An island in the sun material. Legacies of colonialism in sardinia between the nation-building process and (a lack of) decolonization

Abstract

As European colonialism has had an impact both on the territories and populations that have undergone European occupation, and on Europe itself, decolonization must also be investigated by taking into consideration the so-called “motherland” as well, to verify whether, and in what way, Europeans have come to terms with that past. Studying the presences and the permanencies in the public space which shows signs of the colonial past offers an essential perspective from which to answer these questions. At the same time, conducting this analysis on a local scale allows us to investigate the meanings of these presences and legacies in depth. From this perspective, the essay investigates the case of Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean that occupies a peripheral position in the Italian state. It aims to understand, on the one hand, the role colonialism played in the island’s “nationalization”. On the other hand, the island has faced its colonial past from the fall of the Italian empire until now. The essay first retraces the position of Sardinia and Sardinians within the colonial project, then analyses the presence of different types of colonial signs (toponymy, commemorative plaques, commercial activities) in the public space. It identifies them not just in space but also in time, historicizing their presence and, therefore, their meaning. The study demonstrates that the island was crossed by an intense process of “colonization”, which ran parallel to the process of urbanization and modernization; at the same time, it has not only not questioned those signs, but in several cases they were presented again, demonstrating the absence not only of material decolonization but also, above all, of cultural decolonization.