Reimagining the Italian South: Migration, Translation and Subjectivity in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema

Images of southern Italy as a place of arrival for migrants with different origins and backgrounds have in recent years proliferated in Italian media as well as in contemporary Italian literature and cinema. The unprecedented perspective which presents the mezzogiorno as a place where people arrive, and not only as a place of departure, constitutes a major change in the collective imaginary on the region and fosters new engagements with its migratory histories. This book presents one of the first studies to focus entirely, through in-depth readings of a range of contemporary literary and cinematic texts, on the representation of contemporary migration to southern Italy, and on the concomitant changes in the tradition of representation of the region. Informed by translation theory, and by decolonial, queer and feminist critique, this innovative study zeroes in on the mutual construction of race, gender and sexuality, and on the translation and hybridization of languages and cultures at the southern border. By giving a rich and compelling account of texts which tell multiple stories of mobility from, to and through the South, this book traces the emergence of a transnational imaginary of the mezzogiorno which offers useful tools for an urgent reconfiguration of collective and individual identities.

Goffredo Polizzi is a founding member of CRAAAZI - Centro di ricerca e Archivio Autonomo transfemministaqueer ’Alessandro Zijno’ (Bologna, Italy), where he is also a Research Fellow. He received a Joint Phd in Italian Studies from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) and from Monash University (Australia). He has published several articles and book chapters on Postcolonial Theory, Queer and LGBT political cultures in Italy, representations of gender, race and sexuality in contemporary Italian literature and cinema.