Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Mbembe described as an “unprecedented revival of the imaginaries of long distance”
(Mbembe 2001, 6).
Scholars of Africana Studies have begun to note that the cultural fabric of Europe
is being transformed as first and second generations of Africans challenge monolithic,
Eurocentricdefinitionsofbelonging,racializedlogic,andexclusionarypractices(Gilroy
1987; Hall 1991a, 1991b; Keaton 2006: Carter 2010). Their experiences in Europe are
different from those of other immigrant populations whose presence may also be con-
tested.AsBarnorHessesuggestedintheonlyarticletodiscussraceinaseminalvolume
on place and identity politics edited by Keith and Pile, immigration is distinctive for
Blacks whose settlement in Europe is always enmeshed in racial antagonisms that af-
firm “ambivalences and equivocations in the conditions for settling” (Hesse 1993, 167).
Settlement is not a discrete moment for these Africans from countries profoundly in-
termeshed with Europe. Overturning simple teleologies, Italo-Africans claim place in a
Europe whose history is their own, and partake in the making of new histories.
The Spatial Contours of White Privilege and Belonging in Turin
Maria Abbebu Viarengo spent the first twenty years of her life in Ethiopia and Sudan
before her father brought her to Turin, Italy in 1969. Italy was no stranger to Maria who
had previously visited the country not only in actual terms but through her imagina-
tion as a young person schooled in Italian language and history while growing up in a
placebrieflypartoftheItaliancolonialempire.Inherpartiallypublishedautobiography,
Maria describes the gradual reawakening of the African dimensions of her identity she
had felt forced to repress until the late l980s when a growing number of Africans ap-
peared in the Piedmont region. Her memories of Africa had always been present, yet
she could seldom express them. Compelled to assimilate and conform to Italian cultural
identities, she never quite experienced a sense of belonging in spite of the fact that her
father was Italian, she spoke the official and regional languages better than many Itali-
ans, and she too was an Italian citizen. Maria wrestled with her multiply textured iden-
tity,herearlylifeinAfricaandrelationshipwithherAfricanmother,herItalianness,and
the way she was perceived by Italian society. Of her experiences as a perceived outsider
she writes:
I have heard people call me, hanfez, klls, meticcia, mulatta, cafelatte, half-cast,
ciuculatin, colored, armusch. I have learned the art of pretence; I have always
looked like whomever others wanted me to look like. I have been Indian, Arab,
Latin American, and Sicilian. (74, Quoted in Ponzanesi 2004, 161)
