Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Maria's predicament is reminiscent of Frantz Fanon who described being caught
betweenhisownself-understandingaspartofFrenchsocietyandexperiencesoferasure
in France because of his appearance and designation as someone from a European co-
lonial territory. Fanon and Maria are, as he put it, “over-determined from without” in
European society, perceived through a binary racial gaze that demarcates nonwhites as
absolute others against privileged and well established social identities. Both spent the
better part of their lives acquiring the knowledge, cultural codes, and habits of a colon-
izing culture they had believed their own but then moved to Europe where they experi-
encedaruptureastheir“sistersandbrothers”didnottorecognizetheirexistence.Maria
describes in her autobiography what we might characterize as another rupture because
both her self-identification as belonging in Turin was denied by the surrounding world,
and the parts of her identity that were Oromo, Ethiopian, and the histories of Italy's re-
lationships with Africa were forced into hiding and effaced by her Piedmontese, Italian
identity (Ponzanesi 2004).
Maria represents a particular variant on the experience of people who are part of
African Diasporic belonging in Italy. She is part of a broad group of first generation
Africans who have lived in Italy for twenty to forty years and experience place in Italy
as integrally connected with Africa. Maria is from a former Italian colony, while many
otherslivinginItalytodayspenttheiryouthsindiversepartsofAfricacolonizedbyoth-
er European nations. They share diverse yet overlapping African cultural histories and
common histories of colonization and racialization that unite them across the multiple
spaces and places of the Diaspora.
As Stuart Hall argued, the identities of subjects of African descent are always in the
process of being produced as part of struggles over representation and belonging in re-
lation toexclusionary national andracialized frameworks that have sought toerase their
historiesandparticipationinEuropeanModernity.Hall'sobservationssuggestthatwhile
united by shared experiences of powerlessness and the pursuit of freedom and inclu-
sion, highly diverse members of the African or Black Diaspora always also speak from
somewhere, from material and discursive positions and places (Hall 2003). Maria Ab-
bebuViarengostrugglestoberecognizedinTurinasItalianandOromoinacontextthat
links her transnationally with Africa and other spaces of the Diaspora, but she also very
importantly awakens each morning and falls asleep in Turin, and the truth of her exper-
ience coincides with where it takes place.
As Allan Pred argued, identities and places are made through lived geographies and
bodily engagements in particular locally situated practices (Pred 1990, 2000). And in
Turin, where the number of officially registered immigrants has grown from 41,665
in 2001 to 129,767 in 2010, and where Africans constitute some two-thirds of non-
Europeanimmigrants, placeandBlacklifeworldsareindeedbeingirreversibly remade.
