“From ‘Subalterns’ to the ‘Crisis of Presence’: Ernesto de Martino’s Categories for Comparison”
A guest lecture by Dr. Roberto Dainotto, Duke University, author of Europe (in Theory) and The Mafia: A Cultural History
“Migrant literature” is haunted by the question of difference: of how to redeem the alterity of the migrant’s self and culture – which dominant values tend to make alien or invisible – without misrecognizing the archive of the Other for the (somewhat commendable) purpose of inscribing it within the boundaries of the receiving country. Although migrants and migrant literature arrived in Italy only in the late 1980s, key issues related to the recognition of cultural difference characterized the Italian debate for quite some time — at least since the so-called Southern Question exploded, and then climaxed into the national tragedy of internal migrations. In the hope of providing a framework for “Comparative Migrations” whose viability goes beyond the specific Italian case, this paper focuses on the work of Ernesto de Martino as an attempt to work the complex process of recognition and inscription of difference.
