial conditions in Europe, in Italy—“all Italians were not Italian. . . there was racism against terroni and polentoni.” The two terms respectively convey stereotypes of migrants from the South that have been in use in Northern Italy since the 1950s and of Northerners as people who lack the Southerners’ joie de vivre. More generally, these words are indicative of an inner conflict within the country, which is a consequence of migration from poorer to richer regions. Faaduma then shared a reflection on the presence of racism in Somalia that is equivalent to that between northern and southern Italians. Her husband replied as follows: Yes, but I am talking about Italians. They are Europeans. . . their aim was to bring modernity. . . and them use words such as terrone and polentone. How will we ever do what? We were still primitive at that time because we were under colonialism. . . we were not progressive. . . but Italians were Europeans. . . and they said, “this is a terrone, this is a polentone.

3.2.8  Five Years of Fear I met Belay in a small bar in the outskirts of Padua. He was born in 1970 in Ethiopia and lived—until the moment of his departure—in Quarem, a

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small town in the countryside. He is Catholic Copt and deeply reveres the Holy Virgin. When he was twelve years old, there was a massive famine in Ethiopia and poverty increased exponentially. Because of the difficult situation in his country, he decided to move to Europe and to stay in Padua. When we started to talk about colonialism, his memory transported him to a specific moment of colonialism under the dominion of Rodolfo Graziani. He recalled: Yes, colonialism, five years of war. It was very bad because of the Graziani disaster. In my opinion, he was worse than Mussolini. There are documented testimonies: he decided who had to die. People were cut [in pieces], burned, and buried under the ground. Five very bad years.

At this point, he introduced another interesting frame from a popular imaginary. He evoked the statement made by Haïlé Sélassié, as an ambassador for the Ethiopian people, to the League of Nations in Geneva. “Sélassié told the League [members] that Italians were not allowed to conquer Ethiopia. He asked that Italians quit the country. So, this was not colonization. In fact, after five years, the Italians went home.” When I asked him if the Italians, after their departure, left something behind in Ethiopia, he replied as follows: Yes, they did something, for instance, [they made] streets. Yes, they made streets which exist up till today. Yes, they did something.

3.2.9  Patriotism and Corruption As noted in Chap. 2, Cadigia was one of my key contacts in Padua. Thanks to her, I had the opportunity to meet many individuals coming from the Horn of Africa in this northeastern Italian city. Cadigia was born in Padua in 1966. When she was three years old, her father decided to move with the entire family to Somalia, where he became the Minister of Health until his arrest after the 1969 coup. So, she lived in Mogadishu for four years up to 1970. After that time, she returned home with her mother while her father was in jail. When we began to talk about colonialism, it became apparent that her narrative was clearly influenced by her life story. She even connected her knowledge of colonialism to the condition of her father after his liberation from the Somali prison. She stated:

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So, my father. . . my father did not speak to us very much about his political experiences. I knew about them after, after his death [he died in 2005, ten years ago]. . . but I know he was part of the Somali Youth League. . . He was an object of admiration among many people. . . so, a patriot, we can say. He had democratic ideas; when he had the possibility. . . When we arrived in Italy, he was not allowed to vote because he became Italian citizen many years earlier. . . There was no authorization given by the Somali government for receiving Italian citizenship. . . and this authorization was slow to come because in Somalia, he would be considered a deserter who escaped from the regime. . . So, he did not have the possibility of voting, but he supported Democrazia Critiana’s ideas. . .

After this long preamble, she began to talk about colonialism: He knew very well the political context and told me that Italians made big things in Somalia but only a small part of the money coming from the Italian government reached the people in the form of new infrastructure, public works, and education programs. There was a high level of corruption, and a lot of that money went to politicians; both Italians and Somalis. He suffered a lot because of this situation. For instance, he talked to me about a highway built in the desert in the no man’s land, and this was the reason why a lot of money was used.

When I used the word “Fascism” to bring the discussion back to colonialism, she immediately pointed out that she did not know anything about this based on her father’s experience. He was born in 1929. . . He did not say anything to me about Fascism. I know, for instance, that he smoked a lot and he said that his addiction to smoking was the Americans’ fault. In fact, when he was 10 years old, some Americans offered him a cigarette. So, I don’t know about Fascism. . . in any case, he attended Italian schools and, consequently, he had the same point of view about them, the Italians. He had a good image of Italy.

3.2.10  Destruction, War, and Exploitation Abdirashid was a fifty-two-year old Somali man who was born and raised in Mogadishu. Bosazo Galcaio Garowe is the part of the city where he lived with his family. He described Mogadishu as “a city [that is] able to welcome all, [a] wonderful [city], where there is no discrimination based on race or skin color; a city able to welcome all!” We began our dialogue

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by talking about the history of Somalia. In his narrative, he portrayed the country as a body that was still “young and virgin” because of its independence in 1960. He mentioned some key moments, such as the period of the dictatorship and the invention of the national language, which was formalized on the basis of the Latin alphabet. While his political position was one of opposition against Siad Barre’s regime, he expressed pride regarding the dictator’s achievement of formalizing a national language. The national education prompted us to talk about his father who fought against Italy during the colonial era. My uncle was a teacher too, in 1932, and during the [time of the] racial laws imposed by Italy, they [teachers] held protests against the rule that forbade native people from studying after terza elementare [the third year of primary school education in Italy] and tried to open a school where students could learn up to the fifth year.

Clearly, his memory had been transmitted to him by members of his family. When I asked him a direct question about the colonial period, and about his knowledge about that time, his reply was very different. I was born hearing tales. What people said about colonial Somalia was that the occupation period lasted only a short time. . . that there was always a war [going on], such as in the northeastern part of the country where there was a protectorate known as Megestenia. At a certain point, Italy decided to break the agreement with the local sultan and started a five-year war. Italians arrived and destroyed all of the cities.

At this point, he started to recall all of the traces left behind by colonialism in Somalia, such as a sugar factory in Giohart, a cotton mill in Bahat, the village of Duca degli Abruzzi, and several other places where scents, rum, and many other products were manufactured. But the most important product was cotton. 3.2.11  Insabbiati, Slaves, and Masters As noted in Chap. 2, Viviana Zorzato’s father was an Italian soldier serving in Eritrea. He was an insabbiato, a term applied to those soldiers who decided to desert the army to start relationships with Ethiopian women.

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When Viviana arrived in Italy, she told me that she began to search for information about the history of “my country.” I collected documents on colonialism, such as books, reviews, and other publications. Those books talked about what was a part of myself, and I felt involved in such a terrible stories. . . that talked about Eritrean people, about black people as uncivilized persons to. . . be educated, corrected.

From that moment on, she said, she began to develop an interest in the colonial past as something that was connected to her father. She did not recognize her father’s story in those narratives: “I was saying to myself: ‘no, my father is not like that!’” At the same time, she reflected on the fact that her father arrived in Eritrea in 1936, whereas she was born only in 1964. Therefore, there was a long intervening period during which he could have accumulated memories of a hidden past. My question, at this point, was intended to elicit her knowledge about that period. Her reply revealed, once again, the elaboration of a collective memory that was inherited by new generations after the colonial period ended: I know, from what people said to me, that there were Italians and native people, and most of Italians had a girl as a housekeeper. . . others were simple collaborators with Italians. . . There was a sort of subjection to the idea of who was master and who was considered a lower person. And I felt the same there in Italy after a long time. . . I don’t want to say that all Italians were like that. . . but there was a sort of code that was inherited by people who had been in Africa before.

3.2.12  Mussolini’s Gas Omar was sixty-five years old at the time of his interview. He was living in the town of Rubano and had escaped from Somalia in the beginning of 1985. The political situation in his country was difficult and unstable because of fighting between clans. His memory of colonialism was transmitted to him through the tales told to him by his grandfathers and grandmothers. “Italian is responsible for what happened in Somalia where many people died. Many of them were thrown in the river: Italians killed many people.” By “Italian” he meant his conception of an Italian soldier during

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the colonial period. He continued, clarifying that Italian soldiers killed many persons during the time of colonialism: Many Somali people went to Ethiopia, during the 1935–1936 war in order to fight for the resistance. Many of them died and didn’t return home. Twenty-six persons from my family died for this reason. One day I found a letter at home about that war. . . I ask him to tell me about the contents of the letter. He replied as follows: “There it was written. . . we died, all of us, because of gas spread by Italian soldiers.”

He found something similar when he moved from Berlin, where he arrived after a long journey, to Rome because of a choice by the Somali Embassy. Because of racial discrimination, he remained stuck in his job in the field of transportation for nineteen years. On many occasions, his colleagues called him a “negro” or a “moor.” After the initial period, during which he felt nervous and responded aggressively, he decided to change his approach when dealing with this kind of discrimination: “I understood that they were like brothers to me, they were fine because from their perspective, they were not using a violent approach; they didn’t consider this as a problem.” 3.2.13  Examining the ascaro’s Heritage: Yesterday and Today Many different stories about the ascari (native soldiers in the Italian army) emerged during the interviews. Considered within a memory-centered framework that is aimed at acquiring insights into how postcolonial memory works in elaborating representations of yesterday and today, two of these stories, in particular, are interesting. The first story was narrated by Mohamed. He was born in 1965  in Mogadishu and lived in an Arab neighborhood. His grandparents were Yemenites: “They moved to Somalia during colonialism.” On another occasion, the idea of the colonization as occupation emerged from oral narratives. Mohamed was often sick and had a strong recollection of what happened at home. His grandfather was an ascaro during the time of Ethiopia’s conquest. He recalled his grandfather’s memory that “we died during the war. . . and no one said anything to us; no one asked to receive retirement benefits.” This memory of his grandfather brought up other images of colonialism that his father had inherited. Mohammed explained this as follows:

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My father attended school up to the third year. . . You know, they took hotheads in planes and threw them into the Indian Ocean. This happened in Libya too. They talk about the fact that they made streets. . . but who needed streets? They were needed so that their tanks and trucks could move. Italian colonialism was terrible! Every colonialism is terrible!

I then asked him to tell me about the relationship between colonialism and Ethiopian women. He responded as follows: “They were prostitutes just as those migrant women in Vicenza were for the American soldiers.” He was referring to the US military presence in Vicenza. His imaginary thus combined Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa on the one hand and Camp Ederle, a US military complex in Vicenza, on the other hand. A different story was narrated by Robert, whom I met in Bologna. He was born in Asmara in 1979, in a neighborhood known as “78.” He did not know the precise reason why this part of the capital city was called “78,” but the reason was supposedly attributed to something—like a firehouse—in relation to Italian colonization. He added: The major part of the Asmara region is like that. . . many places are named in the Italian language, such as Tiravolo, which is a place where war soldiers went to shoot during the war. . . So, the Italian word was tiro al volo, and this was changed in tiravolo.

He was happy to see his country gain independence in 1991. In 1997, he was a soldier in Asmara. His military service was supposed to last one and a half years, but then the war with Ethiopia erupted. In 2001, the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments signed the Algiers Agreements in Addis Ababa, but the Eritrean government decided to make it mandatory for all soldiers to remain in service. This difficult situation forced him to make the decision to leave his country in order to try to reach Europe. Along with three friends, all soldiers, he moved to Sudan, crossed the Sahara Desert, and arrived in Libya, where he boarded a ship to Italy. When I asked him to talk about colonialism in Eritrea, he immediately mentioned his father who was an ascaro: He told me many stories. . . you know. . . many stories. One story was about the difference between the Italian and English people. The former made streets . . . the latter began to kill and destroy everything. The Italians made our grandfathers slaves. . . but it is the same story today. Many people here don’t know anything about Italian colonialism, and English colonialism as

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well as. . . And right now, we Eritreans are in the same country that colonized us; a country without memory.

At this point, I asked him about the connection between the past and the present usage of the term “slave.” He replied to as follows: “Today there are borders in Africa, in Europe, everywhere. . . they are the legacy of colonialism because at the same, they separate and differentiate people who are all human beings.” 3.2.14  Looking for Ghosts We first met Enrico Zorzato, the brother of Viviana, in Chap. 2. As previously noted, his father was an Italian soldier during the colonial war. Hence, a large part of his narrative was dedicated to colonialism and the ways in which this period was recounted to him. For instance, he began to talk about the Italian invasion, pointing out that it was an epic story full of romanticism and enthusiasm. He told me: “A child can understand the drama without really understanding what is happening.” He then explained how the first colonialists moved to the Horn of Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, seeking opportunities to cultivate new fertile land or establish plantations in Eritrea. He added: “It was a difficult situation, that of the first pioneers; they lived in tucul [typical Eritrean constructions] made of straw and used rifles in order to defend themselves from hyenas.” The second phase of colonialism, referred to as Italian expansion, commenced from the first decade of the twentieth century and was initiated by another set of men who were interested in finding their place in Africa. “My father was a truck driver. His job was to travel and bring goods to inhospitable places. . . on destroyed or non-existent streets.” He told me that his father spent a lot of time outside the home, “entire weeks travelling thousands of kilometers all across Eritrea; from the highlands to places close to the sea.” He stopped at restaurants named after Italian cities, such as “La Spezia” and “Torino (Turin).” At times this was not possible: He had to carry some storable foods with him, such as bananas. . . and sometimes he said that animals, such as monkeys, tried to steal his food, to enter the truck through the window. . . and he had to close all the windshields in the hot weather.

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He confessed to me that he had told this story many times to his children because of the comic situation that it described but also “to point out that they have African blood in their veins.” He remembered his father as an “ancient colonizer; a white African,” who did not want to leave the country at the end of the colonial occupation and in the post-war period. In 1979 he wanted to meet his old friends. Many of them had died, but some were still alive. “They met after forty-­ five years. He probably didn’t remember their physical appearance, but he had the idea. . . the idea of fishing out memories of the past.” According to Enrico, his father was seeking ghosts from the past to grab “some fragments of the past.” 3.2.15  Italian Apartheid The topic of a violent colonization process that unfolded in the Horn of Africa emerged on many occasions during oral interviews. While some of the narratives evoked myths, such as Italians as street-makers, most of them highlighted forms of subjection imposed on native people. The underlying intention of all of the interviewees was apparently to affirm that Italian colonialism impacted the everyday life of communities in the Horn of Africa. In particular, Salem and Meron used the same metaphor to describe the kind of power that was imposed on black bodies. Salem was twenty-two years old at the time of the interview. She was living in Bologna and was involved in political groups that supported Eritreans who opposed Isaias Afewerki. Meron was thirty-five years old and also lived in Bologna. Both were born in Eritrea and moved, during different periods, to Europe. Salem began to explain her vision of colonialism to me: We had two colonial dictatorships: the English, albeit for a short time, and the Italians who were there for a longer period. It is for this reason, perhaps, that there is a sort of feeling [of having a] bond with Italians. . . It is a strange bond, a strange feeling.

In response to my request to elaborate on this situation, she said: “If you talk with someone cultured, he will say, ‘they stole that and that! They did this to us.’ On the contrary!” She continued:

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Normal people who lived directly through colonization, they claimed that Italians were fine, as my grandmother, for instance, does. She does not think of them with [a feeling of] disgust. . . because in her view, they were not bad. . . They [the Italians] entered the country and colonized us, saying that we were not so bad. . . By contrast, the English people arrived and did not have any dialogue with people. In Asmara there was a sort of apartheid in the sense that in the big city—built by Italians—people were not allowed to move freely; there were places only for Italians and whites.

I tried to grasp the meaning of her words, asking for some clarifications. She explained that “there was a neighborhood. . . a neighborhood where there were only Italians. . . perhaps it was the most beautiful one, with more flowers. . . where not everyone was allowed to enter.” Another interviewee evoked the same image: the idea of Asmara divided into sections for white people and sections for black people. Meron was a soldier in Sawa, Eritrea. He decided to leave his country to travel to Europe with some friends. When we began to talk about colonialism, he immediately declared that “it was a heavy colonization.” When I probed deeper into his memories, he elaborated on his statement: Asmara was the capital city where there were more Italians. They built the country, almost the entire country, and the city. In the city, in Asmara, there were places where only Italians lived. Colored people or Eritreans were not allowed to enter [these places]. And if you, as an Eritrean, went over there, they took you away and brought you to prison. . . and [there were] sanctions and [more] sanctions. . . they beat you. It was apartheid!

3.3   Colonialism as a Mirror As I have explained in the introductory and methodological sections of this chapter, my aim has been to focus on the use of memories of colonialism to re-signify the postcolonial condition or, from another perspective, to elucidate, for a white interviewer, how colonialism and the present are connected through the subjectivity of the interviewee. However, simply speaking of subjectivity, considered as an abstract concept that is akin to identity or culture, is not enough. On the contrary, a particular trait is clearly evident in this relationship: that of skin color. This element played an important part in creating a specific set of conditions for the interviews. It is one thing to talk about the journey with a friend; someone who experienced the same violence. It is another matter to tell the same story to

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another person from the same community who has only indirect knowledge of the event. It is yet another matter to explain the same experience to a white researcher, born in Europe, who holds a microphone in his hand. Clearly, every story starts from a self-positionality. However, this affirmation is only possible if we move from an experience lived directly—or, alternatively, as something that happened to people who all belong to a particular community—to a topic that is simultaneously abstract and allows to empathize the distance between the self and the interviewer. In other words, the act of speaking about Italian colonialism evokes a genealogy of imaginaries derived from antithetical pairs of concepts that are diametrically opposed, signifying violence that is based on historical facts. To talk about colonialism means to show, within the same temporality of the narration, oppression that has been imposed by white people from Italy on black people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia in the context of colonialism in the Horn of Africa. At the same time, rhetorical figures in the oral narrative reveal a comparison between yesterday and today, or, from another perspective, how colonialism did not end with the fall of the Italian empire. This extension is a kind of error or an anachronism only from a chronological perspective. For those who are discriminated against in Europe, and by Italian institutions, talking about colonialism would provide an opportunity, first of all, to penetrate the heart of the topic. It would prompt the resumption of violence inflicted against black people in different parts of the world, and a sense of recognition entailed in the personal stories of other black people who were subjects of discrimination, territorial segregation, and violence. Applying a theoretical lens derived from memory studies, it is apparent that a consideration of colonialism highlights the felt urgency of declaring a self-positionality, such as being black, a black woman, a black Italian woman, or a Somali woman in Europe, which not only relates to the current period but also signals a return to colonialism. At the same time, the movements of the self toward an imagined collectivity provoke feelings of inclusion within a large and heterogeneous group of individuals who have lived through conditions of violence, reacting in different ways ranging from subalternity to resistance. Examples include movements between “there” (the Horn of Africa) and “here” (Italy, Europe) and the associated condition of displacement; between stories of black people of yesterday and those of today (in Italy or abroad); and between a story that demonstrates racism and other similar stories. These shifts in the self along a time frame that reference a common originating past—that of colonialism as the original violence and the

