From Intersectionality to Interstitiality: Pathways in Italian Race, Migration, and Diaspora Studies

Abstract

In recent years, the study of Italy’s contemporary migrant “crisis” has broadened into explorations of national biopolitics in transhistorical and transnational contexts. This article suggests some useful pathways between critical race theory and postcolonial theory to explore pressing questions related to race-based cultural politics and Italian national identity. It highlights critical race theory’s potential to enrich analyses of racializing discourses: for example, the concept of “interest convergence” is harnessed here to describe and understand the mechanisms of Italy’s “New Risorgimento,” i.e. its recent psychic unification through race-paranoia. The article also investigates possible applications of the widely (mis)used term “intersectionality” and explores some of the limits of both critical race theory and postcolonial theory, especially the ever-present risk of slippage back into preexisting essentialist identity categorizations. To avoid such slippages, the article suggests further exploration of theoretical conceptualizations of hybridity by two of postcolonial theory’s foundational scholars, Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha, due to their emphasis on discourse analysis and “interstitiality” rather than intersectionality. It urges further examination of Italy’s questione della razza via interstitiality in order to introduce urgently-needed nuance into analyses of race, nationality, power, and cultural discourse. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of deploying multiple theoretical approaches and stresses the need to work within a public-facing “global humanities” framework to explore and expose how racializing discourses generate detrimental manufactured anxieties and hate in contemporary societies. Creating a “sense of the commons” via such transnational and comparative approaches to analyzing biopolitical conflicts would build both inclusivity, and therefore strength, within democratic nations, institutions, and societies, thus allowing them to thrive once again.