Abstract
This article discusses the concepts of nostalgia and cultural identity in Italian migrant literature in light of Bhabha’s theory of hybrid identity and Ahmed’s concept of home as a second skin. Nostalgia, from the Greek nóstos (return home) and álgia (pain), was originally a seventeenth century medical diagnosis for those suffering from severe homesickness, and the term is often used by scholars of migrant literature. But what is home in contemporary migrant literature? How can one long for a home one no longer can remember, or never has even lived in? How does nostalgia influence the migrant’s local and cultural identity? One of the authors who examine these questions is the Italian Somali writer Igiaba Scego, and the discussion of nostalgia and cultural identity will be based on readings of two of Scego’s short stories, “Dismatria” (“Exmatriate”) and “Salsicce” (“Sausages”), as well as her autofictional novel La mia casa è dove sono (My home is where I am).
Highlights
By focusing on the individual experience of cultural identity, Scego gives voice to the migrants whom the mass media call the masses, the wave and so on. She represents a transethnic and transnational voice in Italian literature, and shows that identity is not something static, but rather something that changes from context to context, from day to day, and something that doesn’t exclude other expressions or feelings of belonging
The migrant subjects of Scego’s literary work, the dismatriates as she calls them, are not like the mythological hero Ulysses who, after decades of traveling, comes home to his patient wife Penelope and his kingdom Ithaca. Their return is instead performed through memories, dreams, scents, and traditions
The fact that Scego’s protagonists will never be able to return to Somalia does not mean that they do not feel Somali anymore; and their longing for a lost Mogadishu does not mean that they reject their Italian identity
Summary
1. In/Visible migrants and the humanistic disciplines Today’s challenging refugee and humanitarian crisis at the borders and shores of Europe, prompted by tragic developments in countries like Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, has increased media attention to migration issues. Moving and tragic impressions like the ones described above, figure side by side with what the mass media often seem to label a wave, masses, or an invasion, labels which, according to the art and media theorist Pamela Scorzin (2010), make the migrants both visible and invisible at the same time: One the one side they [the migrants] are made highly visible in the sense and form of being stamped and stereotyped, as strange and exotic foreigners, into a certain widespread and long-standing cliché, such as the well-known waves and floods of poor, hungry, strange and unskilled dangerous aliens; and on the other side, they are virtually made invisible as individuals and human beings, each with their own dreams and wishes, their hopes and desires.
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