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source of differences—demonstrate dual qualities. On the one hand, this memory connects people and facts across different periods, suggesting another vision of colonialism that is narrated from the perspective of the postcolonial condition. On the other hand, the same memory is operative when talking about the self as a projection of the individual within a collective imagined community, using traces of the past inherited from parents and friends, mostly transmitted orally. I will now turn to an analysis of the rhetoric figures and their roles and features. As pointed out in the second chapter, Angela/Malaika referred to colonialism to explain her condition as a unique and multifaceted woman who is simultaneously Angela and Malaika. This positionality of being “in between”—to use Homi K. Bhabha’s famous phrase (1994)— meant that she was always out of place and simultaneously able to discover ways through which she represents her subjectivity. Her reference to colonialism enabled her to state that during that period, people like her were discriminated against from two sides: thus, on the one side, they were labeled meticcio by white Italian colonialists, and a law was imposed that forbade permanent relationships between white men and black Somali women, whose unions could give rise to individuals of mixed race. On the other side, Somalis labeled her—and others like her—uaele uaele, which means “not pure.” These ways of being not Italian, not white, and not European, but also not Somali and not completely black, seem to describe a condition in positive terms, indicating a unique double positionality in the present. Thus, this memory of colonialism operates to reverse a double negative condition experienced by people who Angela/Malika considered to have been similar to her in the past, deploying this double positionality as a positive strategy to slip out of the grip of representation. The metaphor of “eaters of cow” evoked by Nuurta conveys the similarities in differences between various colonialisms: Europeans were eaters of cows, namely not Muslim, not black, and not native. This positionality has relevance in the present, dividing up a sphere of belonging; that of sisters and brothers of the Muslim faith, friends born in Somalia, or black people in Italy. There is a clear line of division between an “us” and a “them.” Differing from the memory of Angelica/Malika, this one operates metonymically to define the other as a colonialist; as a white person. Nuurta spoke about colonialists, both Italians and English, as eaters of beef; as Christians and not Muslim. Many of the individuals whom I interviewed used colonialism to define a polysemic representation of alterity and otherness. In Medhin’s tales,

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memories of colonialism are connected to the present time. In her narrative, bella abissina (“little black face”) is a trope for the postcolonial condition; of what she and other black women feel when they are called “mixed race.” In this sense, there is a sort of resonance between an image from the past and one in the present. This anachronistic view produces different effects in relation to the historical context of reference: during the time of colonialism, bella abissina’s image signifies colonial power imposed on the colonized land. However, in the present by contrast, it is linked to a specific racialized genealogy of society. Winta approached the colonial question from a temporal perspective. She narrated her idea of colonialism, which is, of course, an inherited memory of that experience transmitted by previous generations and through institutionalized discourses. In order to define Black Eritrea, which is a condition of people colonized during the Italian dominion, she evoked a specific triadic genealogy composed of Mussolini, the cathedral, and Asmara. This constellation is part of an imaginary held by black people in Eritrea. Therefore, her being black emerges by the contraposition to Fascism colonialism in the Horn of Africa. Nino spoke of subjectivities—or profiles of subjectivities—which are a consequence of colonialism considered as a unique and hegemonic force in the area. Similar to Winta, Nino expressed a condition of people who are “halved” in contrast to the unique logos of Fascism: of the “Italian man” in the colony. He spoke of “half-people” as being people whose value is halved because of their black skin. They are the sciarmutte—prostitutes— of yesteryear and the present; the asuk (poor people), or other subjects lost in the narration of Europe. In the case of Vivian, we should recall that her father was an Italian soldier in the Horn of Africa during the time of colonialism and that Italian soldiers who decided to leave the army because they were in love with Ethiopian/Eritrean women were considered insabbiati. This figure of colonialism reveals a dialectical, counterposed coupling: that of slave/master. The liminal subject who decides to put down their weapons appears as something strange, reinstituting a sort of architecture of violence that is based on the aforesaid dichotomies of the past and the present. Along the same lines, Omar evokes the use of toxic gases by Mussolini and the Italian troops to speak about the contemporary situation; the condition of people who suffered under colonialism and the present-day migrant black subjects in Europe. In the eyes of white people, these other subjects were conceived as negros who were excluded from humanity.

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For Kaha, black people are considered inferior or bestial in racist Europe. Along the same lines, Sara introduced the trajectory of black people who were first slaves, then colonized, and now were migrants. In other words, they were viewed as people to be enslaved, dominated, and subjugated. The irony deployed by Mohamed and Faaduma opens up a critical question: what happened previously during the period of colonialism was repeated for other people in the post-war period. They spoke of the division between the polentoni (northern Italians) and the terroni (southern Italians). Both of these terms are disparaging and reveal a symmetrical construction of Otherness inner the Italianness. Some of the interviewees spoke about historical facts, for example, Belay, who described colonialism as five years of fear; Cadigia, who spoke about the connection between corruption and paternalism; and Abdirashid, who described devastation in the world before the advent of Italian colonialism. Others, for example, Mohamed and Robert, used memory to describe a condition of subjectivation of black people. Both of these individuals spoke about ascari to connect those who were drafted into the Italian army and black people in contemporary Europe, who are discriminated and considered subalterns to the white men. In other cases, evoking colonialism does not immediately conjure up an image pertaining to the present; a figure that is directly connected with a social context and a particular subjectivity. For instance, Enrico’s reflexive thoughts about colonialism, about his father, and about possible culprits responsible for the violence in Africa project shadows, and in some cases ghosts, on to the postcolonial scenario. It is possible to assert that memories of colonialism for the individuals who were interviewed were deployed in order to talk about discrimination in terms of race. Memories of colonialism constitute a strategic field that makes it possible to re-imagine the condition of the voiceless subject of yesterday and today. In other words, this memory has a dual and direct connection with the past, which was not experienced directly, and with the present, which is approached in terms of continuity with the original violence of colonialism. Sometimes, this narrative space evoked the past to describe a condition of the interviewees or of other people whom they knew who belonged to the same national community, such as blacks in Europe. In other cases, the interviewees talked about a fragment of the past, as in the case of Medhin and the “little black face” that was intended to bringing the focus to the present to highlight a situation entailing discrimination and racism.

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In addition, memories of colonialism reveal positionalities that are outside of the nomenclature of the Italian lexicon, thus pointing to other ways of existing despite colonialism and racism in Europe. These positionalities relate to a single subject in between the public and private spheres, or, from another perspective, they indicate possible subjectivities located at the margins of history: the mixed-race person, Black Eritrea, the half human being, asuk, sciarmutte, and lost people. In this sense, the idea of being part of a history that is not documented and lived but is inscribed on the skin of millions of people and transmitted from generation to generation seems to indicate movement toward a subjectivity of pride associated with a black identity. Moreover, it suggests the idea of redemption which, in many cases, alters history and produces another narrative of the past for those who are not white; for black people in Italy, in Europe. It should not come as a surprise that many of the interviewees’ voices affirmed that Ethiopia and Eritrea were not colonized and were only occupied by Italian soldiers. Thus, Dabar, who was twenty-nine years old at the time of the interview, and who was born in Addis Ababa and arrived in Turin by plane to study at the university, wrote the following text in his map (see Fig. 3.1), which is reproduced below:

Fig. 3.1  Dabar’s map

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Ethiopians have defended themselves against colonialism and are free from white supremacy [sic; he meant supremacy] and it has helped us a lot morally. We now believe that all [of the] human race is equal!

Under the plane in the drawing—and corresponding to the two stopovers, Baharain (his spelling) and Milan in his journey—he enclosed the following text in a box outlined with a blue pen as a way of protecting this concept from possible interference: Colonialism has left no (significant) traces on my country and it has made us strand [sic] apart with our assets.

In another box, outlined with a green pen, he defines the condition of black people in Europe: Europe is only good for Europeans.

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Poidimani, N. (2009). Difendere la “razza”: identità razziale e politiche sessuali nel progetto imperial di Mussolini. Roma: Sensibili alle foglie. Proglio, G. (2015). Filigrana dell’immaginario. Cinema e razza nel tempo della globalizzazione, 1980–2001. In G.  Giuliani (Ed.), Il colore della nazione. Firenze: Mondadori Le Monnier. Proglio, G. (2018). L’Italia e il passato coloniale. Riflessioni e considerazioni a margine del dibattito storiografico. Memoria e Ricerca, 1, 113–132. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Scego, I. (2004). Rhoda. Roma: Sinnos. Spivak, G.  C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In L.  Grossberg & C.  Nelson (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Houndmills: Macmillan. Srivastava, N. (2018). Italian Colonialism and Resistance to Empire, 1930–1970. London/New York: Palgrave. Stoler, A. L. (2009). Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stoler, A. L. (2010). Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stoler, A.  L. (2011). Colonial Aphasia: Race and Disabled Histories in France. Public Culture, 23(1), 121–156. Stoler, A. L. (2016). Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times. Durham: Duke University Press. Triulzi, S. (2006). Displacing the Colonial Event. Hybrid Memories of Postcolonial Italy. Interventions, VIII(3), 2006. Triulzi, S. (2011). Memorie e voci migranti. Between, 1(2), 2011. Wekker, G. (2016). White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 4

The Black Mediterranean

This chapter originates from a theoretical debate grounded in numerous disciplines with divers approaches. It analyses the concept of the Black Mediterranean as a remembrance site of crossings, but also as a site of silence and oblivion, of resistance of black people to the white hegemony in Europe. In the accounts of interviewees that follow, the Black Mediterranean begins in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Many are the routes toward Europe. Each of these is to be read on a plane where multiple lines intersect, defined by the availability—or lack thereof—of opportunities on the basis of gender, race and class, religious and ethnic identity, age, and employment status. The Mediterranean becomes a place where colonialism and slavery meet the postcolonial condition, a boundary to be overcome to attain salvation, a present that is unattainable in the Horn of Africa but teeming with hope in Europe. And yet, it is also the site of silence and of the impossibility of speaking up. Its waves reflect the faces of the interviewees and, in their memories, the faces of those who did not make it, disappearing before or during the crossing. It is constructed by the remembrance of Libyan jails, Sahara crossings, and the sale of migrants from one smuggler to another in Sudan and Libya; it is the emblem of a context in which anything is permitted and humanity reverts to its beastly form (see Danewid 2017). But, it is also a place of reunion with Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Somali traditions; with Pan-Africanism and Pan-Islamism; with the idea of liberation from Europe; with identities proclaiming their © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_4

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blackness, Africanness, and diasporic identities in Europe; with the myth of Ras Tafari and of the Ethiopian resistance.

4.1   Theoretical Framework Over the last fifteen years, many research endeavors have attempted to study migrations across the Mediterranean from different points of view: considering the relationship between borders and European societies (De Cesaris 2018; Poinard 2002; Vanoli 2017; Sanfilippo and Corti 2012; Chambers 2007, 2008, 2012), visuality (Giubilaro 2017, 315–336), and the role of migrants’ memories (Triulzi 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018),1 in the field of border studies (Garelli and Tazzioli 2018), and from an anthropological perspective (Aime 2018), through film representations (Ponzanesi 2016), and with multidisciplinary approaches (Proglio and Odasso 2018). In some cases, the “spectaluralization” of the border has been analyzed (Cuttitta 2012; De Genova 2013; Mazzara 2019). Some writings have pointed out the use of a xenophobic and racist rhetoric around mobility and migration (De Cesari and Kaya 2019). Other scholars still have focused on the border as a body-conditioning device (Sciortino 2004), oscillating between exclusion and differential inclusion. The conception of the “border as a method” (Mezzadra & Neilson 2013) has been borrowed in this chapter, in order to define processes through which subjectivities in diaspora interact with one another to build and elaborate shared memories. These memories represent a strategic tool for finding ways to elude border devices, entering and remaining in Europe over and above the categories and taxonomies construed by political, legal, and military discourse that so often define border crossing processes. Cedric Robinson (1983) and Robin D.G.  Kelly (1983) were among the first to talk about the Black Mediterranean: here the sea is connected to a racialization process that is a by-product of capitalism and the reproduction of black subjectivization. Alessandra Di Maio used the formula “Black Mediterranean” when referring to the condition of thousands of migrant people and their crossings. In her essay, Di Maio specifies that “black is the colour of the sea during crossings of thousands of migrants who have ‘burned’ during the last three decades. It is the colour of the Mediterranean when Africa and Europe meet in its waters” (2012, 146). In a sense, her reference relates to the theoretical proposal by Predrag Matvejević about a Mediterranean whose borders are not “defined in terms of space and time,” and “irreducible to sovereignty or history, which

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do not belong to states or nations” (2004, 18 [1987]). In another sense, her perspective draws back to and re-actualizes Paul Gilroy’s work on the Black Atlantic, on memories of slavery and the middle passage between Africa, Europe, and America (1993). Many other scholars after Alessandra Di Maio have analyzed the Black Mediterranean from numerous perspectives, among which: citizenship, hybrid identities such as that of Afro-­ Italians, displacement devices, territorial segregation, and confinement (Frisina Hawthorne 2018; Hawthorne 2017; Danewid 2017; Saucier 2014; Raeymaekers 2014; Grimaldi 2019). My own approach to the Black Mediterranean centers on the relation between oral history, border devices, and the role of subjectivity through memory. The Black Mediterranean is intended as a space of excess signification; “excess” in relation to European and national rhetoric on the Mare Nostrum, to slavery and colonialism’s legacies in defining the color line, to forms of “othering” and body disciplination (Proglio 2019); “excess” in relation to border devices. In fact, the Mediterranean is a symbolic place for European public imagery on which nations, groups, associations, and individuals invest over the course of centuries in order to accumulate strata of different cultural memories (Assmann 2002) and thereby exercise geopolitical control on the area and its mobility, on bodies and lands in the North of Africa. Orientalism (Said 1991 [1979]) and exoticism (Schmidt 2015), that is, the romantic narrative of the Mediterranean—and perhaps also the “unity in difference” as proposed by Fernand Braudel (1949)— are narratives that utilize the Mediterranean as a place of discursive investment, with the specific goal of reiterating, outside European borders, the “geography of imagination” mentioned by Edward Said (1991 [1979]).

4.2   The Black Mediterranean’s Stories In its progression from theoretical and methodological coordinates, here on this chapter presents fragments of memory of the Black Mediterranean that emerged from oral interviews. 4.2.1  As New Slaves in the Mediterranean Me: Could you please tell me about your journey? Ali: Yes… to Europe, from Tripoli, Libya. Me: What do you remember?

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The sea was inside the boat. We were pressed, one on top of the other. And even below us, there were people wedged together… they screamed, under our feet. For each wave… a ‘uhhhh’ from everyone. And shouts from the front, behind, below, and above. It’s cold there in the middle of the sea. And there is fear, because it is like being nowhere, in the middle of the world, abandoned. You fall into the water and die… that’s how it ends. Nobody asks after you, nobody talks about you… like slaves, but we decided to leave. We decided to reach Europe. We are like back-to-front slaves, since we pay to be exploited here, in Italy. We think of ourselves as white, but our skin is black. It is visible when we arrive in Lampedusa. There were seagulls and land all around us. We arrived early in the morning. They brought us to the port. Then they separated men on one side and women and children on the other. We were Somalis, Eritreans, Sudanese, Ethiopians and some Tunisians. They made us climb down to Europe.

This is the memory of Ali. He was twenty-seven years old at the time of the interview, in 2016. He had crossed the Mediterranean eight years before, when he was nineteen. He decided to leave his city, Mogadishu, which was at the mercy of clan clashes and Islamist attacks. Ali remembers the boat used to cross the Mediterranean as the place where you can lose contact with the outside world, where you are alone and isolated. Water and fear spread in every nook and cranny of the boat, causing screams that come from every direction. Ali makes a connection between this memory and the slave trade. His memory, as he tells me, is anchored in Somali oral tradition—the massewé—and in the tales of the elderly and public imagery. These representations spawn from a specific archive of those who have been shackled, of their descendants in Europe and Africa. “My grandmother… I remember that song on the history of Black slaves,” adds Ali. It was a song about the slave trade, colonialism, and African liberation. The last part of his account deals with the topic of subjectivity. “We think of ourselves as white, but our skin colour is black”: this sentence seems the result of a black epidermalization process, as theorized by Frantz Fanon (2015 [1952]), characterized on the one hand by the desire to lighten one’s skin and take on whiteness, and on the other, by the inevitable nature of biological data dominated by the white logos as laid out before the world. His life and those of his travel companions are worthless. This is clear when he talks of being sucked in by the waves, and of ending up

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on the seabed, as one possibility among many. For Ali, the Mediterranean is a threshold revealing the condition of black people with respect to the border. But there is more. The process by which he remembers the crossing is located in an historical period that combines different events: slavery and colonialism, the harraga2 people along the route leading into Libya and Europe. The chronological progression of history gives way to a narrative based on the condition of black subjects and their different subordinations in various periods. All these imagined subjects—according to Ali’s memory—are voiceless and confined to a “zone of not being,” as proposed by Fanon (2015 [1952]). Intersubjectivity, in this case, does not transform the geography of borders, but rather bends the linear course of history to reveal the condition of forgotten subjectivities, and of those that are considered superfluous in the recounting of slavery and colonial history. In Ali’s account, whoever is talked about belongs to specific categories—“we were Somali, Eritreans, Sudanese, Ethiopians, and some Tunisians,” Ali points out. 4.2.2  The Color Line at Lampedusa Me: And then you left: how was the journey? Amari: Difficult. Me: Could you tell me more about it and of when you arrived in Lampedusa? Amari: I had never seen the sea. My brother—who is in Sweden—told me about it on Skype. When we left, we were afraid. Silence and sometimes a few words. Go, go, go… and we no longer saw the shore: there was only sea. From morning to night and then again, two times. At one point they called for help on the radio. They came to pick us up. They took us to the island, Lampedusa. I was happy, along with the others. There was a pregnant woman next to me. And a fifty year old sick man behind me. They gave us some blankets, the golden ones: they were lightweight blankets but kept in the heat. Then they disembarked us. I was happy but I was also afraid. There was a lot of police around. When I went from ship to land, I couldn’t believe it: I was in Europe. There, they asked us some questions. People speaking our language. They asked where we came from, the country, and why we decided to leave; they asked who brought us to Italy.

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Me: and then what happened? Amari: They gave me food and drink. Then they brought me to a centre where there were very many people… many from Eritrea, like me. There I understood how the centre worked. It was like being in a zoo, like many caged animals. Yes, we could go out, but we were monitored. We were animals because we were all black. Or rather, not white, because each one had his own type of black, from wherever he came from. That feeling of being out of place reminds me of Europe, even today. Amari was born in 1984 in a small town in Eritrea: in Tesenei, a stone’s throw from the Gash-Setit nature reserve, close to the Ethiopian border. He decided to leave because of the dictatorship—he had no opportunities in his country. He reached Lampedusa in December 2014, when, in other words, the Mare Nostrum operation was replaced by Triton. For Amari, too, the Mediterranean is an important threshold. This can be gauged by the feelings he mentions: firstly, he is afraid because he has never faced the sea before that moment; then, after some hours, he begins to hope he will reach Europe; finally, these two feelings are combined when the time comes to step from sea to land. Amari’s feeling is difficult to narrate; not owing to a lack of Italian language skills, but on the contrary, because there is no Italian word that can explain that state of being between happiness and fear. His expectations for a new life are, however, unfulfilled when, following police checks, he is transferred to the island’s hotspot. His entry into the center remains imprinted in his memory: he arrives with other black people in a place managed by whites. Blacks of different shades, which Amari associates to particular geographical origins. The color line, as clarified by W.E.B. Du Bois, is the production of a genealogy of global relationships that affects a specific context. Revisiting the concept from Frederick Douglass, Du Bois states that the global encounters the local in the definition of color and its associated meanings: “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line: the relationship between the lighter and darker races in Asia, Africa, America, and in the islands of the sea” (Du Bois 2007, p. 18). Amari proposes a similar reflection: white is always and exclusively the neutral color; different shades of black refer to a subdivision of the world—from an ideal north and center to a south and periphery—based on a European imagery of race and following classifications internal and external to Europe.

