Italy's Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861

Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories #20

by David Forgacs

Italy's Margins explores how certain places and social groups in Italy have been defined as marginal or peripheral since unification. This marginalization involves not only concrete policies but also ways of perceiving people and places as outside society's centre. The author looks closely at how photography and writing have supported political and social exclusion and, conversely, how they have been enlisted to challenge it. Five cases are the peripheries of Italy's major cities after unification; its East African colonies in the 1930s; the less developed areas of its south in the 1950s; its psychiatric hospitals before the reforms of the late 1970s; and its 'nomad camps' after 2000. Each chapter takes its lead from a symptomatic photograph and is followed by other pictures and extracts from written texts. These allow the reader to examine how social marginalization is discursively performed by cultural products.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

337 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2014

Reviews

[Shayan Tadayon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is divided into five distinct chapters, which can be read separately depending on the importance of the subject for the reader. I especially enjoyed reading the earlier chapters. It’s an example of solid academic work, where theoretical precision and an abundance of information and detail come together, offering the reader both the pleasure of reading and sufficient insight into the topic.

The book's driving issues are discursive marginalization, the center-periphery relationship, and how the periphery is represented by various tendencies in the center, alongside the power dynamics embedded in all of this. These elements provide a fresh perspective on the unification and nation-building of Italy through the lens of the “Other.”

The second chapter, which deals with the issue of Italy’s colonies, was unexpectedly new to me. Particularly since it has never received much attention in Italy’s public sphere, and outside of Italy, this aspect of European colonial powers’ history has been taken less seriously. Despite that, I recommend this chapter to anyone with less knowledge on the subject or who is interested in the history of colonialism, and I wish you plenty of patience to endure the reading.

One of the most important issues in the book for me is the deeper understanding that nowhere is inherently or naturally marginal, remote, or peripheral. Even sympathetic representations of what is discursively considered “marginal” can hardly reverse power relations. At best, they leave a scratch on the face of the status quo, or, as the author seeks to show, they clarify the critical understanding of these power dynamics and our position in relation to them.