Inventions of otherness and counter-narrative practices: Migrant women writers in contemporary Italy

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Simona Miceli
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/2
Language Italian Pages 19 P. 61-79 File size 182 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2019-002004
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The article discusses some processes of othering that have distinguished European Modernity and that have consequently silenced ‘the other’. Although the post-colonial present has inherited these processes, it has also been permeated by dif-ferent tensions, since the migrants’ practices call Eurocentrism and consequent hegemonic narratives into question. In this light, starting from the results of a bio-graphical research realised through long-narrative interviews, the author focuses on the specific practice of the production of literary texts in Italian by migrant wom-en. After a presentation of the narrative intents that inspired the interviewees, the act of writing is investigated as a counter narrative practice, capable of provoking reflexivity about views on the common sense and able to create contexts for mu-tual knowledge in Italian society. In doing so, the endeavours of migrant women writers may call into question the Eurocentric legacy of otherness and break the mechanisms of forclusion. Finally, these counter narrative practices are interpreted as acts of active and post-eurocentric citizenship, which show interesting potential-ities for the Italian society.

Keywords: Otherness, eurocentrism, counter narratives, migrant women, writing, active citizenship.

  1. Jedlowski P. (2001). Memoria, esperienza e modernità. Memorie e società nel XX secolo. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  2. Lister R. (1997). Dialectics of Citizenship. Hypatia. Special Issues: Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action and Locale, 12, 4: 6-26.
  3. Lombardi-Diop C. e Romeo C., eds. (2012). Postcolonial Italy. Challenging National Homogeneity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. Mezzadra S. (2008). La condizione postcoloniale. Storia e politica del presente globale. Verona: Ombre corte.
  5. Miceli S. (2019). Un posto nel mondo. Donne migranti e pratiche di scrittura. Cosenza: Pellegrini.
  6. Mignolo W. (2007). La idea de América Latina, Barcelona: Editorial Gedisa S.A. (trad. it.: L’idea di America latina. Geostoria di una teoria decoloniale. Mi-Ud: Mimesis, 2013).
  7. Mignolo W. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designes: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  8. Morokvasic M. (1984). Birds of passage are also women…. The International Migration Review, 18, 4: 886-907; DOI: 10.1177/019791838401800402
  9. Morrison T. (2017). The Origin of Others. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (trad. it.: L’origine degli altri. Milano: Frassinelli, 2018).
  10. Mudimbe V.Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
  11. Nussbaum M.C. (1997). Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (trad. it.: Coltivare l’umanità. I classici, il multiculturalismo, l’educazione contemporanea. Roma, Carocci, 1999).
  12. Quijano A. (2000). Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from the South, 13: 533-580.
  13. Ramzanali Fazel S. (2013). Lontano da Mogadiscio. Far from Mogadishu. Milano: Laurana.
  14. Rebughini P. (2018). Oltre l’eurocentrismo: prospettive sul quotidiano. In: Floriani S. e Rebughini P., a cura di, Sociologia e vita quotidiana. Sulla costruzione della contemporaneità. Napoli-Salerno: Orthotes.
  15. Ackelsberg M. (2010). Resisting Citizenship. Feminist Essays on Politics, Communities, and Democracy. New York: Routledge.
  16. Ali Farah C. (2007). Madre piccola. Segrate: Frassinelli.
  17. Anzaldúa G. (1987). Borderlands. La frontera. The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute.
  18. Anthias F. (2002). Where Do I Belong. Narrating Collective Identity and Translocational Positionality. Ethnicities, 2, 4: 491-514.
  19. Rebughini P. (2014). In un mondo pluralista. Grammatiche dell’interculturalità. Torino: Utet.
  20. Said E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books (trad. it.: Orientalismo. L’immagine europea dell’Oriente. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1995).
  21. Sarvasy W. (1997). Social Citizenship from a Feminist Perspective. Hypatia. Special Issues: Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action and Locale, 12, 4: 54-75.
  22. Scego I. (2010). La mia casa è dove sono. Milano: Rizzoli.
  23. Schütz A. (1944). The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology. American Journal of Sociology, 49, 6: 499-507.
  24. Siebert R. (2003). Il razzismo. Il riconoscimento negato. Roma: Carocci.
  25. Smorti A. (2007). Narrazioni. Cultura, memorie, formazione del sé. Firenze: Giunti.
  26. Spivak G. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak?. In: Cary N. e Grossberg L., eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  27. Todorova M. (1997). Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press (trad. it.: Immaginando i Balcani. Lecce: Argo, 2002).
  28. Turnaturi G. (2003). Immaginazione sociologica e immaginazione letteraria. Bari: Laterza.
  29. Wadia L. (2007). Amiche per la pelle. Roma: E/O.
  30. Wolff L. (1994). Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press
  31. Belozorovitch A. (2010). Banane e fragole. Nardò: Besa.
  32. Bhambra G.K. (2007). Rethinking Modernity. Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  33. Boatcă M. (2007). The Eastern Margins of Empire. Cultural Studies, 21, 2-3: 368-384; DOI: 10.1080/09502380601162571
  34. Boele van Hensbroek P. (2010). Cultural Citizenship as a Normative Notion for Activist Practices. Citizenship Studies, 14, 3: 317-330.
  35. Chakrabarty D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  36. Colombo E. (2014). Livelli di istruzione e atteggiamenti nei confronti della differenza culturale. Una rassegna delle principali interpretazioni sociologiche. Scuola democratica, 1: 9-28; DOI: 10.12828/76516
  37. Dell’Oro E. (1996). Lo straordinario incontro con il lupo Hokusai. Milano: Edizioni Piemme.
  38. Dell’Oro E. (1991). L’abbandono: una storia eritrea. Torino: Einaudi.
  39. Fanon F. (1952). Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Editions du Seuil (trad. it.: Pelle nera, maschere bianche. Pisa: Edizioni Ets, 2015).
  40. Floriani S. (2013). «Come se nulla fosse stato». Narrative postcoloniali e senso comune. In: Siebert R. e Floriani S., a cura di, Andare oltre. La rappresentazione del reale tra letteratura e scienze sociali. Cosenza: Pellegrini.
  41. Floriani S. (2004). Identità di frontiera. Migrazione, biografie e vita quotidiana. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.
  42. Ghermandi G. (2007). Regina di fiori e di perle. Roma: Donzelli.
  43. Halbwachs M. (1925). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan (trad. it.: I quadri sociali della memoria. Napoli: Ipermedium, 1997).
  44. Isin E., ed. (2015). Citizenship after Orientalism. Transforming Political Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  45. Isin E., ed. (2014). Citizenship after Orientalism. An Unfinished Project. New York: Routledge.
  46. Isin E. (2002). Being Political. Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  47. Jedlowski P. (2010). La letteratura come fonte. In Siebert R. e Floriani S., a cura di, Incontri fra le righe. Letterature e scienze sociali. Cosenza: Pellegrini.
  48. Jedlowski P. (2008). Il Sapere dell’esperienza. Fra l’abitudine e il dubbio. Roma: Carocci.

Simona Miceli, Invenzioni dell’alterità e pratiche contronarrative. Scrittrici migranti nell’Italia contemporanea in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2019, pp 61-79, DOI: 10.3280/MM2019-002004