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Another important piece of the narrative is the association between non-whiteness and animality. On this topic, some authors (Coulthard 2014; Stoler 1995) have referred to the relationship between desires and the black body, as an imagined map that is able to reveal the exotic and the sensual, the monstrous and the horrid. By paying attention to Amari’s words, we can comprehend the specificity of the first-person narrative. Power has a specific representation: it is white. The color line, at this point, works in order to define bodies of “caged animals.” Immediately afterward, Amari specifies that oppression does not concern the condition of being “in jail,” because everyone can have the opportunity to go out; it centers on day-to-day control. Being non-white, being black, or rather, not possessing whiteness in relation to the hotspot managers. 4.2.3  Lampedusa-Brindisi, “Picking Tomatoes” Belay is Eritrean. He neither tells me his city of origin, nor how old he was when he left: he fears his identity might be revealed. He is, however, keen to specify that he left to escape the dictatorship. Today, he is forty-two years old and works as a courier in Veneto (northern Italy). His migratory trajectory is the same as many of those we have already encountered: first Sudan, then the desert up to Libya. Eventually, he manages to cross the Mediterranean. I met him in 2016, in a small bar on the outskirts of Padua. Belay: I was in Libya for 12. Me: 12 months? Belay: 11 months and 14 days, to be exact. Me: And then? Belay: Then we crossed the sea. Me: How was it? Belay: Very, very bad, worse than the Sahara. From the off… the boat was falling apart, we arrived by luck… it was all flooded, water poured in from all directions. Me: How many were you? Belay: 130, maybe 132 or 133. Me: And what happened during the crossing? Belay: Nothing! Me: Nothing?

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Belay: Me: Belay: Me: Belay:

Me: Belay:

Me: Belay: Me: Belay:

Nothing, all you do is pray. There is no food, no water… because there is no time when you climb aboard, before leaving, to get anything, clothes for the trip. They make you rush through it all. Were there others with you, some women or children? Yes, yes. I felt sorry for the child behind me, near the engine, because it was clear that he was suffering, like his mother... he too was very pale. Did you all make it? Yes, all of us. When we arrived, we didn’t believe it. They spoke a different language to us. And it was then, only then, that we understood that we had perhaps arrived in Europe, in Italy, maybe... You had arrived at Lampedusa? Yes, at the port of Lampedusa, where we stayed for three days. Then they took my fingerprints. And, finally, they sent us to Crotone by aeroplane, where we remained for 25  days. Then they gave us a document. And then you came to Padua, right? No, no, I went to Brindisi, to pick tomatoes. And how was that job? It was heavy, the pay was poor, but it was okay as it was. They would tell you what to do, and then you would be paid off the books, per crate. The big one is 7 euros. If you’re good, you can do three crates at most. Later, at the end of the day, they paid us.

Belay is initially accompanied to Lampedusa, where his identity checked and his fingerprints are taken; then he is sent to the C.A.R.A. of Crotone.3 As the period within this structure comes to an end, he is offered no options: he can only go to work as a tomato picker in Brindisi. The color line and the border’s devices work to produce a racialization of labor, placing his body in a specific position: he ends up becoming a key working part of the agricultural black market on which a great deal of the Italian economy relies on. His memories are a voice within a system that has been known about for some time, controlled by the mafia and repressed by police forces. Mafia and police, both of which are Italian. His account does not oppose xenophobic narrations or illegal recruitment, it assumes a different position: “It was heavy, the pay was poor, but it was okay as it was,” he states. The ambiguity does not reside in this sentence, but in the dichotomies

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that determined his situation, which consider him, as others, as part of the problem or as butchering meat for the system of exploitation. His words steer away from these two representations, indeed from many representations that would confine him, once more, to a zone of non-existence. 4.2.4  Europe Is a Culprit, in the Mediterranean Abdirashid was born in Mogadishu thirty-two years ago. He arrived in Italy via Libya, when he was eighteen. He recounts his journey with lowered eyes, his sight fixed on the ground. It is apparent that he is once again experiencing the fear he had felt. “We were squashed in a dark warehouse,” he tells me. Then, all of a sudden, they let them out to load them onto that boat. “The term boat is excessive, let’s call it a raft,” since the vessel was in terrible conditions from the off: it flooded from all sides and the great number of people it carried—over 120—certainly did not help. Two days later, he reaches Lampedusa. Without water, food, nothing: the crossing has been a journey beyond the realms of possibility, he confesses. “I didn’t think I would make it, I didn’t think I would have arrived alive. I was awaiting my final moment,” he recalls while swinging his head forward and backward, as if to say “yes.” Truth be told, that motion, which immediately reminds me of trauma, relates to something different. At this point, I ask him if he is okay; if he would like a glass of water. He replies in the positive, but adds: “it’s normal... I have already dreamed this dream thousands of times before: I see waves before us, and the boat that rides up and down, the horizon rising and falling. Nothing surrounding us, only sea.” I can feel his pain, the anxiety that leads him to revisit those moments. I think that perhaps it is best to take a break, to end the interview here. As these thoughts crowd my head, an unexpected sentence breaks the silence: Thank you, because I have never talked about this. And I would like it to be known... that it might help others that have suffered this as it has helped me, or others who, as Europeans, do not realise what it means to defy death for the sake of life.

He continues saying he had no other choice. He repeats it multiple times. He looks me in the eye as he speaks. I am left speechless and, a little later, I rest my hand on his shoulder and tentatively smile.

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It is then that the register of the conversation changes radically and a collective group narration ensues, encompassing everyone else who has faced the Mediterranean. “They speak of Lampedusa, but Lampedusa begins at the Horn of Africa: there are responsibilities... for everyone,” he states in a clear-cut manner. I ask him why, for him to elaborate this trail of thought. He replies: It is not just my story, it is the story of thousands of black people in Europe, of those that are still in Libya, and of those that are now fish bait, at the bottom of the sea.

These words place personal events in the context of a black diaspora. Memories do not relate to him alone, or those arriving from the Horn or other parts of Africa: it is the story in which the individual and collective are interdependent and connected by the black color of skin. In this place of remembrance, private and public memories intertwine to generate various conditions of exploitation, discrimination, and violence. At this point, Abdirashid adds: Europe and Italy have always offered dictators a helping hand, but when crises occur they never do. It is the same for Libya, it is the same for Algeria: in Algeria a Muslim party won in 1991, 1993... ok, everyone said no, but after those no’s, the generals killed millions of people: those millions don’t count, they are not men, because in the end when you light the fuse they die.

After pausing a few moments to reflect, he continues: Let’s take another example: Libya. Yes, before creating chaos, like the French did, I need to have an alternative. I kill Gaddafi but then I leave the country as is, with no prospects. Has Libyan oil stopped? No, it has not! The gas, has that stopped? No, we too control it. But the people are dying, but these immigrants arrive at Lampedusa. Egypt is the same, the “Arab Spring” has won a president. Ok, you allow time... you carry out the coup and they shouldn’t have accepted the West, Europe should not have entered. So we are complicit in what’s happening: it is we who helped the dictators, like Hosni Mubarak also. There is a democratic election and 99% votes for one candidate. And everyone laughs, saying “Hosni Mubarak won!”. 35 years.

I ask him what he means by “we.” He clarifies that “we” refers to those who came from the African side of the Mediterranean, then adds: “we, not

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because we are equal, I am black, I come from the Mediterranean, like the others, yesterday and today.” He pauses briefly and then continues: The world changes when you cross the sea, it flips over, even if you are never the same as the whites, never... but I bear on my shoulders the responsibility of those who are no longer there, of those who are crossing the border, of those who will do it, not just in the Mediterranean, but everywhere.

He then concludes: Europe is complicit in everything that is happening, because it never intervened in the right way. In the last 40 years, it has always helped the dictators: when they rebelled, it beat them down. When someone ends up eating from the rubbish, that is not democracy, so they decide to take to the streets or to leave: in either case it’s about crossing that line where you stop just being you, and you have others on your side, because you’re hungry or because you’re black in Europe.

4.2.5  Lampedusa, Crossroad of Transnational Geographies Asnai arrived at Lampedusa in 2011. When I interview him, in Turin during 2014, he is thirty-two years old. His Tigrinya identity leads him to study politics in his university years, at Adama. In 2005, he is incarcerated following the elections and the repression of protests by government authorities. He moves from one prison to the next: prison “Number Nine,” then the one underground at Zuai where—he recounts—“there is no light, there is nothing.” He still remembers the fear and terror, the torture. He manages to flee while being admitted to the hospital at Addis Ababa. His uncle gives him 300 dollars to get to Gondar. He continues on foot, walking for seven  days straight and managing to cross the border with Sudan. He calls his uncle to tell him that the first obstacle has been overcome. Then he continues to Khartoum where he stays for three days. A van arrives to pick him up and immediately sets off again. He is well aware that the Sudanese police could arrest him: other Ethiopians along the trip told him as much. Our conversation continues as follows: Me: Asnai:

How did you know where to find a bed, in Sudan? There are many Ethiopians and Eritreans there in Sudan. So when you arrive, they know it and they help you. Is there room

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in that house? Yes, there is: go there. And they then give you some food, clothes, they give you something for a short while. The risk is for the Sudanese police to arrive and stop illegal migrants: then you can no longer go home. After three days, I set off again. He knew of this network, to be able to rely on his fellow countrymen in Sudan and along the journey, well before departing: people he did not know when he left. His journey continues toward the north, in the direction of the Sahara. I ask him how much he paid. He replies “300 dollars to enter the Sahara and 200 to flee from Khartoum.” The management of mobility through the desert is dictated by people’s associations and specific national identities: “There are Libyans and Sudanese. The Sudanese bring the Sudanese. Libyans bring people from Chad, Egypt, and Sudan.” He pays 500 dollars to the “Sudanese” for fifteen days of travel. He arrives at the Libyan border and then waits “almost eight days for Libyans to arrive.” There are hundreds of people. It is all part of a well-oiled mechanism, “it’s a business for them.” He adds: “they take you and sometimes sell you to others. In Libya it’s like the mafia, when you arrive in Tripoli you cannot enter the first time.” He explains that he had to make that trip three times because the smugglers were in agreement with the police to squeeze every last dollar out of people like him: “some Sudanese pay 30 euros per person to get you out of jail and then make you pay another 500 for a new journey.” Only after the third time can you ask to be taken all the way into Tripoli. He remembers the sensation of feeling trapped in Libya, of having to somehow cross the Mediterranean: I was in Libya almost two years, between travels and jails... this no longer concerns me. After that, I tried almost three times via sea, I paid 1200 dollars for each trip. The first didn’t go well, after three days at sea, without compass, without phones, without GPS. We had made a deal for the compass, GPS and mobile phone, but the contact person gave us nothing, nothing. When we leave there is no problem from the sea, so you will shortly be in Italy. There is no other way of escaping from there. Because to arrive by sea is difficult, there is a lot of police and you have to set off at night. Then, when we returned we couldn’t enter the city so we ended up in jail. After seven days, we escaped from jail. The second time we didn’t go in the sea. The contact person took the money for the trip and ran away, he was Sudanese: he went back to his country. Then for the third trip I paid 2500

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dollars. It was a secure trip as it was planned by a Libyan policeman who prevented other controls.

He arrives at Lampedusa at daybreak. “When we saw the seagulls we understood that there was Europe, that we had arrived,” he recounts with a smile on his face. This is followed, in his words, by the security operations of the Italian Maritime Police, the shepherding to the harbor, the inspection, and the disembarking onto land. After spending a few days at the center, he is also sent to Crotone. Here, his first move is to try contacting other Eritreans. He remembers his disorientation in these words: “I was in Italy, but not yet in Europe... yes, that was Europe, but no mine, not what I had imagined in the beginning.” I ask him to guide me through what he means. Asnai: Me: Asnai:

Lampedusa is an island, but it is also Europe. So why are you saying that it is not Europe? Because I didn’t want to stay in Italy, I wanted to go to Sweden of London. Me: And then what happened? Asnai: Fingerprints. Me: Your fingerprints were taken, but you knew that, right? Asnai: Yes, I had been told several times. Me: By who? Asnai: Friends, relatives, people who care about me… in France, Italy, but also Germany, in London and Liverpool, and in the United States. But also those who were with me in Libya, who had learned it from others, across the Mediterranean. Me: So why did you decide to leave your fingerprints? Asnai: Because I was afraid of losing everything, and Italy was the first outcome, which didn’t appeal to me. But the Europe I wanted was another one, it wasn’t Italy.

4.2.6  Imagery of Europe off the Map Ahmed is Somali, birth year 1983. He was born in Mogadishu. He starts telling me about his neighborhood, the sea, the beach. He grew up in a country at war, and has only seen peace in videos on YouTube. In 1998–1999 Somali streets were awash with blood and to forget that

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apocalypse he watched football. That’s where his passion for Roma began. Smiling, he tells me: “We used to wait for the cassette (VHS) to arrive, then we would watch it, the very next day.” His problems persist beyond his arrival at Lampedusa, recounted as “what lies across the sea, the other world.” “Each evening I remember my home, I’d like to go home again, one day, peace.” But it is not possible. The refugee condition is like a prison under an open sky: “they give you a travel document, I can go around Europe but I can’t go back to my home, I miss it so much.” “When I arrived at Lampedusa—Ahmed continues—I thought about going home every day, to eliminate the documents and let them send me back home.” I had no home, I had no job: “Once you get the documents: the police calls you and sends you away, take your things and get out. And where do you sleep? On the street.” He decides to get a train without a ticket and arrives in Turin. Having become aware of the housing occupation of Corso Peschiera, there, he meets some Somali friends again. I ask him what destination those who depart Mogadishu aim for. He replies “Europe.” Italy, in other words, does not form part of that imagery, it’s a stop imposed by the migratory course: Ahmed speaks of a Self that is shared with other Somalis. “I thought it would be better here,” he repeats more than once. He then adds: “you see so many good things on television; you think that if one day you go there, Madonna,4 it’s just like paradise, but we’ve found a difficult life.” He stops laughing and clarifies: “when I was in Somalia I thought about a better life.” On the contrary in Europe he has found things that were missing in Somalia: “First peace, second money, life, a nice house, a car.” He would not stay in Italy a single day if he could return home tomorrow. He states: “I shut everything down and go there. Because the air is good, the land is good, green, with plenty of fruit. You have to live bravely in Europe. I thought I’d find money for free, but now I must work, work, work.” Ahmed: Some went to Europe to ask for other documents. They check your fingerprints. And say that you arrived that day in Lampedusa, you have the residency permit, you go to live in Italy and you must return there, because there’s a rule, called Dublin, that they made a few years ago in Ireland. It establishes that if a foreigner arrives in any country of Europe to get some documents, it is forbidden for them to go to another Europe

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and then ask for documents. If you come into Italy, you must stay there, you can’t go to France and ask for more documents. Me: And if someone doesn’t want to go to Italy, what do they do then? Ahmed: You go to Europe, you have documents, nobody can stop you.

4.2.7  Colonialism and Bodies of Desire Sarah is twenty-eight  years old and was born near Milan. I meet her in Rome, near Termini Station. It’s June 2016. She has a fairly marked Roman accent. She tells me she feels Italian as well and that her parents are Eritrean. Both fled Isaias Afewerki’s regime, from conditions of poverty in that “most beautiful and unfortunate” place of Africa. We meet under one of the train boards, in front of a shop that sells sandwiches. After greeting each other and exchanging a few words, she asks if I mind doing the interview while walking. I reply yes, but then ask her if there is any particular reason for this choice. She explains that she has long thought about how to approach this meeting, not with me, but with her memory. “I would raise some things that aren’t just mine, that come from other people, that maybe I have never known, and that have existed well before me,” that “it’s easier to elaborate all these movements of memories and bodies by moving”: she provides this answer while making a gesture with her hand, as if to push air behind her. She adds that she will surely experience anxiety and fear. We find ourselves, in that moment, right in front of the station, in the square where the buses leave. Sarah: Me: Sarah:

This is Cinquecento5 Square. I’ve been past here for years, on my return from school, to change buses. And I never asked myself who these five-hundred were. Really, you know that… Then, I went to the presentation of Igiaba Scego’s book with a friend and I discovered that they were those who died in the colonial war at the end of the 1800s, in Dogali.

I ask her, then, if there are links to what is happening today, with the Mediterranean crossings and with racism. She stops and embarks on a discussion about the heritage of Fascism and on its repercussions on borders, immigration management, and creation of the “other.”

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This is the land of Mussolini. Not everyone is his child, his nephew. There were partisans too, people like Gramsci, who fought till the end. But something of all that violence, all that terror, has remained, even today. Against the Jews, against gypsies, against homosexuals, against communists... we, blacks, were in Africa, under their colonialisms. They used us to claim that they were strong and powerful, in Europe and in the world... they knew they could make anything of us... they could rape us, kills [sic] us, make us work or make jesters of us... we had nothing left, not even our bodies.

I ask her whom she had learnt about colonialism from. “My grandparents” she replies, “especially my grandmother, who would always tell—in fact—sing of those events.” Heritage, through spoken means, has had a significant impact on the construction of her memory, on her identity vis-­ à-­vis white people, on the idea of masculinity. “We, black women... we, Eritrean women... we are always the same, for them,” she adds in a curt and decisive tone. “They used us, they use us; we are not people, we are flesh and desire... we have no soul, mind, history... we are but toys to use and then discard.” I ask her if her statement also applies to the rest of the country. She smiles and replies, “of course, it’s obvious, we women are the measure of the rest.” Her reasoning continues around the fact that nobody remembers Italy’s past in Africa anymore, the colonial conquest, and that it all seems to have happened in a democratic and peaceful transition, without any form of violence. Indeed, Italy is considered to be, by many Italians, a “source of liberation for those black underdeveloped peoples.” Europe, what is Europe? What Europe is can be seen at Lampedusa. They log us because we’re black, because we arrive from Africa. But they don’t do so with a black person arriving from the United States or an Arab from the Gulf Countries. They use “blacks” because the dictionary has its rules... but in their minds they think “negro.” The negroes of the tribes, underdeveloped and without a soul, without rights, similar to monkeys or animals. On top of that, I am also a woman, a negro woman. In other words, in their opinion, I need to satisfy every desire of the white man, of the Italian man. I am totally at his service. And I should have children... I’d be a child-­ bearing machine. For everything else, I’d have no use. There, you need only look at Lampedusa... the first piece of European land where it seems as though the past never passes. There are laws that relate to race, color, geographical origin... perhaps without being written, but that is how it is... and it’s not a question of right or left, it’s that racism is still here, in the eyes and

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in the minds of Italians. Is this still the land of Mussolini? I sometimes ask myself that, notwithstanding of history, everything seems connected up to the deaths in the Mediterranean, to the people who are dispersed, to those who have no dignity, in Europe. Negro women and negro men, we are that today, just as we were yesterday.

