Historical-Political Narratives: The Dissemination of Race, Nation, Class in Italy

In an attempt to qualify the reception of the book within the Italian political and academic debate we might compare it to an intricate mesh composed of different colour threads of various lengths, some more visible than others. These threads, although intertwined, have been disentangled in different ways at different times. Schematically, issues of race and racism at the time were central to a renewed debate in Europe that was not limited to sector-specific studies; in contrast, the issues of nation, nationalism, and, above all, class, were somewhat marginalized in the Italian reception of the work, even if in the years following the first edition they would re-enter the limelight for different reasons—a period I will try to reconstruct towards the end of this essay. Finally, there were other threads that Balibar and Wallerstein barely acknowledged, but undoubtedly touched upon in their essays—gender, religion, and Europe. These subject areas, which acquired particular visibility several years later, constitute