Date: 2022
Type: Article
Images of black faces in Italian colonialism : mobile essentialisms
Modern Italy, 2022, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 375-396
PICCIONI, Lucia, Images of black faces in Italian colonialism : mobile essentialisms, Modern Italy, 2022, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 375-396
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/75393
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This study analyses the essential question of the role of visual and material culture in the construction of a mass racial ideology during the Fascist colonial empire. The hypothesis behind this essay is that representations of the facial features of colonised populations may be understood as agents that transform what are in fact inconsistent and vague notions of identity and race into concrete and effective ontologies, both in the scientific field and in the popular imaginary. The facial casts made by the anthropologist Lidio Cipriani and exhibited in the race pavilion of the very popular Mostra triennale delle Terre italiane d’Oltremare (1940) in Naples, the anthropological photographs and illustrations of the infamous journal La Difesa della razza (1938–43), and the advertising images representing African women’s bodies, both gave consistency to the notion of race and incarnated its protean nature made up of narratives, metaphors, fantasies, and prejudices constructed and accumulated over time.
Additional information:
Published online: 10 November 2022
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/75393
Full-text via DOI: 10.1017/mit.2022.40
ISSN: 1353-2944; 1469-9877
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Sponsorship and Funder information:
This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - CUP Transformative Agreement (2020-2022)
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