4.2.8   The Site of Responsibility Numerous interviews flagged the urgency of attributing some responsibilities for what is unfolding in the Mediterranean, for the continuing number of deaths and for the conditions of those being held captive in Libya, but also, taking a broader view, for that Black Mediterranean that begins in the countries of the Horn of Africa and continues inside of Europe, in the fields and factories, where exploitation is marked by skin color. In all the dialogues, though with different declinations, the maritime space between Africa and Europe is considered to be a site where anything can happen. But contrary to a European imagery according to which fatalism is linked to audacious escapes from African and Asian countries, and in which nobody is to blame for the deaths at sea, the urgency in denouncing how the border control system is itself fruit of planned and premeditated choices made by national and European institutions emerges in all the collected oral memoirs. The selection of transcriptions proposed here, from the point of view of piecing together this oral account, has been tricky because all interviewees have considered this theme as crucial, and have been keen to express themselves on the topic. The choice, therefore, fell on the most frequently recurring narrations, though without excluding the others. The range of narration typologies is fully represented by the voices contained here, even though, for reasons of limited space, it has not been possible to fully describe the expressions of the different subjectivities. Winta, who we have already met in previous chapters, comments that “there must be a reason, it’s not only Europe’s or Italy’s fault... it’s as though everybody was on the same side. When I see that they do nothing, it’s as though everything is normal.” Then she re-invokes the carnage of 2013, recalling the bodies of hundreds of people, stacked one on top of the other, on the pier of Lampedusa’s harbor. In her view, the instigators of the bloodshed are in Italy, France, Germany, amid those who set migratory policies. Tragedies are then commented with hate speech even on Facebook, and other social networks: “they are people, right? It’s an

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absurd kind of viciousness, that makes you feel ill, actually, it’s best not to read certain comments altogether, because they all seem mad.” Erminia Dell’Oro—a famous Italian writer born in Eritrea—points the finger at the wars that upended entire countries and their societies, such as in Iraq and Libya. With regard to Italy, on the other hand, the issue is that Rome “has never considered Eritrea, partly because it became Ethiopia over many years.” Then she recalls the arrival of Andreotti and Baietta in Addis Ababa and links the disinterest for ex-colonies to a condition that continues in the present toward those who, today, arrive in Europe from those countries that were initially objects of conquest. Through a temporal shift from what was to what is, from past to present, from colonialism to postcolonial condition, Dell’Oro connects this to the issue of employment. Originally, many Italians, who had rushed to Eritrea, had enriched themselves by exploiting local workers; today, many Eritreans leave: “I understand them, there is no work, young people flee.” Sarah—who we have already encountered in the pages of this book—is also keen to discuss the Mediterranean question. Having acknowledged the institutional and social difficulties in thinking that all the newcomers can be welcomed, she adds: “helping them is the right thing because they know full well that Italy is just a passing place and it’s not the land where they eventually settle.” She resumes by stating that this is a question of “humanity, responsibility, I would be glad if everyone felt responsible.” She ends with: “this is the situation—referring to the deaths at sea—and nobody can keep their eyes shut before these things.” For the Faatuma and Mohamed—who we have already met in previous chapters—the question should be shifted to a global scale and centers on economic development, globalization, and the arms trade. The husband, in particular, reconnects transnational migrations to the events taking place in Europe and the United States, to the genesis of Islamic State of Iraq: “Who gave weapons to Isis? Europeans and Americans. Assigning the blame is useless, the blame is theirs.” The course of the discussion touches the Twin Tower attacks, the war in Iraq to defeat Saddam Hussein, and the interests behind nuclear proliferation. And what is unfolding today in North Africa is the fault of Europeans. And what’s happening in Libya? Where do all the arms come from? Where from? The poor people have nothing, nothing, but if you look you can see they have the latest types of weapons, latest models, and where have they come from? They say ‘they’ve come from the Sahara’, it’s the Americans or

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Europeans that provide them. As long as this will be the case, the world will never be stable.

On the other hand, for others like Amed—a fifty-three years old Somali man I interviewed in Padua—responsibility must be traced back to the past. “The cause of impoverishment of these countries, of the West’s exploitation, is the cause of immigration, so this is the root.” He explains how Gaddafi’s Libya had a precise plan to make Italy pay for colonialism’s wounds, and for petroleum exploitation. “They treat them—migrants—as dogs, worse than slaves. Libyans are arrogant, and their prisons terrifying. The West’s responsibility, and Italy’s, is in not having found an interlocutor, a political solution to contain this phenomenon.” The solution is by no means easy and seems to involve the possibility of a more active role played by Europe: “you can’t let up and allow deaths like this, it’s not enough to save, to feed a pregnant woman, to bury the dead, organise funerals, it’s not this: a solution to the problem needs to be found.” In commenting the Mediterranean’s bloodshed, Enrico Zorzato uses strong, yet very precise, words. He speaks of “an economy of despair,” that is, of how hunger and economic crisis pushes people to seek a way to survive, perhaps by fleeing from their countries of origin. “I consider to be desperate someone who recovers a dingy to board other desperate people, all for the possibility of earning a bit of cash by transporting them to the other side.” The roles, therefore, define how each person behaves, even though their situation, generally speaking, appears to bear little difference between a migrant and a trafficker. Then come the voices of those active in support and solidarity toward the foreigners arriving in Italian cities. One of these, Sonia—who we have already met in previous chapters—examines the situation in a broad sense. We stand before an event of monumental scale, most likely we don’t even realize. It’s an event that started many years ago, that is surely not destined to end in the short term, we are trying to plug the holes, to make amends instead of seeking a broader, longer-term, way. With this premise as a starting point, what moves the European Union in general but not exclusively— since we should say that this is the condition for almost all the States presented with facing this type of welcoming challenge: Israel comes to mind for example... is the principle of inhumanity, i.e. the lack of humanity when considering other people. There is a de-personalization, dehumanization of the human mass currently on the move, as if it were one thing, one process, as if it were, I don’t know... something that isn’t real, something to

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take on with financial statements, like mad cow disease, I don’t know... something that doesn’t work... against which to legislate. So, there is a totally inhumane outlook in confronting this event.

She then adds that the inhumane nature applies to institutions as well, and that this reflects, naturally, on the Italian people, enabling the possibility of being “explicitly racist in the media, newspapers, and on TV” and legitimizing “even day-to-day inhumane behaviours.” She initially speaks of a disinterest of institutions but then she corrects herself: “it’s not a disinterest; it’s treating this phenomenon inhumanely.” She tackles the topic of sea crossings: “focusing the attention on the boatmen, on the human traffickers, looking for a scapegoat on this thing they want to be seen as the enemy, the new enemy.” No attempt is made to shift responsibility on something real: “the problem is not the trafficker, because if they didn’t exist there would be other ways; the problem is not the new form of slavery, there is no new slavery.” I ask her, at this point, why it should not be considered a new form of slavery. Her answer is as follows: It’s not slavery because you willingly give yourself over to a person, you pay a person; it’s illegal, but it’s called something different, it’s not called slavery: you pay someone. There are two consenting entities: I take your money in exchange for a service – even if you can’t call it service – I pay to reach the European coastline and then, once disembarked, there is no longer any form of relationship, no continuity, there is no slavery.

4.3   Blackness Across the Mediterranean The memories evoked here derive from a dialogical imagination (Bakhtin 1981) thanks to contact zones (Pratt 1992), either real or virtual, between people in diaspora and through different communication channels (Clifford 1994). Resulting from mobility (Clifford 1994, p. 330), these memories are directly connected to the colonial past (Braziel Mannur 2003) and concern those subject to the legacies and ritualizations of the constructs utilized by Europe for overseas governance (Gilroy 2000). The memories of the Black Mediterranean are diasporic as they originate from “contested spaces” and from positions “differentiated on the basis of class, gender, generation, sexual identity, and access to language” (Brah 1995, 189). The shared trait, like any diasporic memory, is duplicity, the reflection of a liminal subjective condition suspended between memories of

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home and being elsewhere (Dhaliwal 1994), but also the idealization of the return (Safran 1991), ambiguity (Sturken 1997), the definition of a creole, syncretic, hybrid identity (Gilroy 2000). From the perspective of the use of the past, as clarified by Matt Matsuda, these memories do not propose to objectively restore an event, but a “return to or repetition of recounted history” (1996, pp. 15–16) through the lens of difference. In short, the past is an archive of events and meanings from which to draw for a multiplicious and negotiated positioning (Bertman 2000) between yesterday and today, individual and collective, between recalling and forgetting, power and resistances, history and myth, trauma and nostalgia, conscious and subconscious, fear and desire (Hirsch Smith 2002; Faist 2010). Albeit these memories act via social frameworks (Halbwahs 1997 [1925]), they are consequential to the work of borders as an imposed subjectivity on those who wish to arrive in Europe. Inter-subjectivity is an instrument for the re-emergence of subordination as the result of various types of discriminatory practices: the positioning of people in zones of not-being, the subsumption of certain human beings to the black color of their (own) skin. The issue of imposed silence does not derive from not having a voice, but from the net of practices and discourse that have deafened subjectivities, from the invisibilization to the essentialism that the black person is subject to. The strategic function of the Black Mediterranean’s memories does not just relate to speaking up, but also to the manner in which silencing devices are confronted. These memories position subjectivities starting from the establishment of an otherness and the modalities with which this is produced in different times and spaces. In other words, the de-contextualization and anachronism within oral memories indicate that the account of a third space is being elaborated, defined “in excess” compared to the geography and language of borders, external to dichotomies, and taking into account the multiplicious positions of being-in-diaspora. The Black Mediterranean in composed of heterogeneous memories of a similar diasporic imagery, that is, the different discursive declinations of certain themes and symbols. Lampedusa is a physical and symbolic turning point in the Black Mediterranean: it is the first European land, in which crossing over produces a white geography on and for black bodies. Lampedusa—in the words of those who have set foot there or of those who have interpreted arrivals as a black Italian (Sarah)—is first and foremost Europe with all its forms of discrimination. In contrast to a European

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border that is occasionally at work beyond the continent’s physical boundaries—with the operations in the Mediterranean, the externalization of borders, or the more or less explicit agreements with autocratic regimes (Abdirashid)—the constellation of memories evoked by the diaspora talks to a transnational context. Asnai clearly refers to this, recounting a journey that crosses half of Africa, from Sudan to Libya, crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe, via Italy. Each step toward his goal happens on a global scale: that of the diaspora. Thanks to it, and to the support received from his uncle, Asnai successfully overcomes the obstacles. The Europe he imagines is not generic, but specific: it is Sweden or London; certainly not Italy, which is only a place of passing. In contrast to whiteness, a blackness is evoked that references past myths and symbols that become re-actualized. The slavery and colonialism memories serve to elaborate metaphors and reconnect one’s own subjectivity to other oppressed peoples of yesterday, but also to indicate a continuity of violence present within Italianness. While this point is common to all accounts, the geographical imageries of each subjectivity are different. Ali evokes the figure of slaves, a collective black entity deprived of speech, incapable of representing itself before white powers. “New slaves in the Mediterranean,” he states, but paying; in other words, individuals who, in order to free themselves of this status of inferiority, are forced to redeem themselves, as Amari remembers: being, perhaps no longer considered totally human, relegated to the condition of animals, of pre-humanity. In the hotspot of Lampedusa, similar happenings occur to those experienced in Libya, but in a perspective that appears more disquieting: the multiple black shades of bodies become the sign of ethnic absolutism mentioned by Paul Gilroy (2000). Whiteness imposes the subjectivization of bodies and their biopolitical management: it defines the geographical origin through the assignment of meaning to each shade of black. The resulting genealogy is used for the extraction of riches in Europe, as clarified by Belay. Black bodies are ideally transformed or reduced to arms and legs for underpaid or irregular jobs, as is the case for the tomato harvest in Brindisi. Memories are not necessarily counter-narrations (Foucault 1994)— which would imply the centrality of hegemonic discourse; they are, however, the outcome of strategic re-elaborations that derive from the evasion of black subjectivity with respect to physical and symbolic devices, and border narrations. The cases presented in the text are varied: Belay recounts working in the fields, distancing himself from visions of pity or black criminalization; that of Sarah which works off the movement of memories,

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personal of third parties, with the movement of her own body; Abdirashid connects, in the same story, subjective accounts to a plural narration inherent to those arriving from the Mediterranean. The Black Mediterranean’s memories are elaborated in an excess space of signification. This implies that, just as in the processes as in the allocation of meaning, something occurs that breaks national and European mechanisms that produce meaning. We need but think, for example, about the ways in which colonial and slavery imagery is conveyed via orality and song (Ali); to the sentiment felt by Amari at Lampedusa, which, through the act of remembering, translates into an emotion at the brink of fear and happiness; to the Italian genealogy of whiteness referred to by Sarah, produced by colonialism, and identified in the figure of Mussolini and his descendants. These memories intersect different fields: dreams, the acute memory of something that has been lived in first person, the accounts of third parties, and the imagery. The very ability to move beyond the fences that define each context is a source of inspiration to overcome the trials of the journey, but also the disappointment that is felt in Europe. It is the case for Ali and his illusion of becoming white after multiple efforts. The epilogue is only: “but our skin is black.” The dream of Europe vanishes, it is definitively betrayed and one can sink down to the point of negation of oneself as a human being, as Amari remembers, when feeling like an animal in a zoo. The nostalgia and the myth of a return, for Ahmed and many others, are also the symbol of the lack of satisfaction due to a condition that cannot be improved as is in inherently tied to Europe’s role. Lastly, the act of speaking up, harking back to a memory experienced directly by those who have left the Horn of Africa and embarked toward Europe, or shared via conversations and reflection for those born in Italy/ Europe, crystallizes on the theme of responsibility. It is the wars and arms trading that take apart the already delicate equilibria of African countries, that put thousands of people’s lives on the line, people whose only possibility, to continue to survive, is to leave. Once again, what appears blatant is the reflection of colonialism as the projection of something that is historically placed in a particular period, but that, at the same time, affects the formation of the present. It particularly concerns the rapport with African countries—all the sites along the migratory route from the Horn of Africa have been object of Italian conquest. But it also concerns the inhumane conditions imposed on men and women only as a result of being black, and not European. In conclusion, the topic of responsibility

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is developed by loosening the net of clichés that prop up xenophobic and racist motivations, according to which, for example, the culprits of the deaths between Europe and Africa are only the traffickers. Once again, what emerges is a global and diasporic shared memory that holds together all the different blocks of a war mosaic: from the arming of ISIS to the Twin Towers, from the attack on Iraq to that against Gaddafi’s Libya. The aim, of course, is to elaborate—through this geography of memory—a picture from which it might be possible to locate those responsible for the deaths in the Mediterranean, as absurd as they are daily, but also for the racializations, exploitations, discriminations of black people within Europe, and for the devastating conditions in the countries of the Horn of Africa.

Notes 1. We note the significant undertaking coordinated by Sandro Triulzi in Rome and across the national territory for the Archive of migrant memories: see the website www.archiviomemoriemigranti.net 2. Harraga is an Arabic term meaning “to burn.” In this case it is associated to those who decide to illegally enter Europe, symbolically burning their own document and, with it, their past in Africa and Asia. 3. C.A.R.A. is the Italian acronym for Centro di Accoglienza per Richiedenti Asilo (Welcome centres for asylum applicants). In Italy, there are seven additional such structures in Brindisi, Catania, Caltanissetta, Gorizia, Foggia, and Rome. From the end of 2015, additional centers were repurposed for the same function (Lampedusa, Trapani, Pozzallo, Taranto). 4. Italian exclamation: literally referring to the religious figure of the Madonna, and used in practice to mean “Wow!” or “Oh my!”. 5. Italian for “five-hundred.”

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Robinson, C. (1983). Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1(1), 83–99. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sanfilippo, M., & Corti, P. (2012). L’Italia e le migrazioni. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Saucier, P. K. (2014). Ex aqua: The Mediterranean Basin, Africans on the Move, and the Politics of Policing. Theoria, 61(141), 55–75. Schmidt, B. (2015). Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sciortino, G. (2004). Between Phantoms and Necessary Evils. Some Critical Points in the Study of Irregular Migration to Western Europe. IMIS, 24, 17–43. Stoler, A.  L. (1995). Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Other of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Sturken, M. (1997). Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Triulzi, S. (2015). Roaming to Rome: Archiving and Filming Migrant Voices in Italy. In E.  Bond, G.  Bonsaver, & F.  Faloppa (Eds.), Destination Italy. Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative (pp. 431–448). Oxford/Berne: Peter Lang. Triulzi, S. (2016). Empowering Migrants’ Voices and Agency in Postcolonial Italy. Critical Interventions. Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, 10(1), 58–70. Triulzi, S. (2017). 3 Ottobre. Giornata in memoria delle vittime dell’immigrazione. In Alessandro Portelli (a cura di), Calendario Civile. Per una memoria laica, popolare e democratica degli italiani, Donzelli Editore, Roma, pp. 251–265. Triulzi, S. (2018). I morti e i vivi. Il filo rosso che lega tante cose. Gli Asini, No. 49. Vanoli, A. (2017). Migazioni mediterranee. Un mare in cui si è riflesso il mondo. Roma: Castelvecchi.

CHAPTER 5

Geographies of Emotions

In a previous work, I introduced the concept of a “geography of emotions,” which I then attempted to problematize (Proglio 2019). My aim was to “bestow upon intersubjectivity the specific transgressive, out-of-­ place, floored positionalities” of migrants in Italy (p. 250). These theoretical reflections are grounded in an expansive debate on “figurations,” beginning with important scholarly reflections on the subject’s positionality, such as those of Donna Haraway (1984), Gloria Anzaldua (1987), Teresa De Lauretis (1999), and, more generally, those emerging within feminist debates. Rather than attempting to synthesize different theorizations, my aim was to explore various ways of decentralizing the gaze on the subject and to re-invent the role of subjectivity from multiple standpoints. Thus, my aim was to propel a shift from a unique and uniformed conception of a human being to one that embraces the complexity of the subject grounded in a wider critique of Europe and the West. This critique draws attention to the production of discourses that endorse a fixed and linear geography of the entire world that coincides with divisions drawn between states and nations, continents, regions, North and South, centers and peripheries, and norms and differences. As the geographer, Chiara Giubilaro, has pointed out in her insightful book (Giubilaro 2016), it is possible to trace the inception of mobility and the cultural turn to Out of Place (Said 1999). In this autobiographical work, Edward Said, a Palestinian theorist, positioned himself within the diaspora. © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_5

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It is within and alongside this story that Said builds a meticulous and composite affective geography, made of places and relationships but, above all, of dislocations: departures, arrivals, travels, farewells, and exile, experiences that more than any other would have left a mark on his life and his opera. Different dislocations are intertwined in the writing, scanning the narration and taking alive the tension between exile’s experience and sense of belonging, movement and roots, up to the last sentences of his tale. There, the reason of his dislocation is interiorized, insinuating to the body level and even deeper, into folds of subjectivity. (Giubilaro 2016, 9)

Following her discussion of Said’s affective geography, Giubilaro introduces different theories and perspectives that have been elaborated within the discipline of geography, proposing a genealogy of works. This genealogy encompasses John Urry’s Sociology beyond Societies (2000), the “new mobilities” paradigm that emerged within Lancaster University, and a myriad of contributions problematizing the role of space and mobility (e.g., Adey 2006; Hannam et  al. 2006; Fortier 2006; Franquesa 2011; Faist 2013; Massey 1991; Cresswell 2006). However, this illuminating debate does not seem to have impacted history. In seems to me that while many contributions have pursued an inquiry of mobility—focusing especially on migrations—at present, historical studies that take these inputs into account are lacking. Luisa Passerini, who has written the preamble to this book, led the research project based at the European University Institute in Florence I am involved in: this research project—as pointed out in previous pages of this book—explored the topic of the “mobility of memory” through investigations of the role of remembering in contexts of mobility. In her preamble to The Mobility of Memory: Migrations and Diasporas across European Borders, she stated that “[t]he expression ‘mobility of memory’ punctuated our exploration of a cluster of processes centering on visuality, mobility, and corporeality while conducting this research” (Passerini 2020). Clarifying the aim of the research group, she continued as follows: Our intention in situating the mobility of memory in the context of intersubjectivity was, first of all, to draw out the implications of the movements of memory between subjects engaged in the process of remembering: memory is mobile in the sense that it is created through exchanges between different subjectivities. (Passerini 2020)

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Drawing on this theoretical insight on the relationship between memory and mobility, in this chapter, I will raise questions about what I refer to as the “geography of emotions,” which is an imaginative geography encompassing perceptions of different spatialities and temporalities and dealing with shared ideas of the world.

