Who Needs ‘Italianness’?: Postcolonial and Migration Italian Literature

Studying the rocky road towards the construction of an Italian identity forever threatened by disintegration is of particular interest, especially when considered in terms of literature. To the intense debate on the formation of the nation state in Italy (the capacity of which to draw widely on literary texts in reconstructing the genealogy of discourse on the nation should be praised), we need to add the levels of awareness reached by postcolonial criticism and its thought-provoking reflections on the colonial and postcolonial make-up of the contemporary world. Contemporary migratory movements compel us to take into account the presence in Italy of people from all over the world. This presence forces us to rethink the entire history of European and Western colonialism, which lies at the base of today’s globalization, as we are reminded by numerous literary texts, and especially by postcolonial and migration literature.