Geography Reference
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i am acutely aware that to argue that Romans are nevertheless not racist is
to court obvious parallels with the politically correct pronouncement, “i'm not
a racist, but . . .” ( non sono razzista, però . . . ).11 This conventional (and interna-
tionally widespread) disclaimer is a clear statement of Dumontian encompass-
ment. it shows that people can be ideologically nonracist at the same time as they
display racist sentiments in practice. indeed, the politically correct language of
antiracism thereby sustains a substantively racist attitude. Those who are more
unabashed about their racism can openly frame it in terms of the romanità cel-
ebrated by mussolini and the ultrà troublemakers at today's football matches
(see Dyal forthcoming)—a defensive localism that, like Roman identity in the na-
tional context more generally, wallows in a sense of rejection and marginality.12
for these social actors, then, being Roman has come to stand in opposition both
to the nation-state and to the new waves of immigrants. a segmentary polity is,
ipso facto, a diverse one. Romans pride themselves on their internal social diver-
sity, pointing to their famous ability to achieve the cohabitation of different social
classes in a single area while also distinguishing among different districts on the
grounds of class differentiation. This structural attitude, however, favors a rejec-
tion of cultural diversity; hostility—of the monticiani toward the trasteverini,
for example—is expressed by rejecting the other side's speech habits, forms of
social life, and other cultural features. from this stance, it is only a short step to
rejecting the more modern idioms of mutual respect that come under the label
of multiculturalism. at the same time, the state is increasingly rigidifying the ap-
pearance of the city, creating a more ordered and homogeneous and bureaucratic
whole in place of the former riotous array of local differences; and this, too, re-
inforces a growing tendency to essentialize Roman identity in opposition to that
of immigrants and other groups. Thus, the neoliberal management of the city's
spaces works against the allegedly traditional forms of Roman social life, offering
in its place a vision of Roman “identity” that, by a further twist, resembles noth-
ing so much as the cultural separatism of the Northern league.
on the one hand, it seems that ideally the state would like to break the back
of the virtual separatism of the capital. on the other, however, it is precisely these
culturally dissident forces that furnish the right-wing parties with the majority
of their converts, proletarian and artisanal sectors bereft of their once clearly
left-wing identity through what they see as cynical betrayal. in this way, short-
term opportunism trumps the desire to create a unified state—a rather distant
prospect in any case, given that the right-wing coalition is so dependent on the
Northern league, which, in addition to its frequent forays into separatism, also
openly expresses anti-immigrant and racist sentiment.
Rome, moreover, encapsulates a local version of this dynamic. The afflu-
ent residents of places like the bourgeois and once military-dominated suburb
of parioli may affect to believe that the dispossessed—known as coatti (literally
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