5.1   The Autonomy of Migration and Counter-Geographies As Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson observed in Border as Method (2013), the border is a device that works to extract richness from bodies. While these debates on the border device are illuminating in a reconsideration of the role of borders in controlling mobility, my interest lies in questioning how people and subjectivities in diaspora elaborate a vision of the world that does not correspond to the official geography produced by nation-states, with walls, frontiers, checkpoints, police controls, and barbed wire. To talk about counter-geographies means to affirm various things. The first is a notion of geography elaborated by migrant people during their journeys or when they decide to move to Europe that does not correspond with the official conception. Arguing from a perspective of “autonomy of migration,” Papadopoulos, Stephenson, and Tsianos (2008, 202) clarified that this approach “does not, of course, consider migration in isolation from social, cultural and economic structures. The opposite is true: migration is understood as a creative force within these structures.” In his chapter in The Contested Politics of Mobility (Mezzadra 2011), Sandro Mezzadra made the following point: [T]o engage with the autonomy of migration thus requires a ‘different sensibility’, a different gaze, I would say. It means looking at migratory movements and conflicts in terms that prioritize the subjective practices, the desires, the expectations, and the behaviours of migrants themselves. (Mezzadra 2011, 1)

The “autonomy of migration” approach focuses on conflicts that arise between the border regime and migrants’ experiences. My intention is to adopt this gaze in considering oral sources from a historical perspective. In particular, my aim in outlining a complex geography of the world based on emotions is to focus on the role of subjectivity. If, as various disciplines, such as anthropology, psychoanalysis, and history hold, emotions are

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cultural constructions (Petri 2012), then it becomes possible to unpack the canonical idea of desire (e.g., to reach Europe or to find another house), entailing a myriad of feelings that are based on relationships, contacts, behaviors, insights, dialogues and tales, representations and imaginaries. From this perspective, to talk about illegal migrant crossings as the consequences of a counter-geography is reductive. Moreover, a second topic emerges, namely that of migrant people’s struggle against the border device conceptualized in terms of a subjectivity that relates to many human beings with assigned positionalities in terms of race, gender, class, place of arrival, and so forth. Counter-geographies could be applied as a plural declination of the formula to account for the multiple diverse ways of elaborating other geographies. However, from this perspective, the use of the term “counter” to represent a large and diverse assortment of intentions and practices for illegally crossing borders is also questionable.

5.2   Theorizing a “Geographies of Emotions” I conceive of the “geography of emotions” as an intersubjective field where migrants and diasporic individuals reconfigure the world. In doing so, I begin by considering those theoretical approaches that have problematized subjective insights within the discipline of geography. The first theoretical framework is that of David Harvey, who in 1973 proposed the concept of a “geographical imagination” for examining the close connection between narrative production and the meaning of a place. Harvey explained this type of imagination as follows: This imagination enables the individual to recognise the role of space and place in his own biography, to relate to the spaces he sees around him, and to recognise how transactions between individuals and between organisations are effected by the space that separates them. It allows him to recognise the relationship which exists between him and his neighborhood, his territory, or, to use the language of the street gangs, his ‘turf’ . . . it allows him to fashion and use space creatively and to appreciate the meaning of the spatial forms created by others. (Harvey 1973, 24)

Harvey’s insights on “geographical imagination” are derived from the ideas of other scholars, such as Brian Berry, John T. Coppock, William Bunge, Eliot Hurst, and Peter Kropotkin. In 1978, Edward Said adopted a similar concept to describe the production of narratives concerning the

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past that were shared by European nations and used to justify their conquests of other (non-European) countries. These discourses were shared among people who had the same beliefs and cultural backgrounds and propagated in media, such as newspapers, literature, and the arts. In Orientalism, Edward Said described imaginative geographies as the outcome of a triangulation of power, knowledge, and cultural productions. He wrote: It is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality. A group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land and its immediate surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call ‘the land of the barbarians’. In other words, this universal practice of designating in one’s mind a familiar space which is ‘ours’ and an unfamiliar space beyond ‘ours’ which is ‘theirs’ is a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use the word ‘arbitrary’ here because imaginative geography or ‘our land–barbarian land’ variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough for ‘us’ to set up these boundaries in our own minds; ‘they’ become ‘they’ accordingly and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different form ‘ours’. (Said 1978, 54)

Derek Gregory, who was influenced by Said, and also by Michel Foucault and Edward Soja, developed his own conception of an imagined geography, focusing on the relationship between spatiality and memory. In Geographical Imaginations (1994) and Imaginative Geographies (1995), Gregory applied Said’s terminology and concepts to problematize the role of subjectivity in space. He sought to advance the discussion on geography, describing it as the “will-to-power” disguised as the “will-to-­ map.” He conceived of “imaginative geography” as a generalized practice entailed in the construction of the identity and deployment of the Other through representations of forms of otherness. Accordingly, the production of narratives is based on certain aspects that Said did not pay much attention to, such as anxiety, desire, and fantasy. Viewed from a wider lens, imaginative geography constitutes a specific way of representing non-­ European subjects. Said explains this as follows: The imaginative geographies that were used to display the Middle East were different from those that displayed South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America, for example, and the power of their representations—their

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e­ ffectivity in devising, informing and legitimating colonial practices —was guaranteed by more than metropolitan assertion. (Said 1978, 454)

In an essay published in Critical Inquiry (2000), Said focused on the connections between invention, memory, and place. Memory and its representations touch on “questions of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority” (Said 2000, p. 176). It is not “a neutral exercise in facts and basic truths”; rather, “the study of history, which of course is the underpinning of memory […] is to some considerable extent a nationalist effort premised on the need to construct a desirable loyalty to and insider’s understanding of one’s country, tradition, and faith” (Said 2000, p. 176). Memories of the past are “shaped in accordance with a certain notion of what ‘we’ or, for that matter, ‘they’ really are” (Said 2000, p.  177). Following his introductory remarks about Invention of Tradition (1983), edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, Said extends his reflections to the use of the past in the public sphere: My point in citing all these cases is to underline the extent to which the art of memory for the modern world is both for historians as well as ordinary citizens and institutions very much something to be used, misused, and exploited, rather than something that sits inertly there for each person to possess and contain. Thus, the study and concern with memory or a specifically desirable and recoverable past is a specially freighted late twentieth-­ century phenomenon that has arisen at a time of bewildering change, of unimaginably large and diffuse mass societies, competing nationalisms, and, most important perhaps, the decreasing efficacy of religious, familial, and dynastic bonds. People now look to this refashioned memory, especially in its collective forms, to give themselves a coherent identity, a national narrative, a place in the world, though, as I have indicated, the processes of memory are frequently, if not always, manipulated and intervened in for sometimes urgent purposes in the present. (Said 2000, 179)

Derek Gregory observed that “the past is always present, of course, in precarious and necessarily partial forms: it has material presence, as object and built form, as archive and text, and it also haunts the present as memory and even as absence” (cited in Elden et  al. 2011, pp.  314–315). It could be said that the past is always fragmentary and that it casts shadows over the present. In Gregory’s theoretical framework, the past is continually reconstructed and interrogated: it is the outcome of what Donna Haraway has termed “situated knowledge,” that is, the space “in which

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and through which knowledge is produced” (Haraway 1984, 320). Gregory noted that his conception resonated with Haraway’s contention that every bit of knowledge is produced by someone from somewhere. Moreover, he suggested that horizons could only be fused through conversation: the interactions between two subjects and the resulting intersubjectivity serve as a tool for doing so. Harvey, Said, and Gregory each attempted in different ways to explore ways of considering the past as symbolic places where the coupled notions of the self and Other could be recognized and distinguished through fragments of memory gleaned from narratives. They showed how each subject selects and uses a portion of a public memory for their own ongoing representational process, elaborating their position in relation to a group and to the entire world. As Said has pointed out in many of his works, this kind of process seeks to impose a representation—and indeed hegemony—on the rest by the West. My epistemological assumption is that this process entails the operation of a complex machinery that has invented the role of the West in inventing the Other, using colonial categories to impose power on bodies and lands existing outside of European borders. The role of memory seems to be relevant in sharing a similar perception of what exists outside of the norm—here though as ways to belong to the Europeanness. From another perspective, such narratives became part of an archive that was continually reshaped around the question of where to position the Other, as in the case of border devices. Thus, the colonial legacy can be conceptualized both as an organized system of narratives and as a practice for interrogating the attribution of subjectivity to some people who are considered not-Europeans in terms of how race, gender, class, beliefs, and practices are intertwined in the archive. Adopting different research paths, Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith have attempted to problematize the relation between emotions and geography. In Emotional Geographies they reconsidered geography through emotions, which, they argued, matter: “They affect the way we sense the substance of our past, present and future: all can seem bright, dull and darkened by our emotional outlook” (Davidson et al. 2007, p. 1). Here, the conception of emotional geography is dynamic, transformed by age, and types of relationships. The goal is to elicit evidence that the application of a spatially engaged approach for investigating emotions is capable of “bringing new insights to geographical research” (Davidson et al. 2007, p.  2). However, the concept of “emotional geographies” should not be understood narrowly because emotions slip through and between

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disciplinary borders. Bondi, Davidson, and Smith clarified that their goal was not to propose another subdiscipline; rather, their intention was to introduce a new question about the relevance of emotions in defining the spatiality and temporality of certain places. This kind of gaze has important consequences for reconceptualizing, in historical terms, mobility in dialogue with memory. Specifically: Much of the symbolic importance of these places stems from their emotional associations, the feelings they inspire of awe, dread, worry, loss or love. An emotional geography, then, attempts to understand emotions— experientially and conceptually—in terms of its socio-spatial mediation and articulation rather than as entirely interiorized subjective mental states. (Davidson et al. 2007, p. 3)

By introducing emotions as a relevant topic in the study of the production of space, these authors have contributed significantly to changing the geographic paradigm. Several scholars have contributed to the “emotional turn,” as it has been described within the discipline of geography. They have examined a wide range of emotional experiences, such as phobias (Bankey 2002; Davidson and Smith 2003; Davidson 2003), psychotic illnesses (Parr 1999), the relation between anorexia and cyberspace (Dias 2003), and the role of the body in the construction of space (Bell and Valentine 1997; Crewe 2001; Colls 2004). All of these scholars, influenced by the seminal work of Davidson et al. (2007), have investigated the role of subjects or groups in a particular sociocultural context. Differing from the above-mentioned authors, I have adopted an oral historian approach that preserves and foregrounds a historical perspective to garner insights on various subjectivities. This approach, I suggest, brings forth an understanding of how shared emotions of yesterday, today, and tomorrow can be indicative of another kind of geography that stems—in the case of this study—from the condition of being in diaspora. Consequently, it may be possible to consider socio-spatial mediation and articulation as the expression of oral memories; of the intersubjective field. In line with this approach, I would like to shift the focus on the relationship between subject to subjectivity for the following reasons. First, a focus on the connection between subject and subjectivity not only enables the movements of memory to be mapped in chronological and spatial terms but also sheds light on the historical production of new temporalities. This framework enables me to unpack a new geography as elaborated

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by the subjects during the interview process. Second, this gaze facilitates an investigation of how shared memories of migration and/or diaspora connect places, people, and memories, disclosing another representation, perception, and experience of the world. This double attention to subject and subjectivity can, on the one hand, reveal how the mobility of memory precedes the movement of people and is developed as a shared memory within a specific group (based on national or ethnic origins, gender, and/ or skin color), with the specific goal of accomplishing a migrant project. On the other hand, the meeting between two subjectivities enables a new mapping of the geography of a migration, highlighting the relevance of emotions for characterizing a place. My use of the term “geographies of emotions” refers to the way in which shared memories of an emotion connect subjects to a place (e.g., Lampedusa), a crisis situation, or a social condition (i.e., refugees or so-­ called illegals in Europe), revealing how they affect the intersubjective sphere, reshaping, mostly indirectly, the canonized geography of Europe. From the perspective of memory, the process—grounded in the intersubjective field—engages with human geography, considered as a space of dialogue, connection, and mobility for subjects. The geography of emotions is both a perspective and a method for investigating how (inter) subjectivity—and the use of memory—can reshape places, relationships, and representations. Here, it seems important to delineate some characteristics of memory and to examine the approach for investigating intersubjectivity in the production of an historical narrative. Concerning the first point, many scholars have identified relevant properties of memory in diaspora, such as the condition of being out of place in the new context of arrival, the idea of returning home after an extended period of time spent in Europe, and a perception of being split into two, or, alternatively, feeling a double absence (Sayad 1999). My intention is to focus on memory as the output of an interaction between two or more subjectivities. Accordingly, I will not consider the roles of memory in leading migrant people across borders and “climbing over” frontiers and checkpoints or crossing mountains and seas. Nor will I focus on the question of how memory is shared and through what channels. Instead, I would like to explore memory as the originating source from which an imaginary of the whole world is sketched out through orality and recurring emotions. From this perspective, emotions can be viewed as immediate and important tools for trying to find a safe way to reach Europe during the journey from the Horn of Africa, or,

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if the person was born in Europe or arrived during a particular period, to try to find a position from which to face discrimination, racism, and xenophobia. In this chapter, I will attend to several fragments of memory elaborated during the journey or in Europe, and I will attempt to reconstruct some parts of the imaginary that are based on emotions and give rise to a new geography. Before proceeding further, I would like to emphasize the importance of attending to the role of subjectivity in the evaluation and interpretation of oral sources and, especially, of emotions. Acceptance of the view that emotions are cultural constructs makes it possible to develop a critique regarding the dominance of a European gaze over other typologies of feelings that have not been adequately explored in Europe or, more generally, in the West. Many anthropological investigations have demonstrated the connections between language, words, and meanings, particularly in relation to a state of mind within non-European societies. I draw attention to this important topic, sharing my reflections on the role of the investigator and scholar during and prior to an interview in the process of interpreting oral sources. There are many possible ways of doing this. Two, in particular, stand out. The first entails the view that it is only possible to understand emotions expressed by individuals who share a common background. Accordingly, talking about migrant people whose backgrounds differ is not appropriate. This approach produces a field wherein knowledge production is divided in terms of positionalities, that is, it is divided along the lines of color and societal differentiations, for example, gender and age used in everyday life. The second approach is more challenging and relates to the complexity of the society. Oral sources, in particular, are highly sensitive because their meanings extend beyond what is actually said. Pointing to a mismatch between what is said and what is meant opens up a wide range of questions about the possibility of fostering a dialogue among different cultures in history. I have chosen to delineate the landscape of meaning within the field of intersubjectivity, attempting to render an interpretation—my own interpretation—regarding the sources produced along with the interviewees. In this sense, the construction of a “geography of emotions” is an ongoing process in which the interpreter must listen before speaking and problematize before interpreting. Accordingly, this geography entails an oral history of the diaspora moving from the Horn of Africa to Europe.

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5.3   A Geography of Fragments: Emotions in Diaspora Commencing from the theoretical reflections laid out in the previous section, in proposing a geography of the diaspora that extends from the Horn of Africa to Europe, I will attend to fragments of memory that are infused by and highlight the role of emotions. These fragments are not representative of a unique vision of the world, namely that of people coming from or culturally connected to the Horn of Africa. However, they emerged within a dialogue between the interviewees and other people in an intersubjective field, conveying important insights about the world and mobility. Accordingly, these cultural memories are part of a social process imposed by Europe on migrant people, or, through a reversal of perspective, they become ways through which migrant people discover a sense of self and community to counter discrimination, racism, and marginalization. This understanding of cultural memories resonates with Maurice Halbwachs’ (1997) concept of collective memory through the social positionalities of subjects as well as Assmann’s discussion of diaspora. It is applicable to the condition of all subjects who are not citizens according to EU and national rules. 5.3.1  Homeland as Lost Land One of the main recurring narratives emerging from my interviews concerned the place of arrival and the idea of home. I use the phrase “idea of home” because all of the interviewees attempted to describe a specific aspect of their condition before they undertook the journey to Europe. As several scholars have noted, subjectivity is responsible for the portrayal of an idyllic condition that is irrevocably lost when the individual embarks on the path to migration. As I have attempted to show throughout this book, each oral memory is directly connected with subjectivity, and the idea of the place of arrival, or, for those born in Europe, the place associated with a cultural background, is a direct consequence of this relationship. The same “geography of emotion” is envisioned from two different perspectives. For individuals in the Horn of Africa facing the journey to Europe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia are connected to a memory that is experienced directly. However, others, by contrast, are symbolically linked to these countries through a shared memory of a past associated with peace and independence, freedom and equality. Sonia, who we have already met

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in previous chapters, pointed to the difference between real and imagined places. She subsequently produces a genealogy of places in Eritrea that were directly linked to her family. She explained: “Asmara, my father’s city, the city of my family. . . I had the opportunity to visit this city: it was hugely emotional; I felt a definite sense of belonging.” She continued: Then, there is Keren, my grandmother’s city; my father always talked about that and, while I never visited it, the perception is so vivid; then, Massawa . . . I visited it; and then Ledalak, an incredible paradise that I would like to visit again for its sea bottoms now that I have a snorkeling license.

Salem, who we have met in Chap. 3, was born in Eritrea and lives with her family in Bologna. She stated: I would like to visit my village again . . . because it is the place where I grew up, where I spent important years of my life. When I was eight or nine [years old], I was in this small village where I knew all of the people: everyone knows everything about everyone; everyone knows who you are; everyone scolds you . . . but this is the routine. My childhood: to play in the mud, on the ground, with the animals. I remember that moment with love; my small home.

Robert is older than Sonia and Salem: he was born in Asmara in 1979. His memory of Eritrea differs from theirs, touching on the colonial heritage. He talked about Asmara and “78,” his neighborhood, whose name stems from the city’s Italian colonial heritage. During the colonial period, there was a military camp. Italians lived there; there was a battalion. When they left our country, the name of the regiment remained. Most of Asmara is like that, with Italian names. For instance, there is a zone called Tiravolo. Tiravolo was the shooting range. At this point in the interview, I asked him to explain to me why this place is so beautiful and important for him. “Because I love to remember [the times] when I was child,” he replied. Imed, who was born in 1945 in Eritrea, shared a similar story. His remembered place was also connected to colonization. I was a child, I was three or four . . . there was a field close to my house. And many English soldiers were gathered together. It was the great retreat of Great Britain. So, an image remained in my mind. I was with my father watching what happened. There was a cableway. When I was in that place I

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remained to see items from the port to Asmara. I was stuck by that infrastructure. Before leaving, the English soldiers dismantled and demolished it all.

I asked him why they did that and what his reaction was to this kind of operation. “I asked my father the same thing. He replied that it was because they wanted the Eritrean people to remain in a condition of non-­ development.” He confessed to me that the image remained in his mind, signifying his country and its relationship to Europe. He was highly disturbed by this action. When he went to school and started to study English, he felt angry about being forced to study the language of the colonizer. The mental image of what he had experienced with his father remained at the back of his mind along with each word that he learned. Ahmed, a Somali doctor aged seventy years, who was living in Bologna, shared with me his memory of home. There are two places. . . where I grew up. . . The first one is close to Mogadishu; it is Kirkar in the Johab area. Italians called this place Villa Duca degli Abruzzi. For us it is Johab, 100 to 150 kilometers away from Mogadishu. It is the place where I started to work as a doctor. I worked for nine to ten years. In that place, I started to know about pathologies, to understand people’s needs. One effect of colonialism was to change the names of places. It is not about going to the moon. . . African cities have always existed and had names. I think it is wrong to change the name of a city or a place based on which nation comes. . . Italians, English people, or others. I asked him what the second place was. It is Mogadishu, because it is the place where I was born, grew up. After my job finished in Johab, I went back home. It was the place where my family lived, my father, my sons, my parents. . . where I started to work in Dek Farluk hospital, teaching students at the medical university. Then, around 1990, the war exploded. In 1993, I left everything and escaped first to Kenya and later to Egypt, and finally came to Italy.

