Mixed Race Studies

Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa—Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema

Bloomsbury Continuum
2012-05-10
328 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781441190437

Shelleen Greene, Assistant Professor of Digital Studio Practice and Theory
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

A thorough study of the portrayal of race in Italian cinema, from the silent era to the present, illuminating issues in contemporary Italian society.

Equivocal Subjects puts forth an innovative reading of the Italian national cinema. Shelleen Greene argues that from the silent era to the present, the cinematic representation of the “mixed-race” or interracial subject has served as a means by which Italian racial and national identity have been negotiated and re-defined. She examines Italy’s colonial legacy, histories of immigration and emigration, and contemporary politics of multiculturalism through its cultural production, providing new insights into its traditional film canon.

Analysing the depiction of mixed-race subjects from the historical epics of the Italian silent “golden” era to the contemporary period, this enlightening book engages the history of Italian nationalism and colonialism through theories of subject formation, ideologies of race, and postcolonial theory. Greene’s approach also provides a novel interpretation of recent developments surrounding Italy’s status as a major passage for immigrants seeking to enter the European Union. This book provides an original theoretical approach to the Italian cinema that speaks to the nation’s current political and social climate.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: From “Making Italians” to Envisioning Postcolonial Italy
• Chapter 2: From Meticci and the “Challenging Realisms” of the Colonial Melodrama to a Postcolonial Consciousness
• Chapter 3: The Negotiation of Interracial Identity, Citizenship and Belonging in the Post-War Narrative Film and Beyond
• Chapter 4: Transatlantic Crossings: Re-encountering Blackness in the Cinema of the “Economic Miracle”
• Chapter 5: Zummurud in her Camera: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Global South in Contemporary Italian Film
• Conclusion
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index

Race, Hybridity, and Miscegenation

Thoemme Continuum
2005-06-30
657 pages
ISBN: 1843711044
EAN/ISBN13: 9781843711049

Edited by:

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

Kristie Dotson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Michigan State University

Volumes 1 and 2 of this 3 volume set collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s, focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.

This set brings together very rare primary sources of two central debates in the USA from the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Many of the essays in all three volumes have not been republished since their original publication and are extraordinarily hard to find. Volumes 1 and 2 collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity, which since Ray and Buffon had been central to species definition. The main book-length contributions to the debate were recently republished in “American Theories of Polygenesis” (Thoemmes Press, 2002). However, alongside these books and feeding off them are passionate debates which helped to define scientific racism for that time, not only in the US, but also Europe, because to a certain extent Europeans were willing to defer to American observers for their knowledge of Africans and particularly the effects of racism. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.The term “miscegenation” was coined in the anonymous text “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro”, now attributed to David Croly. Some of the works included are overtly racist in highly objectionable ways and serve to document a context that is too often ignored. A particular feature of this volume is the inclusion of works by African-American authors. Some of the authors and texts included have been forgotten, but even the better-known texts can be properly understood now they are restored to their context. The debates about hybridity and miscegenation are not only of deep historical significance, they are also of interest in the light of the contemporary rehabilitation of the idea of hybridity in the work of Homi Bhabha, as well as the current interest in the idea of “mixed race”.  The set comes with two separate introductions by editor Robert Bernasconi. These substantial essays (5,000-10,000 words each) record the history of the debates including reference to works not here republished, brief biographical information on the authors included, and insights into the larger intellectual and political context.