Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
iestoandfromAfricainasingle,hierarchicalsocialconfigurationproducedthroughthe
continuing legacies of colonialism, cultural exchange, capitalist expansion, and human
movement.ThelifeexperiencesofmanypeopleborninAfricaandlivinginItalyarefar
from simply and singularly “African” any more than they are simply and only “Italian.”
For them, Italy and Africa constitute overlapping worlds. As Achille Mbembe has sug-
gested, “African identities” are not monolithic, they are multiple, straddling several dif-
ferentcultural,local,andregionalidentities(Mbembe2001).InHeideggerianterms,the
Being-in-the-world of these African-Euros is what I call a polymorphic being, a Being-
in-Polymorphic places (Heidegger 1962). This being in the world has to be grasped as
simultaneously AfricanandEuropean.African-Italian multiple subject positionscontest
and displace the Lega's monocultural perspectives, suggesting different ways of belong-
ing in the contemporary world.
Polymorphic Place and Being
In her pathbreaking ethnography of race, identity, and the French educational system,
Tricia Keatonsuggeststhatasecondgeneration ofAfricanMuslimhighschoolstudents
are perceived and spatially marginalized in France as Other, even though the French
state doesn't officially recognize racial and ethnic minorities. According to an absolutist
and color-blind political philosophy and state policy the French educational system
equalizes by sublimating all differences to “common cultural” norms. Nevertheless,
teenagers from the Maghreb and West Africa who live in urban projects located on the
urban peripheries, are treated as less than fully “French.” Socialized in French public
schools, the young women practice and inhabit a French cultural habitus or learned dis-
positions and taken for granted practices, and when in public spaces are forced to con-
ceal the portions of themselves that participate in the cultural and religious habitus of
their parents. Their subjectivity is shaped by a sense of not being recognized as truly
French along with identification with the African and Arab worlds that are perceived
in France as alien, Other, and dangerous. Even though they are perceived as outsiders,
these young women challenge the dominant discourses of belonging by self-classify-
ing as “French” and with hyphenated Afro-French or Arab-French identities. These acts
are part of a process in which these young Black women insist they belong in France
by positioning themselves as part of overlapping, polymorphic cultural worlds. Keaton
suggeststhatmaterialpracticescontradictmythsofnational(racial)identityandcultural
boundaries:
The world, including France, belongs to no single people—despite popular per-
ception to the contrary—and the cry of je suis français (e), 'c'est mon pays now
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