As previously noted, Meron escaped from Sawa, the military headquarters. He reached Italy via the Mediterranean route. I love my home town where I was born. Right now, my father, my mother, my sisters and brothers live in that place. I miss everything. Some years before, there was the opportunity to come back. Saying some lies, you had

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the possibility to meet your parents and your country. Right now, it is impossible. From the moment when I left the country, I decided not to go back home. I don’t like the government because is a dictatorship. And I say dictatorship in the real sense. So, if you are against the government, you do not have the right to come back home. Until the dictatorship ends, I will not see my country, my home . . . up to the [start of] democracy.

I tried to steer the interview toward the field of emotion, requesting him to tell me about a beautiful place in his town. “Where my mom is” was his response. “Sanafe,—he continued—is the place where I studied, until I was 17.” His state of mind was importantly linked to his emotions. “My emotions, I remember all. . . that life is over. Here, I feel isolated because I am not well integrated. It is not possible to be integrated 100%. I remember all, and I really would like to find all, when I get back home.” Mohamed, who was born in 1988, comes from a mixed family. His mother is from Somalia and his father is Italian. He lives in Bologna. His favorite place is the city where he currently lives. When we talked about Somalia, his reaction was striking. He has visited the country twice: in 1990, when he was a baby and when he was twelve years old. “When I arrived, I found it difficult to communicate. I did not speak Somali fluently. But my grandfather—because of colonialism—learned Italian. So, I had a chance to get him to recall some forgotten words.” He then started talking about Somalia: “Somalia, for me, was like a book with white pages. I had to write that book. I had no prejudices. I was anxious about health conditions in the country. And I thought about what I could or could not eat.” He told me about an incident that happened when he was with his cousin, who was five years old at the time. This incident concerned a truck, which the boy’s mother had bought after many years of saving up for it. He was happy about this meeting, but at a certain point, he banged against the side of the truck, injuring his head. At that point, the entire village tried to do something for me. There was a meeting with many people. They came to pray for me: they wanted me to be healed. I remember that meeting: I was seated at the center. There were a lot of people praying on their carpets. There was incense and traditional items. It was a wonderful experience: those people didn’t know me and yet, they spent their time trying to help me, invoking their God. That experience touched me: I started to understand a part of those humble people.

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During my stay in Bologna, I had the opportunity to interview Gabriella Ghermandi, the most important and influential Italo-Ethiopian novelist in Italy. She wrote a novel titled Regina di fiori e di perle, which focuses on Italian colonization through the stories of an Ethiopian community, blending myths and oral narratives, memories and archetypes of a past, and violence inflicted on Ethiopians and their resistance. My favorite place is Arba Minch, a place south of Addis Ababa. It means ‘forty sources’. A long time ago, it was a small village. Today is one of the most important places in southern Ethiopia. When I was young, I don’t suppose there was a paved street. And during the night, one could hear lions roar.

I expressed my astonishment on hearing this: “Oh gosh! Real lions?” This exclamation prompted her to share a story with me. I have a very funny story. Once, someone called for my father urgently. There was a lioness in a stable. She attacked and killed a cow. My father had a rifle, which he used it when doing his job at the lake’s jetty. In that area there are navigable lakes. And there are many crocodiles. People doing the same job as my father had two ways of killing a crocodile: they used a wicker wine bottle, similar to the one [used for] Chianti, filled with dynamite or they shot it. So, my father went the stable and unfortunately killed the lioness. But behind her, a crocodile appeared. He succeeded in capturing the lioness in our garden.

This story appears to be connected to a genealogy of memory; following her recollection of this incident, Gabriella began to share her feelings, saying, “this place is wonderful.” She continued: There is a place between the two lakes called Paradise’s Hill. The Italian explorer, Bottero, named the two lakes Rodolfo and Margherita. And then, there is a forest with forty water sources within it. It is magnificent! I remember we went to the forest when we were young. We had no water, at all. Therefore, we went there to take a bath. I remember the taste of that water: it is so good! I return to that place in order to drink the water. There are big butterflies. Another place she loves is the Illibabur region, close to the city of Gore. During the era of the dictatorship, the Commonwealth made an agreement with the Ethiopian government regarding the farms: forty-nine percent of profits went to the Commonwealth and fifty-one percent to the

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Ethiopian government. Because of this agreement, many plantations have been created. One of these plantations is named Gummarotti. It is operating even now. My father procured a contract to build workers’ houses (4000 workers with their families). He spent a lot of time in that place; some years. I went there during holidays. It was a crazy place; there were Colobus apes, Buleza ones. In this thick forest, they swung all day from tree to tree. And so, I have to say that important places in Ethiopia, for me, are those places linked to nature. Arba Minch is the place I dreamt about for one year after I arrived in Italy. I dreamt almost every night about taking a plane to go back there. But the plane was not able to land, so, it took me back [to Italy]. And I woke up crying; it was a sign of nostalgia.

Kidane was born in 1962 in Eritrea. He arrived in Italy in the 1990s to study at the University of Bologna, where he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine. He subsequently decided to open a restaurant named Adal African Restaurant. He told me: “My favorite place is my home, where I was born and grew up. I remember the plantation created by my father, where there were lots of fruits and vegetables. It was tropical Africa. I have all of these images in my mind as they are part of me.” I requested him to say something more about the place, and he continued: The name of the city is Cheren. It is a beautiful city. It is unique from the geographical point of view. Observing Cheren, you can find mountains— there is a valley with three mountains and a river. It was an Italian fortress during the time of colonialism—we can say.

“So, you were child in this wonderful place,” I observed. Following my statement, he began to retrace the trajectory of his life based on temporality as well as the spaces that he had crossed. I was born in 1962. Until the age of nine, I lived with my parents. After that, I went to study in Asmara at a seminary. When I was nineteen years old, I moved to Bologna to study medicine. I obtained my graduation. Then, when I was graduating I thought of the possibility of opening an ethnic restaurant. I tried and fortunately . . . I was afraid because the taste of this type of cuisine was so different from Italian flavors. But it was a success.

Fortuna is a young woman living in Bologna. She was born in Eritrea in 1992. She began by telling me about her name: “My grandmother decided on Fortuna. She took the word from Italian. Then they gave me

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a first name, an Eritrean one, Iwot, which means ‘life.’ ” She spoke of the condition of her mother who was not married. Consequently, she grew up with her grandparents. She then mentioned some key dates: 1996 was the year when her mother came to her, crossing the Eritrea–Ethiopia border; in 2003, she received the documents permitting her to move to Italy and arrived in Bologna. I remember almost everything. I was young. I remember my uncles, my grandmother, my cousins. We all lived together. My uncle was a farmer. Young boys went to work in the cultivated fields; young girls remained at home with our grandmother to prepare coffee. In the morning I went to school; in the afternoon, I got back home and played all the time or I prepared coffee with my grandma.

When I asked her if she had a mental image of favorite place, she replies with a laugh: “my home.” . . . Keren, the second most important city in Eritrea. Before reaching Keren, you have to pass through a small town called Antalya—I lived there with my grandparents. And my grandmother’s family lived in Keren. So, we very often—because there was the telephone line—went to Keren to call our mom. My mom called from there—in Bologna—and my grandmother’s brother, who owned a shop with a telephone, gave us the opportunity to talk with her. So, if you ask me what my favorite place is, I can say also that place, that house. I was attached to that place because it connected me with my mom. And, of course, I remember my small town.

Gaber was born in Eritrea in 1975 and has lived in Bologna since he was thirteen years old. I love Asmara: the city remains in my mind. I lived there up to the time when I was twelve. So, I can’t forget it. I was happy, I was calm. It is impossible to regain that peace. I spent nine years here. There is not a single day which is similar to one in Eritrea. My country is fabulous for its weather, for its prosperity. We are not poor people, we sustain ourselves with agriculture.

I ask him about a specific, singular place in his memory. His response was “where I went with my sheep, my cows, in the mountains.” His recollection continued:

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They [all of his animals} remained in my heart . . . in my thoughts. I don’t want to live forever outside of my country. I would like to get back home because it is possible to develop a project. One can live in a relaxed way, with respectful, religious, welcoming people. I remember, in particular, the church where I went to pray. There are also many fests each evening. I remember a small shop where I went each evening to drink something. Because in the evenings, I did not sleep, I spent time playing with my friends.

I met Antar Mohamed, another important Somali writer, who co-­ authored the novel, Timira with Wu Ming II, close to Piazza del Nettuno in Bologna. I did not visit all of Somalia because it is a big country. We didn’t have cars, and public transport is not efficient. I am connected to the city where I was born and grew up. I am particular connected to Mogadishu because today that Mogadishu no longer exists. There is a Somali artist, Kinsi Kudo, who compiles and compares photographs of yesterday and today in Somalia. I have an emotional connection to my city, which has totally disappeared. So, I can’t imagine how young boys born during the civil war can know something about their city; it is so difficult.

At this point, I asked him whether this feeling of being connected to a memory of a lost place is something that all Somali people feel. He replied as follows: Yes, I think so. I can say that there is a generational problem. People born in the seventies, that is, those who are now forties, feel the same emotion. People born after that time, like in the nineties, do not have this memory and way of thinking. On the contrary, the generations born in the seventies—I can say up to the eighties—have this memory. I believe the break is the war . . . before and after the war. Before the war, that imaginary was shared with young people. Today, none of my school friends live in Somalia. Someone lives in Kenya or someone else in Addis Ababa. Some weeks ago, a friend of mine got to know that I had presented my book to the European University Institute in Fiesole. She wrote to the organizer in order to ask if it was possible to obtain my contacts. She lives in Ottawa, her mother in Adelaide . . . her sister in Kenya. . . . So, [there are] three people in three [different] parts of the world with the same memory, which is also my memory.

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5.3.2  Journeys as Metaphors of Feelings Another common topic emerging from the oral interviews was the idea of the journey. This idea is not only connected to physical mobility going from one place to another. More generally, this kind of memory has a metaphorical meaning. Many people—and almost all of the interviewees—pointed out that the journey is linked to a condition of being out of place, at home and in the destination. Just like the idea of home, this fragment of memory is characterized by emotions. In previous chapters of this book, I have discussed the topic of the Black Mediterranean, and, more generally, I have problematized the theme of travel to Europe in terms of a human mobility, considering and adopting a theoretical framework that posits the autonomy of migration. In the following section, my intention is to describe the continuing journey as a sequence of feelings after individuals reach their destination. Angela/Malaika observed that the idea of traveling to Europe has changed a lot in recent decades: “When I arrived to Milan, in 1975, people decided to reach Europe in order to study. Today it is for another reason; for saving themselves.” She traced a chronological itinerary relating to Somalia in which she situated AFIS, toxic affairs connected to Ilaria Alpi’s death and the impoverishment of the country, and the incipient role of Islamists. Europe needs young people for some jobs. In fact, its population is becoming older. . . . They [the owners] pay migrants very little and exploit them. They throw them in slums. Somali people arriving in Europe have decided to remain in the continent. They try to cross Italy in order to reach Northern countries where there is better welfare. If you look around, you can find young people—Ethiopians and Eritrean, and also Somalis—on the street, doing nothing and victims of everything.

Nurta—who we have met in previous chapters—confirmed what Angela had stated in her interview. Young people today try to reach Europe in order to change their life. They are ready to take leaky boats. They do not have Italy in their mind: they want to reach Europe. The West is fascinating for Somali people. They think money and cars are here.

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Describing her deep concern about what is happening in the Mediterranean and the condition of migrant people in Europe, Medhin wished to point to the Europeans as being responsible for the deaths, while at the same time acknowledging that “people flee from Eritrea because of the dictatorship; because they have no chance for their future.” Winta argued that “the future is in trying to escape.” She clarified this point as follows: “I know many young people in Eritrea. You can ask them, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?; They don’t reply saying, ‘I would like to be a doctor, a lawyer. . . they say to you: ‘I want to escape from this country.’” She then adds: “I am lucky to live in Italy. I always feel guilty. I know, I should not feel guilty, but it is difficult to accept that.” Kaha Mohamed Aden recalled her travels during the interview: “I felt so sad during Siad Barre’s regime. My father was in jail, in isolation. . . I had just finished high school, and I decided to leave the country; to leave Mogadishu. Because, because, because, because. . . many terrible and unfair facts happened in Somalia.” As previously noted, Kaha first attended the University of Perugia and then moved to Pavia. She spent a long period studying close to home. After that period, she started to appreciate Pavia: “Right now, I like Pavia because I like myself.” During her joint interview with her husband, Faaduma spoke about their journey. She stated: I arrived in Italy to study at the university in Turin. I had been in Italy three times because I worked as an administrator at a university in Somalia. Then, the civil war spread, And I decided to leave, without any further thought. I went to greet my parents, in Yemen, and then I came here to work. Sarah first worked as a domestic helper and later as a cultural mediator.

“They treated me with kid gloves. There was no racism. I had a good position: I worked with the rector.” Her husband, Mohamed, reached Europe after a daring and difficult trip through Dodasso, Yemen, Aden, and Digeré. He stated: “I never dreamt of coming here, of leaving my country. It was fate. We fled, and when one flees it is for saving oneself. And we saved ourselves.” These two different kinds of travel—namely that of Sarah and her husband—appear to indicate different perceptions of being in Europe as well as in diaspora. Cadigia undertook another kind of travel, escaping from Mogadishu because of her father’s political position, as noted earlier, and arriving in Padua with her family. Her trip to Italy

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from Somalia by boat was arduous, lasting twelve days. When she arrived in Padua, she first lived with her aunts. At school, she was discriminated against and called “nigger,” “dirty nigger,” and “Jew.” Someone asked her: “Where are you from?” She remembers being thought to be Italian. In Cadigia’s perception, her aunts were very strict and religious. “Because of that, I learned to write when I was only four years old.” Her aunts bought a red bicycle. My brothers were resentful about that . . . about all of this well-being. On the other hand, maybe I would have given up all of that to stay with mom, with my sons. So, I lived with a sort of abandonment feeling because I started to think why did my mother decide to renounce me rather than the others?

Abdirashid arrived in Padua when he was twenty-seven to study at the University. “I remember I did not think Italy was like that,” he stated. We did not have any prejudice against white people. When we arrived in Padua it was different. We were foreigners. When you walk on the street in Mogadishu, no one says to you, ‘look, a white person.’” There you are an alterity. For all of us, Italy was a second home.

Having identified his two preferred nations for migration—Italy and Egypt—he asserted that “we called Italy the place of God.” Ahmed, another Somali man whom I interviewed while writing this book, focused on the same topic analyzed by Abdirashid. “Italy is not Mecca,” he stated. He elaborated further: People in Somalia watch news about Europe on TV and on social networks. They have a specific imaginary: Europe is a wonderful and elegant place, with nice cars. In Somalia there is famine. One has to roll up one’s sleeves. One has to make sacrifices. And this is a call for people to emigrate. They think, ‘Look at that one, he fled and now he has a house, a car, and is nicely dressed. There we are all thin. The reason for migration is to have a better situation, to try to live better, to have more money.

At this point, he began to recall his journey and his perception of Italy: “At first, my idea was that Italians were perfect people. . .Then, I realized that this is not a Paradise. If you want something you have to work hard.

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And with this awareness, I realized that I am not a free man. They used me.” In particular, his polemic was against the condition of not really being a citizen in Italy because he was black and a migrant. Viviana Zorzato described her experience upon arriving in Italy. I understand, just now, what happened when I arrived in Italy. I lost all of my reference points. I was living in a new context. I was excited about this new life. I felt many differences when approaching other people. I had some difficulties talking with people who were my equals in age. I felt that there were different modalities of being in harmony.

She explained that this was not only a cultural problem: some experiences, such as wars and the economically difficult situation, impacted her identity. I felt floored. It seemed to me that I did not have a story; my aim was to keep my story confidential. I was unable to transcend the first approach whereby things happened because I felt that I was being slotted into a situation. For example, [people would say]‘Look, you are able to speak Italian.’ Because of some of the things that had happened to me, I felt so distant from Italy. In Eritrea, I felt closer to the Italian society and culture.

Raha, a Somali woman living in Padua, connected the idea of the journey with her family. “I came here because of a difficult childbirth at home in 1985.” She had Davide in a private hospital in Somalia and then went home. Then, she decided to move to Italy because of the civil war. “And when I arrived to Italy, I never went back to Somalia.” Her memory of Mogadishu too centered on the idea of a wonderful home place which had been irrevocably lost. She described her daughter, Sonia, as an example of someone who had successfully integrated in Padua in terms of her job and social status. “Religion, African, and the Third World—all of these things are false; they do not exist.” This statement was intended to convey how difficult it was to live in a situation where people adopted some colonial imaginaries and discriminated against black people. In Somalia she worked at the University’s Faculty of Engineering. In Italy she found humble jobs with some Paduan families. “But I thought my children will never do these kind of jobs.” Her life project and aim was to raise “D.O.C. Paduan children.” She told me that she loved her children and defended Davide

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when another child at school started discriminating against him, using racist terms. “No tolerance,” she declared angrily, “no tolerance for these kinds of acts.” Mohamed decided to leave Somalia in 1963, some years before the country gained independence. He went to Padua to study and work. Some of his family members came from Yemen: there were several ascaros. “They [Yemenites] call us servants’ sons.” He graduated and won a fellowship in Italy and therefore decided to move to Italy. He stated that there were several important differences between his own migration and that of young people arriving now. I asked him if he could explain the reasons and why these differences were relevant. Today, they don’t know that Somalia was an Italian colony. There is tremendous ignorance. When I was at school, I remember, we knew all about nations, politicians, and capital cities. Today, young people don’t know anything at all about geography.

I then asked him how the idea of leaving that place changed. Look, the idea of leaving the country is always there in the public imaginary because that place is a hell. . .There are some neighborhoods in Mogadishu where there are no problems, especially along the city’s periphery, such as in a place called Scibis, a former Arab neighborhood.

After a pause, during which he remained silent, he continued: “Look, if I earn 10.000 euros a month there, I do not feel tranquil. . . Here, in Italy, there are things that you can’t find in Somalia.” Our dialogue continued on the topic of how Somali people are unable to find a good situation in Italy as the following exchange illustrates. Mohamed: Gabriele, do you understand? They come here . . . they can find a good economic situation . . . but they cannot find something good in terms of human relationships. One can have the [good] luck to make some friends in Italy . . . but everyday life is different from that in Somalia. Me: How has your idea of Italy/Europe changed from what it was when you arrived here? Mohamed: Now I will make you laugh. At the time, I had a professor. . . . That professor taught us that in Italy there are no flies or

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mosquitos. I started to think what a wonderful place! We were young, hence we believed a professor. I arrived in Italy with that idea in mind. As noted earlier, my entire interview with Enrico Zorzato centered on his relationship with his father, an Italian soldier, who fought in the war in Ethiopia. He postponed his departure because his father was not sure that he wanted to return to Italy. “We left home after five years of a trial run.” Enrico explained that his father considered himself a “white African” and regarded Africa as his home. “The good situation” relating to his departure was that immediately after Eritrea’s occupation by Ethiopia, there was still a consulate and the possibility of repatriating Italians. His father did not recognize the country that he had left behind so many years ago and felt out of place both in Roma and Padua. His feelings were very different. I decided to describe Italy to my parents in Eritrea using some images, such as those in postcards. I preferred to talk about Venezia and sent a postcard. I was not able to explain, to convey to them my sense of feeling empty regarding the fact of being born in a country with so many important emotions, of being uprooted and going to live. . . in a place with a different identity from Africa. The ‘longing for Africa’ exists; it is an objective feeling felt by my father and, right now, I clearly recognize it. My father never felt nostalgia for his country, at least not in an evident manner. On the contrary, he felt this emotion about years spent in Africa. The longing for Africa exists!

