Patrizia Palumbo, ed. A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 332 pp. Photographs. Bibliographies. Index. $24.85. Paper.

Abstract

Patrizia Palumbo, ed. A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 332 pp. Photographs. Bibliographies. Index. $24.85. Paper. This intelligent and praiseworthy anthology addresses historical, literary, and cinematic aspects of the Italian colonial experience in Africa. In addition to lucid and thoughtful discussions, the volume offers both Italian texts and effective, accurate translations of important passages. One may hope that the numerous conceptual doors skillfully opened here will inspire others to enter the neglected realm of the Italian experience in Africa. first four contributions are grouped into unit titled The Shaping of Colonial History. Despite the editor's commitment to the postmodernist shibboleth that recent areas of scholarly interest . . . have all cast doubt on the validity, relevance, and accessibility of historical facts (5), the bulk of this volume's discussion lies nevertheless within the bounds of rational discourse; although prominent Italian historians of Northeast Africa such as Irma Taddia and Alessandro Triulzi are not included, they are at least allowed to appear in the footnotes. senior scholar Angelo Del Boca eloquently summarizes the role of Italy in the experiences of her former colonies since their independence. It has been an age of missed opportunities, as politically embedded former imperial interests fought resilient rearguard action to complicate diplomatic relations between metropole and former dependencies and to inhibit constructive research through the sequestering of archival sources and other obstructionist tactics. Nicola Labanca emphasizes the unique qualities of the Italian imperial venture. Labanca calls for reassessment of the issue of periodization and laments the misuse of archival sources by an ossified official historiography. Diplomatic context is seen as decisive; other causalities less so. Barbara Sorgoni revisits the conceptual terrain of nineteenth-century anthropology, examining both academic professionals and amateur observers of northeast Africa. She makes the predictable discovery that late nineteenthcentury Italians do not measure up to the critical standards of late twentieth-century French intellectuals, but offers the patronizing concession that Alberto Pollera was perhaps capable of a sort of proto-relativistic comprehension of otherness (75). Guilia Barrera addresses the issue of interracial relations in colonial Eritrea. She dismantles received tradition, claiming for Italy uniquely positive experience in this regard, and outlines persuasively and with precision the colonial structures that governed the creation and maintenance of racial hierarchy. …