Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Italy's Postcolonial ‘Question’: Views from the Southern Frontier of Europe

2015; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13688790.2015.1191983

1466-1888

Cristina Lombardi-Diop, Caterina Romeo,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

AbstractIn Italy, like in many other European countries, cultural roots and national identity are currently shifting as the result of contemporary transnational migrations and globalization. This essay analyses how the paradigm emerging from the Italian national case contributes to a redefinition of the postcolonial canon centered on British history and culture and to the notion of a "European" postcolonial as a whole. To this aim, the authors identify in colonial history and contemporary immigration the threads that connect the postcoloniality of Italy to that of other European countries. At the same time, they locate the specificity of the Italian postcolonial in the intersection between these factors and other events in Italian history that have strongly influenced the process of shaping an Italian national identity: the Southern question, intranational and international mass emigrations, new mobilities, the subaltern position of Italy within the European Union, and the geopolitical dislocation of Italy as the Southern frontier of Europe. The authors close their essay by presenting a Mediterranean Southern perspective grounded in new forms of knowledge and aesthetic sensibilities that counteract Europe's sense of encroaching and its politics of border protection. AcknowledgementsAlthough the authors conceived and developed this essay together and wrote the section titled 'Colonialism, Decolonization, Postcoloniality' jointly, Caterina Romeo wrote the sections titled 'Introduction', 'New Italians', and 'Emigrant Nation', while Cristina Lombardi-Diop wrote the sections titled 'The Threat of Racism in the Mediterranean' and 'A View from the Southern Frontier'.Notes on contributorsCristina Lombardi-Diop is Director of the Rome Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago, where she holds a joint appointment in Modern Languages and Literatures and Women's Studies and Gender Studies. She is the editor and translator of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Moving the Center, recipient of the 2001 Nonino Prize. She is also the editor, with Caterina Romeo, of Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave 2012, published in Italian as L'Italia postcoloniale by Le Monnier-Mondadori in 2014) and the author, with Gaia Giuliani, of Bianco e nero. Storia dell'identità razziale degli italiani (Le Monnier-Mondadori 2013, Winner of the 2014 Prize of the American Association for Italian Studies). Her essays on white femininity, Fascism, and colonialism, Mediterranean migrations, and African Italian diasporic literature, have appeared in a variety of edited volumes and journals. Most recently, she has published on the need for a postcolonial and race theory approach to Italian American Studies, and on the visual grammar of Fascist colonial comics strips.Caterina Romeo is Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Gender Studies at the University of Rome 'Sapienza'. She is the author of Narrative tra due sponde: Memoir di italiane d'America (2005) and the co-editor (with Cristina Lombardi-Diop) of Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and L'Italia postcoloniale (Le Monnier-Mondadori 2014). She has co-edited a double monographic issue of Dialectical Anthropology on contemporary migrations in Europe and a monographic issue of tutteStorie on Italian American women. She has translated into Italian the work of numerous Italian American women writers, among them prize-winning Louise DeSalvo's Vertigo (Vertigo 2006, Special Acerbi Prize for Women's Writing in 2008) and Kym Ragusa's The Skin between Us (La pelle che ci separa 2008, John Fante Prize in 2009). Her essays on Italian American literature and culture, Italian postcolonial literature, postcolonial feminism, and constructions and representations of blackness in contemporary Italy have been published in international journals and edited volumes. She is currently completing a book-length manuscript on postcolonial literature in contemporary Italy.Notes1 See also our previous theorisation on postcolonial Italy: Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, 'Paradigms of Postcoloniality in Contemporary Italy', in Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp 1–29 (with an extended bibliography); Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, 'The Italian Postcolonial: A Manifesto', Italian Studies 69(3), 2014, pp 425–433.2 David Theo Goldberg, 'Racial Europeanization', Ethnic and Racial Studies 29(2), 2006, pp 331–364, p 332.3 By this we do not mean to suggest that all European countries have a colonial history, nor that all colonial histories are similar. Among the countries included in this volume, for instance, Switzerland does not have a colonial history, while Ireland's entanglement in colonial history has been in the position of the colonized, rather than of the colonizer (see Michel and Laird in this volume).4 Among other relevant texts, see Gaia Giuliani and Cristina Lombardi-Diop, Bianco e nero. Storia dell'identità razziale degli italiani, Florence: Le Monnier, 2013.5 Some of the seminal works on Italian colonial history are: Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale, 4 vols., Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1976–84; Angelo Del Boca, Italiani brava gente? Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005; Nicola Labanca, In marcia verso Adua, Turin: Einaudi, 1993; Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002; Gian Paolo Calchi Novati, L'Africa d'Italia. Una storia coloniale e postcoloniale, Rome: Carocci, 2011. Seminal collections on Italian colonial cultures and their legacies include: Patrizia Palumbo (ed), A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003; Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller (eds), Italian Colonialism, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Jacqueline Andall and Derek Duncan (eds), Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory, Bern: Peter Lang, 2005.6 See Britta Schilling, Postcolonial Germany: Memories of Empire in a Decolonized Nation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. For a discussion of German colonial history, see also Schilling in this volume.7 See Antonio M. Morone, L'ultima colonia. Come l'Italia è tornata in Africa, 1950-1960, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2011.8 Out of a total population of 5,014,037 foreign residents in Italy in 2014, 1697 are from Libya, 7722 from Somalia, 8100 from Ethiopia, and 10,610 from Eritrea. See Dossier Statistico Immigrazione 2015, Rome: Idos, 2015, pp 463–464.9 See Sandra Ponzanesi, Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004; Daniele Comberiati (ed), La quarta sponda. Scrittrici in viaggio dall'Africa coloniale all'Italia di oggi, (2007), Rome: Caravan Edizioni, 2009.10 See Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, 'Paradigms of Postcoloniality', p 4; Teresa Fiore, 'The Emigrant Post-"Colonia" in Contemporary Immigrant Italy', in Lombardi-Diop and Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy, pp 71–82, p 72.11 Notable exceptions are the migration of young Ethiopian and Somali students who were sent to Italy, mainly in the 1960s to receive an education that would allow them to be part of the leading classes of their countries upon their return (see Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa Orientale. Nostalgia delle colonie, vol. 4, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1984, pp 77–78). In the 1960s, there was a significant migration of Eritrean women who were employed in Italian households in Eritrea and who followed their employers once they moved back to Italy. In the 1970s, as Jacqueline Andall claims, Eritreans constituted the largest community of migrants in Italy. Many were fleeing the country as a consequence of the Eritrean War for Independence (1961–1991) with Ethiopia and found refuge in Italy (see Jacqueline Andall, 'Immigration', in Prem Poddar, Rajeev Shridhar Patke, and Lars Jensen (eds), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, pp 287–290, p 288).12 Mark I. Choate, 'Tunisia, Contested: Italian Nationalism, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin', California Italian Studies 1(1), (2010). Available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8k97g1nc (accessed 10 March 2016). For a discussion of Italian indirect colonialism and its links to Italian indirect postcoloniality, see Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, 'The Italian Postcolonial: A Manifesto'.13 Dossier Statistico Immigrazione 2015, p 9.14 See Russell King, 'The Troubled Passage: Migration and Cultural Encounters in Southern Europe', in Russell King (ed), The Mediterranean Passage: Migration and New Cultural Encounters in Southern Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001, pp 1–21.15 Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.16 Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy's Many Diasporas, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. See also Oscar Gaspari, 'Bonifiche, migrazioni interne, colonizzazioni (1920-1940)', in Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, and Emilio Franzina (eds), Storia dell'emigrazione italiana. Partenze, Rome: Donzelli, 2001, pp 323–341.17 Nicola Labanca, 'Nelle colonie', in Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, and Emilio Franzina (eds), Storia dell'emigrazione italiana: Arrivi, Rome: Donzelli, 2002, pp 193–204; Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002.18 For a discussion of anti-Italianism in the United States, Australia, and Switzerland, see Gian Antonio Stella and Emilio Franzina, 'Brutta gente. Il razzismo anti-italiano', in Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, and Emilio Franzina (eds), Storia dell'emigrazione italiana: Arrivi, Rome: Donzelli, 2002, pp 283–311; for anti-Italian discrimination in North America, see: William J. Connell and Fred Gardaphé (eds), Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.19 For a discussion of Italian Mediterannean identity and whiteness, see Gaia Giuliani, 'L'italiano negro. La bianchezza degli italiani dall'Unità al Fascismo', in Giuliani and Lombardi-Diop, Bianco e nero, pp 21–66.20 See Enrico Pugliese, L'Italia tra migrazioni internazionali e migrazioni interne, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002, and