Introduction: looking at margins; 1. Urban peripheries; 2. Colonies; 3. Souths; 4. Asylums; 5. Nomad camps; Conclusion: understanding margins.
Five case studies show how different people and places were marginalized and socially excluded as the Italian nation-state was formed.
David Forgacs teaches in the Department of Italian Studies at New York University, where he holds the Zerilli-Marimò Chair of Contemporary Italian Studies. Before that (1999–2011) he held the Panizzi Chair of Italian at University College London and he formerly taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Sussex. He is author of Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980 (1990), Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (with Stephen Gundle, 2007) and editor of Rethinking Italian Fascism (1986), The Antonio Gramsci Reader (1998, 2000) and Italian Cultural Studies (with Robert Lumley, 1996).
'This is a highly original and beautifully written book. The author
takes as his subject matter the ways that marginal people and
places have been represented and understood by photographers,
filmmakers, writers and others in Italy since unification. His
understanding of the creation of these 'margins' is linked to the
formation of the Italian nation-state. Multidisciplinary,
wide-ranging, constantly surprising and always incisive, Italy's
Margins is a path-breaking piece of work.' John Foot, University of
Bristol
'Meticulously researched and yet highly readable … Drawing upon a
richly comparative background, David Forgacs turns his discerning
eye to the ideological work done by photography in determining ways
of looking that constitute marginality as such. The result will
change our way of looking at the history of modern Italy itself.'
Barbara Spackman, University of California, Berkeley
'This is a brilliant book. Through the analysis of photographs and
written texts, David Forgacs explains how the Italian nation has
been built on the process of social and symbolic exclusion and, in
so doing, he offers us an original and fascinating new perspective
on modern Italian history.' Lucy Riall, European University
Institute, Florence
'Italy's Margins is a landmark achievement. Drawing on compelling
arrays of photographic and written material, Forgacs surveys
post-Unification Italy's web of 'other spaces': its urban
peripheries and colonies, its 'souths', asylums and migrant
encampments. His dense cartography of these marginal social spaces,
their sites of exclusion and resistance, captures with exceptional
force their role as hidden matrices of Italy's modernity.' Robert
S. C. Gordon, University of Cambridge
'Italy's Margins offers an extremely original, well-researched, and
detailed analysis that raises key questions on the construction of
national identity and of marginality, and sheds new light on a
number of different fields, engaging the reader through a
compelling argument and highly readable prose.' Marina Spunta,
H-Net
'Forgacs's very impressive book offers a stimulating
multidisciplinary account of modern developments in Italian history
that should be required reading for any scholar working on
marginality, no matter the national context. The book exposes the
relations of power that preside over dynamics of exclusion and,
more importantly, makes us aware of our own contradictory role in
these dynamics: every time we speak in the name of the excluded we
reaffirm our own privileged position as researchers, even as we try
to counteract the structural imbalance in the scale of power.'
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, American Historical Review
'An innovative scholar of twentieth-century Italian culture and a
major scholar of Antonio Gramsci, Forgacs is known for studies that
have questioned the conventional periodization of modern Italian
history by showing cultural continuities between the fascist regime
and the democratic Republic. Here too he often moves across
conventional space-time compartmentalizations to dissect the ways
in which Italian culture and nation formation have produced
exclusion and social marginality, creating spaces that belong in
the nation and yet are placed outside of it: from urban
peripheries, to the colonies, the south, insane asylums, and
'nomad' camps … Forgacs's critical analyses of
counterrepresentations offer indispensable tools for those who are
involved in the work of cultural critique.' Silvana Patriarca, The
Journal of Modern History
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