Robert told me about his journey to Italy. He reached Italy after a long trip, traveling through Africa and crossing the Mediterranean. This is also the main route from the Horn of Africa to Europe, as pointed out in Chap. 4 on the Black Mediterranean. Like other Eritrean men, he served as a soldier from 1997 to 2004 before deciding to escape. At the time when he made this decision, he was in Sawa. I was with three friends . . . and there were other people who decided to take the route with us. Alone, one does not have enough knowledge about Sudan, for instance. I knew I had to cross the desert, the darkness, and doing this with two other persons was better. But one has to be cautious when looking for someone to escape with because there are many spies. At the end of my research, I found two good persons and I began the journey to Sudan with them. I entered Sudan after four or five hours of walking, crossing the Eritrean–Sudanese border at Afiewu, a frontier city.

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I ask him to continue his story and to share his recollections of what subsequently happened. Our conversation proceeded as follows: Robert: Me: Robert:

Me: Robert: Me: Robert:

I spent one year and six months in Khartoum, after that. . . And what about Khartoum? Tell me something about that city and the situation there. Khartoum was fine; I would say better than where I was in Eritrea, where there were a lot of soldiers. Sawa is like a prison: one even has to ask to go piss. One has to ask permission. In Sudan it is different; there people are free. Al least, you can think what you want. In Eritrea, you cannot think. Then, you decided to leave to go to Libya. Is that right? Yes, from Khartoum to Libya. . . . to go to Libya? In Khartoum, it is easy because everyone wants to get to Libya. So, there are smugglers in internet cafés. You have to wait for their call. They call you, saying: “Look, I have the car. The journey starts there at this hour”. I met one of these persons. I was not afraid, because there are many Eritreans. I talked without any problems with him. The problem is the language, which is Arabic in Sudan. So, they hide you in a secret place. And you start the journey from this place. Four weeks after I left Eritrea, I had an ID card, which was given to me by UNO.  But Sudan police do not recognize this document. They may say, ‘This paper is false’ and throw you in jail before expelling you and sending you back to Eritrea. In Sudan, you do not have much time. You have to keep that in mind and quickly find a solution.

He explained to me that the police sometimes stop a person and ask them for their ID card. After spending some months in Khartoum, he began to work in an internet café. He explained that “Sudanese smugglers want someone Eritrean in the café. . . [They wanted me] because I spoke Eritrean and was useful for communicating with other Eritreans.” Many Eritrean people came to the café and said to him: “Look, I want to go to Libya. Please contact someone to help me reach Libya; give me a smuggler’s phone number.” Robert charged some money or packets of

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cigarettes for doing this work. Looking at me with a sad expression on his face, he told me: It was difficult, a bad situation. . . I felt disappointed. . . because no one knew about your situation. You could not talk to your family. You had to create a network of friends who would contact your family telling them if you were able to enter Libya. In 2006—May 25—we began our journey to Libya. After four or five days, we entered Kufra on the Sudan–Libya border. When you enter, whoever brought you to that place would sell you to someone else. First, they would say to you: ‘from here to Tripoli, you will pay 300 dollars.’ Then, when your car was changed, they would ask you for more money. You would say: ‘I already paid for that’ and their response to you would be “So, I am leaving you here.’ After that, you would start to realize that you were losing. If you had no money you would have to remain there. I knew that it was all pre-organized. After that, I and all the other people continued our journey together. I met many people without money. We arrived at our destination. We were twenty-seven people: I knew twenty of them from Khartoum. The smugglers left us with some Libyan people. One of them took me to his house where there were other people. I met other migrant people who said me they had no money. From this point on, you had to call someone on the phone; you have to send your ID to your parents asking for money. In Libya you could do nothing with your Eritrean ID. If you received money, you could continue your journey. They made you pay the number of days spent in their house. If you spent a week, you would have to pay for groceries for seven days. I called my mom, and I did not get her. I tried again, without success. I collected the money sent by my mother and cousins at the internet café. . . . I reached Tripoli after only three weeks. There are many people who remain there for a year.

After telling me how he overcame this hurdle, Robert began to talk about the journey by boat from Libya to Europe. I reached Malta first. Someone asked us if we would like to go ahead, if we needed water, food, and gasoline. They gave us all of these things. The products did not have labels. They helped you to continue the journey but were careful not to leave behind any trace. They helped you because by doing so, you wouldn’t stop in Malta. They gave me a flashlight. They followed us up to the border and afterward, they said ‘from this moment on, we cannot come with you.’ I saw their boat’s lights until we entered in the Italian sea area. We spent half an hour waiting. Many police boats arrived. They took us on board and brought us to Syracuse. We spent a night there

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and after that, they brought us to Caltanissetta, a refugee camp. After spending a month at that center, I received my papers permitting me to stay in Italy.

After he had shared that memory, our dialogue continued, touching on many topics, such as the condition of being a refugee community in Italy. He recalled: “My idea of Italy was a place where I could get a lot of money. There, on the contrary, everyone does not have houses; everyone does not have enough food, so one does not have all of the possibilities.” He felt betrayed by Europe, and his imaginary of the destination place has changed totally. Meron, whom we met in Chap. 3, made the same journey as Robert did from Sawa to Senafe, his hometown. During the interview, I asked him to draw a map of his journey to Europe. He decided to leave the country because of a social situation that he deemed unacceptable. He organized the trip with his cousin. During his twenty days of leave—he was a soldier—he escaped. He reached Senafe after walking for 350 kilometers and then continued on to Doaha, Adigat, Walanhbi, and Shire. Crossing the border to Sudan on a truck that was packed full of people was a particularly difficult experience. He finally arrived in Libya: first in Kufra, then continuing to Benghazi, and eventually reaching Tripoli. This is how he remembers his journey: Sawa, that’s where I was before getting to Sanafe. I had twenty days of leave, so I ran away. The distance is about 350 kilometers. From there, I crossed the border and arrived in Doha. . . My cousin was with me. This is where he lived in Asmara [pointing to a spot on the map]. He also wanted to escape. We left together. We crossed the border during the day at 14:13. No one was there. When I crossed, it was scary. I know the place, I know it. I asked around. They [soldiers] usually go to lunch around 1 to 3 p.m. Right after crossing the border, we ran into Ethiopian soldiers. A few years ago, we were at war with them. We were scared. But no, they hugged us and we were escorted to a police station. After leaving Adigrat we reached the Walanmbi refugee camp. My goal was to cross Sudan and the Sahara to get to Europe. So I only stayed there for five minutes. In Shire, you can have money wired to you from abroad or from someone who’s helping you out. As soon as you receive the money you can resume your journey. If you get hold of the smugglers and pay them $200, you can get to Sudan. From there, we reached the border with Sudan. They know the place; the Sudanese smugglers. Getting to Khartoum, the capital, was no easy feat. You have to pay a small sum to someone, or when you get on the bus. We took the bus. There

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are checks on the buses. So, you have this stub with your name on it and the reason why you are permitted to transit. They know that you are newcomer and they make you get off the bus. To avoid that, you pay a small sum and they let you though. We arrived in Khartoum and I spent a month there. Then, we set out on our journey to Libya. It was horrible. In the Sahara. . . [he maintains a moment of silence]. . . you see some bad stuff, you know, like corpses. You walk past the corpses on the ground. And many risk their lives: we were lucky that none of us died. But. . . you are this close to dying. Like on the fifth day, I was so tired. We had been on the road for four days, and we still had two more to go, but they didn’t know it. They kept saying, ‘it’s near; we’ll be in Libya in a few hours. Then they took everything we had: our clothes, our food and drink provisions; they took everything in exchange for a bit of water. They tainted our water: they put gasoline in it so we wouldn’t drink too much and spit it out; so we wouldn’t finish the water. When they were done taking everything we had, we resumed the journey. We travelled for one night and a whole day. And I ended up, I mean. . . I was really thirsty. For four days I had not eaten properly. So I fell to the ground. Right there. Then, thanks to someone who knew better, they gave me some sugared water and had me lie under the car, in the shade. And I felt a little better. There were others like me. Then, another day and another night on the road. On the second day we arrived; it was night time. We were worn out. You know, when you arrive in Libya there’s plenty of food; eating is not the problem. The problem with Libya is the people. I mean, they’re 100% Muslim; that’s their religion. If you are not Muslim, you’re fucked! And they try to exploit you; they take your money by force. That is the problem with Libya, not the food. Anyway, we arrived in Libya, here, where it says Tripoli [indicating the place on the map]. In Libya, in Kufra, there’s the border [pointing to the map]; here, before you get to Tripoli, there’s Benghazi [written on the map]. From there you get to Tripoli. When you cross the border, it gets really tough. They’re always trying to take advantage of you, taking your stuff, always talking about money. If you take the bus from there . . . there were not too many smugglers when I was there. . . If you manage to get there, you can tell them: ‘From now on I’ll go on my own; it’s okay.” But they know who you are, and if you take the bus, at some point they ask you to get off. Then someone sees you, and they screw you: ‘Hey, I’ll take you to Tripoli, just give me something.’ But when you’re halfway through. . . he stops here [pointing to a spot on the map], and he goes, ‘give me 200 Euro, or I’ll leave you here.’ There’s nothing there, just the Sahara; no houses, no trees, no nothing. Because Libya is all desert. You have no choice; they leave people there to die. You always keep some spare cash on you, and you use it when you are in trouble.

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After three weeks, he undertook the Mediterranean crossing, reaching Lampedusa. In Meron’s memory, Lampedusa is both a specific place and part of a transnational migratory path: From Tripoli onwards, finally some light, you go to the beach and [from there] you get to Europe. The last journey. It took me forty-five days [writing on the map as he speaks], then I left. I was lucky; I got there on my first attempt. I arrived in Lampedusa, here in Italy [pointing to a spot on the map]. Here is Italy and here is Lampedusa. Two days in Lampedusa, then on to Crotone, the first refugee center. I had great expectations. Once you arrive in Europe, you expect everything to be great but many things were missing there—the reception, the dorms—it was all temporary. When you think about what you’ve been through, you’re satisfied with what you did because you went through some terrible things. I was seventeen years old, and they were not ready to take in minors. Adults were free to leave after a few weeks. But minors . . . we were there, and we didn’t know when we would leave that place. Then they told me they had picked me for some project, and I left for a place near Lecce. On New Year’s Eve I went to Bologna and I liked it, so I decided to move there.

Talking about Crotone, he stated: “my journey lasted several months. I was a minor, I was seventeen.” I ask him about his thoughts about migrating to Europe while he was in Eritrea. He replied as follows: The main idea was to leave the country. People were thinking about leaving the country to reach Germany. During the journey, they think about how to reach the destination. They think about going to Sweden or to Germany. But, before anything else, one thinks about reaching Europe. My idea, on the contrary, was to reach Italy. So, I was scared by the idea of leaving behind fingerprints during the journey.

At the end of the interview he made the following comment: Look, we came here from a disaster; our country. About the journey, I would like to say that it is important to respect human beings. I can help an Egyptian, a Turkish, or an Eritrean man. We, all, have in common the same humanity. Therefore, the journey is an example of how you can help your friends, someone without money. I had a brother in another country; he sent me 100 euros. I gave part of that amount to another person who had nothing at all. With that money, he was able to live for a month, maybe more. . . I did not know him; we met during the journey. . . Why don’t

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people help each other? These people do not have a soul. If you think about humanity, you have to help others to solve their problems.

Below is a replication of his journey map (see Fig. 5.1). I was struck by this map for several reasons. First of all, the representation of the Horn of Africa seems to be compressed. Eritrea, the homeland, is perfectly defined in terms of borders. By contrast, the shape of Ethiopia resembles a rectangle within which the journey is represented, depicting town after town. Sudan is only sketched out. Its representation does not preserve the real dimensions and shapes of the country. Clearly, there is a close relationship between memory and the journey’s reconfiguration; from a place which is well known by Meron to a patchwork of zones and lands which are only crossed once during the trip. The same principle applies in the second part of the map, depicting the journey from Libya to Europe. The second important topic concerns Libya. Evidently, the disjunction in terms of representation has to be attributed to a second phase of the trip. Libya, as Meron pointed out, is not easy to reach and is

Fig. 5.1  Meron’s map

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dangerous in terms of preserving one’s own safety. In this part of the drawing, memory and emotions work to isolate this area and produce a representation of Libya as an island. Kufra, Benghazi, and Tripoli are situated very close to each other in the representation. The second part of the map, then, seems to describe a change of perspective: a movement in the gaze of Meron, the traveler, from south to north, and from north to south which is linked to what Meron said about Europe. Despite the presence of a lot of space on the page, he decided to invert and overturn the meaning of the drawing. In terms of his memory and emotion, it is evident that crossing the border meant reaching the migration destination. As noted previously, an interpretation of the drawing is possible only by intertwining this visual source with oral memories and, in particular, following Meron’s state of mind. This kind of geography of emotion was present in many of the maps and interviews that I collected. For instance, those of Rachid, a thirty-five-­ year-old Somali man interviewed near Turin, in Alba, closely resembles that of Meron. The geography of the Horn of Africa appears to explode (see Fig. 5.2). In the first part of the interview, Rachid talked to me about

Fig. 5.2  Rachid’s map

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the difficult situation in Somalia, with people caught between illegal trafficking and the warlords’ civil conflict, clan-based divisions, and problems of everyday life. On the map, he wrote in Italian on the depiction of Somalia, “seventeen years of darkness, without peace.” His journey began in Djibuti, continuing in Eritrea and Sudan. In this part of the drawing, he wrote “quite well.” Then began the second part of the trip, which was probably the most difficult and dangerous. On the border between Sudan and Libya, he wrote the words, “it was like Hell.” After narrating the difficulties entailed in entering Libya on a truck with dozens of people on board, which is represented on the map by a small drawing, he focused on Libya describing to me the people and dangers there. He wrote on the map: “many difficulties.” As with Meron’s map, after recalling the journey by boat to Europe, he inverted the paper. The end of the journey is marked by the following sentence: “Italy, it started bad and finished fine. Thank you to Alba’s community, to my work colleagues.” The transcript of his description of his journey is produced below: I remained in Somalia because there was a civil war. And there were soldiers on the border. When I decided to leave the country I moved to the border. Two soldiers asked me “where do you want to go?” My aim, I told them, was to move to Sudan to study, because there are many universities in Sudan. We had to walk during the day, and it was suffocating because of the heatwave. So, we took water and bottles. And we placed a cotton cover around the bottle. This helped to keep the water cool. We also took some dates. If you eat dates, you won’t get thirsty. We also took some sugar. And then we began to walk. . . for five days we walked. We walked on into the evening, until 10 o’ clock and then we stopped near a tree, close to the street. Some soldiers told us to be aware of the difficult conditions in Sudan. We arrived in Djibouti. Our aim was to enter Eritrea. There were soldiers along the border. It was noon, and we had lunch there. We were eight people. The younger of us was fourteen years old. The day before, we walked three hours to reach Eritrea.

5.4   Fragments of Memories for a New Europe As I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the geography of emotion is both a theoretical and a methodological approach for the study of migration and mobility. In particular, my aim has been to give historical form to the theorization of the autonomy of migration. In this chapter I

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sought to engage in a dialogue with various scholars who have problematized migration and mobility. Moulier-Boutang and Jean-Pierre Garson’s (1984) study on mobility and migration was a seminal work that pointed to the possibility of critiquing some of the prevalent approaches by reversing the gaze on border-crossing strategies. Casas Cortes’ (2015) essay introduced a multidisciplinary approach for situating and analyzing the subject and mobility as the outcome of processes of “subjectification” resulting from border work and migrant people’s elaborate tactics for reaching their destinations. Around this time and subsequently, many articles and books have been published the autonomy of migration. I would like to mention some of these publications that I have drawn on in my work. In Border as Method (2013), Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Nielsen applied the notion of the autonomy of migration to reveal how capitalism works within different fields and through many diverse configurations. De Genova and Peutz (2010) re-elaborated and re-approached the topic of mobility, focusing on the border as a tool that could not account for the diversity and subjectivity of migration. In Escape Routes (2008), Papadopoulous, Stephenson, and Tsianos argued that the mobility of migrant people is an act of resistance against the power of borders, entailing particular modes of being positioned in the world. Papastergiadis (2000) introduced the concept of “turbolences” to convey the process whereby migrant subjectivities reshape territories. These works along with many other essays have influenced my work. Among those who have impacted directly my historical approach to the autonomy of migration are Tazzioli (2017), De Genova (2010, 2017, 2018 with Garelli and Tazzioli), Scheel (2013), Papadopoulos (2007, 2008), and Tsianos (2011). As noted in the introduction to this chapter, Sandro Mezzadra explained that the autonomy of migration approach entails a shift in the gaze on migration, focusing on the practices, desires, expectations, and behaviors of the migrants themselves. In historical terms, this reflection is of particular salience in moving from a standpoint in which migration is considered as a collective phenomenon to one in which individual migrants’ stories entail subjectivities that describe new ways of crossing borders and being in the world (see also Mezzadra 2020). Thus, a change in perspective sheds light on the elaboration of historical narratives and epistemologies through canons and interpretative frameworks, methodologies, and practices of working with different sources. In particular, oral sources are central in this inquiry. During the interview

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process—the preceding phase of defining topics within the thematic template but also during the subsequent phase of interpreting oral sources— the focus is necessarily on the person in front of the researcher, perceived not as an interviewee or narrator, and also not as a migrant or refugee. Her or his story is not something different or divergent from the history of Europe. It should be part of the history of Europe, while the narrative—as an expression of subjectivity—has multiple transnational locations, entailing a diasporic dimension as noted in Chap. 2. These stories do not become history for several reasons that include the manner in which the narrative about history is elaborated. As I have pointed out in a recent essay on this topic (Proglio 2020a), I have observed that the history of illegal migration has been constituted through sources that focus on individuals who did not reach the goal to cross the border. In other words, the history of migration was and is based on archival sources and, consequently, on an organized system of labor that reflects the relationship of not-European people to the society of their destination. This epistemological model has inherited a colonial classification scheme of citizenship. This scheme differs from the one evident in oral sources which was used to trace the mobility of people across territories and through borders. In my recently published book on Ventimiglia, namely the Italian–French border (Proglio 2020b), I argued for the relevance of this kind of source for acquiring new insights on illegal migration, paying attention to the role of intersubjectivity both in the creation of the source and in disclosing a different representation of the past, which is already present and part of Europe, while remaining hidden and eclipsed in shadow. In this chapter, my intention was to further refine the use of empathy as a methodology (Proglio 2018). As pointed out in the theoretical discussion, I aimed to draw out and elaborate on a connection between theories on the autonomy of migration and the role of subjectivity in the context of the European geography of borders. In this research endeavor, emotions have a central role in describing strategies deployed to cross over borders and elude police controls to reach Europe. To problematize this topic in historical terms means to move from the collection of sources of “normal” accounts of journeys to an attention to emotions conceived in terms of shared memories of border crossings. Where there is danger relating to smugglers, where border controls are more intense and widespread, where the desert or sea kills—in the name of Europe—thousands of people each year; in these particular situations and conditions, emotions are created and elaborated. To share tales of their journeys with other people

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is a need for those who have reached Europe and are seeking to exorcize violence suffered during the trip and for those who have to decide what strategy to adopt during their journeys in order to reach their destination. In both cases, the oral narratives of the journey become performative acts of memory. In the definition of the journey, emotions assume an important place in their sequential reshaping of the codified geography of the world. Descriptions of risks and problems during the trip to Europe in terms of emotions are, among other things, expressions of how the geography of the world—not only of pieces of land and seas crossed over—is decodified through the body. This process occurs through listening to the stories of other people—friends, parents, contacts in Europe, and, more generally, those in diaspora—in which emotions play a role in identifying problems and risks but also strategies and possible alliances during the journey. This decoding of the journey is based on a personal and collective experience; in other words, it is an archive of memories of those people who tried to reach Europe. Some of them are clearly not known by the person who decided to endure such a difficult trip. Voices of success and failure are embodied before, during, and after the journey. This memory is cumulative, gathering together different experiences that happened at different times and through many trajectories to reach the destination. It is also a selective memory, given that a person, after having understood risks and possibilities, decides what is the right strategy to reach Europe, or, if already in Europe, how to narrate his/her story of the journey. Furthermore, this memory operates in the field of intersubjectivity through dialogic knowledge of travel experiences. According to this perspective, the journey is never faced alone because the individual is always connected with other people’s memories. Following my preliminary remarks, I have tried to focus my attention in this chapter on two different geographies of emotion. The first centers on the idea of home, and the second on the journey, considered as a metaphor of the narrative dealing with the migration project. In both cases, mobility is not only a consequence of the movement of bodies; it also appears to be a movement of memory that occurs in the act of remembering home and the journey, starting from the positionality of the subjectivity that unfolds during the interview. In both cases, the mobility of memory that recalls home and the journey does not respect official canons proposed by geography.

