The Horn of Africa and Italy

The Horn of Africa and Italy

Colonial, Postcolonial and
Transnational Cultural Encounters

Edited by Simone Brioni
and Shimelis Bonsa Gulema

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933746

Cover image: Andrea Moroni, Art Deco Stairs. Asmara, Eritrea 2014.

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

issn 2235-1809 (print)

isbn 978-1-78707-993-9 (print) • isbn 978-1-78707-994-6 (ePDF)

isbn 978-1-78707-995-3 (ePub) • isbn 978-1-78707-996-0 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2018

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Simone Brioni and Shimelis Bonsa Gulema have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the editors

Simone Brioni is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on migration studies and postcolonial theory with a particular emphasis on contemporary Italian culture.

Shimelis Bonsa Gulema is Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and History at Stony Brook University.

About the book

This multidisciplinary volume analyses key themes and topics related to the cultural encounters between Italy and its former colonies in the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia). The multi-faceted relations between the Horn of Africa and Italy were initiated during the colonial period but have also been shaped more recently through migration. In eleven chapters by experts in comparative literature, cultural studies, history, migration studies, political philosophy and postcolonial theory, the volume highlights how the legacy of colonialism permeates Italian society as well as influencing the construction of national identities in the Horn of Africa. The analysis of this transnational encounter opens up new possibilities for comparative research and critical synergies in Italian studies, African studies and beyond.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Text

Simone Brioni and Shimelis Bonsa Gulema

Introduction: A Transnational Cultural Encounter

part i Colonialism

Olindo De Napoli

1 Law: The Myth of Progress and Differentialism in the Liberal Age

Wu Ming 2

2 Landscape: Somalia as Seen in Italian Colonial Literature

Lee Cassanelli

3 History: Italian Fascist Visions of Somalia’s Past and Future

part ii Postcolonialism

Shimelis Bonsa Gulema

4 Urbanism: History, Legacy, and Memory of the Italian Occupation in Addis Ababa (1936–1941)←v | vi→

Sara Marzagora

5 Nationalism: The Italian Occupation in Amharic Literature and Political Thought

Antonio Maria Morone

6 Racism: Meticci
on the Eve of Colonial Downfall

Daniele Comberiati

7 Decolonization: Representing the Trusteeship Administration of Somalia

part iii Transnationalism

Lorenzo Mari

8 Heroes: A Transnational Reconsideration of Mohammed Abdulle Hassan and Omar al-Mukhtar in Literature and Film

Milena Belloni

9 Diaspora: A ‘Postcolonial’ Migration? An Analysis of Eritrean Mobility Trajectories

Simone Brioni

10 Sport: Leisure, Representation, and Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion

Emma Bond

11 Photography: Memorial Intertexts in New Writing by Maaza Mengiste, Nadifa Mohamed, and Igiaba Scego

Notes on Contributors

Index←vi | vii→

Figures

Figure 1.1: Jean Léon Gerome’s La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l’humanité (1896).

Figure 10.1: Panel from An Olympic Dream. Samia’s mother watches her daughter on TV.

Figure 10.2: Panel from An Olympic Dream. The story of the fisherman.

Figure 10.3: Panel from An Olympic Dream. Samia takes a crying baby into her arms on the boat to Italy.

Figure 10.4: Panel from An Olympic Dream. Samia writes a Facebook post.

Figure 10.5: Panel from An Olympic Dream. Samia explains some of the reasons why she wants to leave Somalia.

Figure 11.1: Somali Village, Edinburgh Marine Gardens, Portobello, 1910 – Group of Warriors. Public domain postcard.←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Acknowledgements

Questo libro non sarebbe stato possibile senza il contributo di molti, e non solo perché è una raccolta di saggi. Grazie di cuore alle colleghe e ai colleghi, alle studentesse e agli studenti, alle compagne e ai compagni, alle sorelle e ai fratelli, che mi hanno sostenuto in questi anni. Grazie a mia madre, mio padre, e mia figlia. Grazie Katherine. Grazie a tutti coloro che hanno collaborato con le loro idee, le loro energie e la loro competenza a questo volume.

Simone Brioni

New York, 17 September 2017

The generous junior research leave accorded to us by our home institution of the State University of New York at Stony Brook gave us the time needed to work on this project. We are also grateful to our institution for the Faculty in the Arts, Humanities and lettered Social Sciences collaborative fund, which allowed us to organize a seminar series at the Humanities Institute about the cultural encounters between Italy and the Horn of Africa. A special thanks goes to the Honors College, which was supportive of the interdisciplinary course that we developed and taught with Peter Carravetta, and to the students who took this course and contributed←ix | x→ through their discussions with us to the success of this research project. We also would like to thank Florian Mussgnug and the editorial board of the New Comparative Criticism series for having welcomed the project of this book, and the external reader of the manuscript of the book for useful advice.

Earlier versions of some chapters in this volume have appeared previously. Chapter 2 developed from a blog post by Wu Ming, ‘Orizzonti d’Impero e paesaggi coloniali: una riflessione di Wu Ming 2’, which appeared in the Italian language on 13 June 2012 on the website <http://www.wumingfoundation.com>. Parts of Chapter 10 develop from an article which was previously published in the Italian language: Simone Brioni, ‘Storie “vere” ed eroine dei romanzi. Rappresentare la Somalia in “Ilaria Alpi. La ragazza che voleva raccontare l’inferno” e “Non dirmi che hai paura”’, Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani 1.1 (2016), 47–60. An earlier and shorter version of Chapter 11 was submitted for a Festschrift for Professor Sharon Wood: Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy, ed. by Simona Storchi, Marina Spunta and Maria Morelli (Leicester: Troubador Press, 2017). We are grateful to the editors and publishers for permissions to republish.←x | xi→

A Note on the Text

Translations in the text are the authors’, unless otherwise stated. Chapter 2 was translated from Italian by Kate Willman. Arabic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Somali proper names are mentioned by referring to the first name, which is the most common practice in African studies among scholars whose work focuses on the Horn of Africa. This choice has been taken to avoid the ambiguity caused by the Westernization of these names.←xi | xii→ ←xii | 1→

Simone Brioni and Shimelis Bonsa Gulema

Introduction: A Transnational Cultural Encounter

Our politics must be Italian and our market must be the world […] our fathers cleared the path for new civilization [and] we would betray our fatherland if we did not expand our field of economic activity.¹

The encounter between Italy and the area in the Horn of Africa (also referred to as North East Africa) which now includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia began at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of the colonial enterprise. This relation was forged to a large extent through war and violence. However, to put the matter in these terms would miss the complexity of an encounter that also included religious exchange, commercial transactions, and explorations that produced knowledge about the geography, history, politics, society, and cultures of people in North East Africa. In more than one instance, these facets were used in the service of Italian and European colonialism, but the relation between the two regions was extensive, and was not limited to, colonial expansion and conquest.