The creation of color? Changing valuations of race in Italian women\u27s writings since unification

This is a longitudinal and historicizing project. Its purpose is to discover and qualify discussion about race and the consequent production of race, as these appear in twentieth-century Italian women\u27s writings. Thus, the materials I review are women\u27s writings; the qualities I focus upon are treatments of race. I examine works by Matilde Serao, Grazia Deledda, Natalia Ginzburg, and Maria Abbebù Viarengo. I am particularly concerned with contextualizing these novels. I discuss and contribute to a descriptive vocabulary that is informed by international struggles against racism and useful in gaining an understanding of racialization in Italy. Treatments of race, whether that race be marginalized or mainstream, are peculiarly significant indicators in the development of precisely those works that have been extensively reviewed for their investments in the movement against gender oppression. This project is in part based on the understanding that discursive practice impacts upon the practices, performances, and institutions of race and racism. That is, language produces an actual effect on the way we live our lives and on the way a society creates and maintains an appearance of continuous identity. There is a long history to the idea that language itself has agency. The concept of the affective, productive nature of language is also a staple of much theoretical discourse of today. It follows that these womens\u27 novels, as well as my study of them, may be expected both to create and destroy notions about race and gender. I find that the women authors upon which the focus of this study rests are deeply engaged in the task of questioning or troubling the practices, performances, institutions, and discourses of racism. I believe that the choice by these authors to continually interrogate race demonstrates a first and primary strategy for combating racism. I follow their lead as I, in my turn, question the overt and the masked discourses on race and on racism in their works