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In all of the narratives presented in this chapter, a linear representation of space and a chronological conception of time based on continuity were replaced by fragmented narratives with temporal jumps and connections in terms of memories, silences, and repetitions. The subjective field in which the act of remembering takes place reveals other possible representation of time and space in terms of memory. This kind of interpretation of the relationship between space/time and memory is characterized by the selection of some parts of the memory—some fragments—that are considered more important for describing the object of recall. At the same time, these geographies of emotions are not codified representations of the nexus between space and time as is the case for cartographical maps or a canonized idea of a place within the public imaginary. These geographies of emotions are shared with other people in the act of remembering and elaborating strategies to reach Europe but are not unique. This ambivalence and multiplicity seem to be very important in elaborating a mobile and not a fixed description of Europe. The first geography of emotion is based on the idea of the homeland. Remembering home means going back in the memory to a condition of departure and more generally to a myth of roots which, for some finds ground in the remembering of family life and for others in a public imaginary of a pre-disaster and pre-social crisis country. If all of the individuals interviewed began their tales with expressions of positive emotions about home, the narratives would then reveal many facets. For instance, Sonia’s narrative revealed an oscillation between real and imaginary descriptions of home. The role of self-positionality is clearly pertinent. Sonia was born in Italy to a mixed couple, and her manner of oscillating appears to signify a balance between two different cultural contexts within her core. The homeland thus becomes something more psychological and intimate in which new and different positionalities are always discoverable. Conversely, for individuals like Salem, born in the Horn of Africa, the homeland is strictly connected with the idea of return. But there is also another important aspect to take into account: age. It is not surprising that Robert, Imed, and Ahmed remember their different homes with reference to the Italian/European presence in the area during the era of colonialism. For others, such as Meron, home is synonymous with a place that is simultaneously a beautiful and terrible place from which they must escape. Mohamed, a young Somali man, connects his homeland in Somalia—he was born in Bologna—with the Italian language as a “positive” legacy of colonialism that enables him to understand his grandfather. For Gabriella,

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the homeland is an expression of a deep connection to nature and ecosystems. She remembers the Arba Minch Oasis and the Illibabur plantations as paradises that were corrupted through European explorations—she quotes Italian explorer Vittorio Bottero—and colonialisms. To remember the same city, as in the case of Kidane and Fortuna, does not imply the production of the same geography of emotions. For Kidane, the landscape of Cheren is first and foremost a trope that connects him to his life trajectory, enabling him to remember all of the important moments of his story. Conversely, for Fortuna, Cheren is associated with her mother’s call which connects her to Europe. In many cases, the homeland is also the place to which individuals want to return after being in Europe. In this sense, the memory of the past is connected to memories of the future, producing expectations and anxieties for tomorrow. Gaber remembered Asmara with all of his animals; a utopic life that he wants to realize tomorrow. For others, remembering home seems to evoke a black hole; a world that ended within a generation and after migration. For instance, Antar affirmed that his Mogadishu does not exist anymore; that city seems to be accessible only through the memory of the diaspora; of those people who reached Europe and other destinations. The second geography of emotions is based on the journey. As I have elucidated in this chapter, it is a metaphor of a condition concerning the interviewee’s subjectivity in relationship to her or his expectations regarding migration. Angela/Malaika, who arrived in Milan in 1975, talked about her journey. To remember her arrival in Europe evoked a return to the history of Somalia, her homeland, in her memory. She retraced all of the important turning moments for the country: the AFIS period, decolonization, and Siad Barre’s regime up to the present civil war. There is a close relationship between the memory of her travel and what she left at home, in Somalia. As noted in Chap. 2, her identity is both Italian and Somali, which in her words does not mean an incomplete and unique identity. Thus, the travel serves as a metaphor both of a time gained in Europe, knowing another social context, and of a time lost, leaving far behind the land of one’s birth. To evoke the journey, in this case, generates two counterposed emotions: a positive one concerning the condition of being and living in Europe and a negative one about leaving and having left Somalia. Something similar is evident in Nurta’s tale. She talked about young people fashioned by Europe. In this case, a sort of psychological transfer from her memory to the story of who is arriving in Europe right

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now is apparent. While there are some relevant differences in terms of the trips undertaken by the different individuals, the main thematic nexus is the dream of Europe which is able to attract people, to generate desires and strategies to counter and cross over all border devices and frontiers. At the same time, this ideal concept of Europe as a paradise is shattered when Somalis arrive on the continent and face racism, discrimination, and a lack of possibilities for migrants. In Medhin’s and Winta’s tales too, the presence of two counterposed emotions is discernable in their narratives about their journeys. In particular, both describe the dangerous trip from the Horn of Africa to the Europe of contemporary migrant people. As Medhin pointed out, all Eritreans share the need to escape from Eritrea. At the same time, nobody seems to take responsibility for what happens in the Mediterranean. In these memories, in particular, there are two negative elements: the situation of the dictatorship at the point of departure in Eritrea, and the Mediterranean Sea, which has been transformed by Europe and the Northern African countries into an open air cemetery. Countering this schema, there is the will to gain another future for migrant people and their families. Winta, in particular, focused precisely on this topic, remarking that the future is and becomes in the act of escaping from Eritrea. Other stories were more personal and connected to the interviewees’ lives. Kaha, for instance, conjoined in her narrative the condition of her father in jail, the dictatorship in Somalia, the period of her studies in Italy without friends, and a happy ending in Pavia. The Abatis spoke about the journey to Italy and an ideal condition in Italy where, in their opinions, there was no racism. The husband stated that he never dreamt about Europe. By contrast, Cadigia, whose initial situation was similar to that of Kaha, with her father in jail, observed that Padua was not ready to welcome migrants, pointing to racism and discrimination. This northern Italian city was not, in her memories, the place of peace that she had dreamt about while in Somalia; it was not the place of God. Ahmed Shek Nur used a similar metaphor: Italy is not Mecca. Viviana remembered what she perceived as an imbalance between what she had imagined about Italy and what she actually found in Padua: the new context was hostile, with many relational difficulties. Raha’s tale appeared to have a different ending. Her memories during the interview revealed the bad conditions in Somalia, while countering a positive evaluation of the Italian context because of the existence of racism in Padua. She stated that Davide and Sonia, her son and daughter, are referred to as “two D.O.C.  Paduan

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children.” This definition seems to declare the possibility of creating good life conditions in Italy after migration. Mohamed’s journey entailed a different trajectory. Born in Italy to a mixed family, he moved to Somalia which was “a white page until that moment,” as he pointed out during the interview. His concerns about the poor sanitary conditions in Somalia were counterposed to a colonial heritage, the Italian language, which appeared to be the primary and only channel of communication between him and his parents. He appreciated the fact that there were many wonderful people in Somalia who were there for him when he needed help relating to his health. Enrico used a strategy to confirm—and not break— the romantic and charmed imaginary of Europe held by his parents in Eritrea. He preferred to confirm their idyllic image of Italy, sending them postcards of Venice. Considering all of these cases, some reflections can be schematized and proposed. Geographies of emotions are constituted by many emotions which, in some cases, are counterposed or seem to contrast with others. In reality, it is never simply a matter of opposition or contrast. The sources have to be evaluated from the perspective of memory and considering, once more, the journey and the idea of the homeland as metaphors of people’s symbolic and physical movements; of their being in diaspora. Accordingly, the interviewee’s subjectivity is interrogated by a dialogue that crosses the line of meaning about the topic and moves on to define the positionality of the self. Given that each life is signified by a complex configuration of states of mind, the various contradictions, ambiguities, paradoxes, and incongruities should be considered key elements of a biographic narrative. It should be emphasized that memory, here, is being conceived as a dialogue in the field of intersubjectivity that can operate using myths and symbols, rhetorical figures and voice tones, comparisons and silence, and changes of subjects and interruptions to connect a personal story to a collective condition concerning migrant people, people in diaspora, or black people in Europe. For the cases considered here, it is evident that emotions signify a representation of time and space, or better, memories are aggregated around emotions that mark times and spaces. This geography extends from the self, and from an embodiment of the memory, to territories and temporalities (past, present, as well as future). Given that it is not possible to remember alone—even in our self-­reflexivity regarding the lived past, we are in dialogue with other people—intersubjectivity reveals other views of the world that are not in alignment with those proposed and elaborated around the idea of nations in terms of their

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organization, borders, and divisions. This geography is deeply transformative in the sense that each emotion and image instigate a narrative about the positionality of the subjectivity at a specific moment. An example is the narrative about the betrayal of the idyllic notion of Europe. These geographies of emotions move people over thousands of kilometers, enabling the travelers to devise ways of crossing borders and eluding police controls, to make further attempts after pushbacks, equipped with new strategies, to find friends and social networks in unknown places, and to acquire aid when the crossing of borders seems impossible. The materiality of geographies of emotions is supported by a mental representation of space and time, which is very different to that of official geography. The linkage between orality and visuality seems to be important in explaining this topic. Returning to the tales of Robert, Meron, and Rachid, it is apparent that different subjectivities with different stories, coming through various journeys from many places, shared similar representations of the relationship between space and time during the journey. In particular, the border is marked by a change in the subjectivity’s positionality, inverting the journey’s map. Moreover, these representations conjoin the past, present, and future and many places crossed during the tale. The point of departure is once again the subjectivity from which the tale is elaborated. Thus, an investigation of geographies of emotions simultaneously reveals the deployment of the past, self-representation in the present, and an elaboration of the future of people in diaspora. It reveals a future which Europe must envision because these emotional geographies, among other things, are also part of Europe.

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Index1

A Aberghir, 31, 32 Aden, Kaha Mohamed, 70, 138 Adey, Peter, 120 Ahmed, Sara, 19, 103, 104, 113, 131, 139, 154, 156 Aime, Marco, 92 Alexander, Claire, 21 Ali Farah, Cristina, 59 Ambescià, 5 Anfez, 44–46, 49, 53 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 10, 19, 119 Appadurai, Arjun, 18, 19 Ascaro, 79–81, 141 Ashcroft, Bill, 17, 18 Assimilation, 5 Assmann, Aleida, 93, 129 Asuk, 69–70, 86, 88 B Bankey, Ruth, 126 Behdad, Ali, 18, 19 Bell, David, 126

Bella abissina, 43, 86 Berry, Brian, 122 Bertman, Stephen, 111 Bhabha, Homi, 18, 50, 85 Bloch, Marc, 23 Boaventura, Sousa Santos, 12 Bonansea, Graziella, 3 Bondi, Liz, 125, 126 Border, v, ix, 1–8, 10, 11, 17, 26, 50, 81, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 101, 102, 105, 107, 111, 112, 121, 122, 125–127, 135, 142, 144–146, 148–152, 156, 158 Braudel, Fernand, 93 Braziel, Jana Evans, 110 Bunge, William, 122 C Casas Cortes, Mirabel, 151 Castañeda, Claudia, 19 Chambers, Iain, 92 Clifford, James, 19, 110 Colls, Robert, 126

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2

163

164 

INDEX

Colonialism, xi, 4, 7–9, 17, 18, 23, 29, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 53, 57–89, 91, 93–95, 105–109, 112, 113, 131, 132, 134, 154, 155 Coppock, John, 122 Corti, Paola, 92 Coulthard, Glen, 97 Cresswell, Tim, 120 Crewe, Louis, 126 Cuttitta, Paolo, 92 D Danewid, Ida, 91, 93 Darala, 49 Davidson, Joyce, 125, 126 De Cesari, Chiara, 92 De Cesaris, Valerio, 92 De Genova, Nicholas, 92, 151 De Lauretis, Teresa, 119 De Santis, Giuseppe, 33 Del Boca, Angelo, 7, 62 Dell’Oro, Erminia, 108 Deplano, Valeria, 62 Di Maio, Alessandra, 9, 92, 93 Dias, Karen, 126 Diaspora, vi, 3, 4, 9–13, 17–22, 24, 26, 36, 37, 45, 48–50, 58, 65, 70, 72, 92, 100, 110, 112, 119, 121, 126–150, 153, 155, 157, 158 Double consciousness, 21 Du Bois, W.E.B., 5, 21, 96 Dutta-Bergman, J. Mohan, 19 E Elden, Stuart, 124 Ellena, Liliana, 3 Excess space of signification, 10, 113

F Faist, Thomas, 111, 120 Fanon, Frantz, 24, 94, 95 Farinelli, Franco, 11, 18 Fiamma Fiumana, 33 Fortier, Anne-Marie, 120 Foucault, Michel, 22, 59, 112, 123 Franquesa, Jaume, 120 Frisina, Annalisa, 93 G Gaal, 73–74 Garelli, Glenda, 92, 151 Garson, Jean-Pierre, 151 Generation, x, 3, 5, 8, 30, 44–48, 52, 58, 59, 61, 78, 86, 88, 110, 136, 155 Geography geography of emotions, 9, 10, 25, 50, 119, 121, 122, 127–129, 149, 150, 154, 155 human geography, 8, 127 Ghermandi, Gabriella, 59, 133 Gilroy, Paul, 4, 5, 18, 19, 23, 93, 110–112 Giubilaro, Chiara, 92, 119, 120 Giuliani, Gaia, 62 Giustetto, Giada, 3 Gramsci, Antonio, 7, 21, 106 Gregory, Derek, 123–125 Griffiths, Gareth, 17, 18 Grimaldi, Giuseppe, 93 H Halbwachs, Maurice, 129 Hall, Stuart, v, 4, 20–25, 50 Hamar, 46–48, 53 Hannam, Kevin, 120 Haraway, Donna, 119, 124, 125

 INDEX 

Harraga, 95, 114n2 Harvey, David, 122, 125 Hawthorne, Camilla, 93 Hernández Nova, Leslie, 3, 12 Hirsch, Marianne, 8, 111 Hobsbawm, Eric, 124 Horn of Africa, the, v–vi, ix, 1, 3, 7–10, 13, 20, 34, 38, 42, 51, 58, 59, 62, 64, 66, 74, 75, 80–82, 84, 86, 91, 100, 107, 113, 114, 127–129, 142, 148, 149, 154, 156 Hurst, Eliot, 122 I Identity diasporic identity, 4, 17–53, 92 out of place, 20, 52 Insabbiato, vi, 43, 77 Italian missione, 37–40, 52, 69 K Kaya, Ayhan, 92 Kropotkin, Peter, 122 L Labanca, Nicola, 7, 57, 62 Levi, Fabio, 62 Liao, Ping-hui, 19 Libya, vii, 5, 9, 10, 42, 48, 80, 91, 95, 97, 99, 100, 102, 107–109, 112, 114, 143–146, 148–150 Line of color, 8, 40 M Maglio, Alan, 33 Mangano, Silvana, 33 Mannur, Anita, 110

165

Massewé, 94 Massey, Doreen, 120 Matsuda, Matt, 111 Mediterranean, vi, vii, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 37, 45, 91–97, 99–102, 105, 107–114, 131, 138, 142, 147, 156 Black Mediterranean, the, 4, 9, 10, 91–114, 137, 142 Memory body of memory, 14 collective memory, 9, 14, 19, 65, 72, 78, 129 cultural memory, 3, 25, 93, 129 embodies memory, 8 hidden memory, 70 memory of body, 14 repressed memory, 7, 57 Mezzadra, Sandro, 10, 58, 92, 121, 151 Mignolo, Walter, 10 Migration, xi, 3–7, 9, 17–19, 57, 74, 92, 108, 120–122, 127, 129, 137, 139, 141, 149–153, 155, 157 Mishra, Vijay, 19 Morone, Antonio, 57 Moulier-Boutang, Yann, 151 Multiculturalism, 5 N Neilson, Brett, 10, 92, 121 O Odasso, Paola, 92 P Pal, Mahuya, 19 Papadopoulos, Dimitris, 121, 151 Papastergiadis, Nikos, 151

166 

INDEX

Parr, Hester, 126 Passerini, Luisa, 1, 3, 8, 14, 120 Peters, John Durham, 19 Petri, Rolf, 122 Peutz, Nathalie, 151 Poidimani, Nicoletta, 62 Poinard, Michel, 92 Ponzanesi, Sandra, 8, 92 Postcolonial condition, 3, 5, 8, 9, 46, 57, 59, 61, 66, 67, 70, 74, 83, 85, 86, 91, 108 Proglio, Gabriele, v–ix, xi, 10, 13, 14, 25, 57, 92, 93, 119, 152 R Raeymaekers, Timothy, 9, 93 Ranger, Terence, 124 Revealing movements, 20–25, 49, 51 Robinson, Cedric, 92 Rushdie, Salam, 18 S Safran, William, 111 Sahara, vi, 9, 91, 102, 108, 145, 146 Said, Edward, 10, 11, 18, 60, 93, 119, 120, 122–125 Sanfilippo, Matteo, 92 Saucier, Khalil, 93 Sayad, Abdelmalek, 22, 127 Scego, Igiaba, 59 Scheel, Stephan, 151 Schmidt, Benjamin, 93 Sciarmutta, 69 Sciortino, Giuseppe, 92 Sheller, Mimi, 19 Silence, ix, 9, 12, 14, 26, 30, 45, 66, 91, 99, 111, 146, 154, 157

Smith, Mick, 125, 126 Smith, Valerie, 111 Soja, Edward, 123 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 19, 22, 24, 52, 60 Srivastava, Neelam, 58 Stephenson, Niamh, 121, 151 Stoler, Ann Laura, v, 8, 58–60, 97 Subjectivity, vii, 1–5, 7–9, 11, 12, 14, 17–53, 60, 61, 83, 85–88, 92–95, 107, 111, 112, 119–123, 125–129, 151–153, 155, 157, 158 black subjectivities, 8, 58, 112 Sudan, 4, 9, 47, 80, 91, 97, 101, 102, 112, 142, 144, 145, 148, 150 T Tazzioli, Martina, 92, 151 Tiffin, Helen, 17, 18 Trin-Minh, Ha, 19 Triulzi, Sandro, 8, 60, 61, 92, 114n1 Tsianos, Vassilis, 121, 151 U Uaele, 63, 85 Urry, John Richard, 120 V Valentine, Gill, 126 Vanoli, Alessandro, 92 W Walker, Alice, 19 Wekker, Gloria, 58, 60