IT303: Week 2
Quando Dio ballava il tango
Diaspora, home, gender
Structure of lecture:
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Introduction to Pariani and text
Discussion of first chapter
Diaspora and home
Images of Home in Quando Dio ballava
il tango
Italy and Argentina
• After 1900, 3 million Italians went to Argentina and
1.5 million to Brazil
• Worked on construction, railways, pampas and
plantations
• 1936 – almost 300,000 Italians in Buenos Aires
• Around 55% of Argentinians of Italian descent
• Seasonal workers – golondrine (rondine/swallows)
• Most were men, but a third were women
• Women left behind referred to as ‘white widows’.
La Venturina e Corazón; ognuna seguendo il filo di due
vite diversissime che non si mescolano l’una con
l’altra, ma armonizzano nonostante tutto, perché in
qualche punto della distanza che le separa compongono
una risposta. Dato che sono nonna e nipote. (p. 28)
Chapter 1
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Language
Narrative voice
Gender and migration
Identity
Memory
Diaspora:
Etymology
Greek:
• Dia (over, through)
• Speirein (sow,
scatter)
Diaspora as a necklace of
scattered pearls (Ali Farah)
Diaspora as web of connections
• Interconnectedness
• Attachment
• Myth of centre
Characteristics of Diaspora
(Safran)
1) dispersal from centre to two or more foreign
regions
2) collective memory / myth of homeland
3) partly alienated from host society
4) desire to return home
5) commitment to maintain / restore homeland
6) they relate personally to homeland and
share sense of co-ethnicity with other
members of diaspora.
Types of Diaspora - Cohen
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Victim diaspora- Jews, Armenians, Africans
Imperial diaspora – British
Labour diaspora – Indian
Trading diaspora – Chinese, Lebanese
Cultural diaspora – Caribbean
Diaspora Space - Brah
• Avoids the divisions of native/non-native or
minority/majority. It includes descendants of
migrants and the ‘indigenous’.
• ‘Diaspora space is the intersectionality of
diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of
confluence of economic, political, cultural and
psychic processes.’
• It ‘includes the entanglement, the intertwining of
the genealogies of dispersion with those of
‘staying put.’
Donna Gabaccia
• Italy has ‘many diasporas’
• attachments are to home town (il paese) rather
than Italy (il Paese).
• campanilismo
• high rate of return part of magnetism of home
town (over half returned)
‘The modern diasporas of Italy were webs of social
connections and channels of communication between the
wider world and a particular paese (village) or patria
(hometown)’ (Gabaccia, p. 3).
Meanings of home
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refuge, comfort, protection, security, stability
permanent dwelling (contrast hotel, tent)
denotes a sense of attachment (house v home)
an architectural, psychological, geographical and
social concept
domestic space, gendered space
site of oppression, restriction, entrapment
an idealised, utopian space
constructed on patterns of inclusion and exclusion
a problematic term for displaced persons or children
of migrants
• ‘Soltanto due mesi fa Corazón e la sua bambina
erano ancora nelle praterie slargate all’altro capo del
mondo; adesso invece il loro orizzonte è qui, in
questa angusta cucina di cardenzóni tartati, vigilata
da scure fotografie di gente che fu’ (pp. 13-14).
• Come deve essersi sentito prigioniero in questa
cascina buia, al suo ritorno dall’America, dopo aver
assaggiato l’ampiezza luminosa degli spazi argentini’
• ‘l’atmosfera di chiuso’
• ‘spaesato’ spaesamento’.
Regalada Majna’s the life in the village, ‘una vita immobile e
senza vie d’uscita; una gabbia, (p. 58-60).
Martinita Colombo leaves home to escape a violent father. ‘una
terribile trappola da cui fuggire’ (p. 276).
Raquel Potok, who flees from her home in Poland during the
1930s to escape racial persecution (p. 116).
Pietro Colombo ‘voleva la libertà’
Ambrogio also leaves home ‘in casa Colombo si soffocava’ (p.
111).
Pietro Colombo wants to build a house in Argentina so his
children can be born in their own home.
Mafalda Cerutti, ‘il suo paese ce l’aveva nel cuore’, p. 169
Wife of Lot (pp. 216, 225).
Topics
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Language / voice
Identity
home
Loss, nostalgia
Gender
Memory
Intergenerational relationship
The sea