Gian Antonio Stella and Emilio Franzina,'Brutta gente'.21 See Mario B. Mignone, Italy Today: Facing the Challenges of the New Millennium (Revised Edition), New York: Peter Lang, 2008, p 203.22 All the data in this paragraph are taken from the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)'s website. Available at: www.istat.it (accessed 20 December 2015).23 The Independent has recently published an article on the 'Italian Bengali' community in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, defined as 'London's newest ethnic minority'. These are Bangladeshi (approximately 6000 families) who, having originally migrated to Italy, have recently relocated to London. The Italian Bangladeshi community often collides with the British Bangladeshi, as the former offers a more transnational version of their South Asian identity. See Hilary Clarke, 'Italian Bengalis: Meet London's newest ethnic minority', 30 November 2015. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/italian-bengalis-meet-londons-newest-ethnic-minority-a6753821.html (accessed 20 March 2016). The tendency for (especially) European migrants to go back to their countries of origin is also increasing: see Chiara Daina, 'Addio Italia, immigrati tornano a casa. "Business difficile e giovani senza futuro"', Il fatto quotidiano, 8 March 2015. Available at: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2015/03/08/addio-italia-ex-immigrati-tornano-casa-difficile-business-i-soldi-pochi/1469283/ (accessed 20 March 2015).24 On the different traits of new Italian emigrations and for interviews conducted with the new emigrants, see Maddalena Tirabassi and Alvise del Pra', La meglio Italia. Le mobilità italiane del XXI secolo, Turin: Centro Altreitalie, 2014, pp 3–5.25 One of the first collections of new Italian emigrants' accounts is Chiara Cucchiarato, Vivo altrove. Giovani e senza radici: Gli emigranti italiani di oggi, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2010.26 See Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, 'Paradigms of Postcoloniality in Contemporary Italy'.27 Fred Kuwornu's documentary, 18 Ius soli, 2011, includes interviews to 15 second-generation young people who, for different reasons, have not yet obtained Italian citizenship.28 See Caterina Romeo, 'Racial Evaporations: Representing Blackness in African Italian Postcolonial Literature', in Lombardi-Diop and Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy, pp 221–236.29 On new representations of Italianness by second generations, see Clarissa Clò, 'Hip Pop Italian Style: The Postcolonial Imagination of Second Generation Authors in Italy', in Lombardi-Diop and Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy, pp 275–291.30 Recently, the appearance of Tezetà Abraham—an Ethiopian Italian actress born in Djibouti—in the popular series È arrivata la felicità (Happiness Is Here) has been saluted by writer Igiaba Scego as a revolution, 'an absolute novelty among Italian TV series' (my translation). According to Scego, in the series broadcast by RAI UNO national television on prime time from 8 October to 17 December 2015, Tezetà Abraham's character, Francesca, offers an image of the diversity of Italian population and portrays second generations as comfortable in their Italian lives and not as strangers in their own country. See Igiaba Scego, 'La rivoluzione degli afroitaliani parte dal piccolo schermo', 31 October 2015. Available at: http://www.internazionale.it/opinione/igiaba-scego/2015/10/31/afroitaliani-seconde-generazioni-tv (accessed 20 March 2016). Immediately following È arrivata la felicità, another series titled Tutto può succedere (Anything Can Happen) was broadcast from 27 December 2015 to 13 March 2016, also by RAI UNO national television on prime time. This series not only features second generations (Esther Elisha as Feven), but also interracial third generations (Sean Ghedion Nolasco as Robel, the son of Feven and Carlo). For a discussion of the importance of these African Italian characters on Italian national television, see Leonardo De Franceschi's blog on Italian cinema of African descent. Available at: http://www.cinemafrodiscendente.com/ (accessed 19 March 2016).31 See http://www.litaliasonoanchio.it/index.php?id=522 and http://www.secondegenerazioni.it/ (accessed 8 December 2015).32 While the principle of the jus soli establishes that a person who is born in a country is automatically a citizen of that country, the jus soli temperato, which is the base of the new law in Italy, poses some conditions for the attribution of citizenship. The most important are: at least one of the parents needs to have a regular permanent stay permit; Italian citizenship for the newborn must be requested, it is not attributed automatically; EU citizens are not included in this norm. The jus culturae extends the right to request Italian citizenship to children who arrived in Italy before the completion of their twelfth year of age and who attended the Italian school system for five consecutive years. Thus, the acquisition of Italian citizenship as regulated by the new law combines a sense of geographical and a sense of cultural belonging. See 'Cittadinanza: sì della Camera allo ius soli. La nuova legge passa al Senato', 13 October 2015. Available at: http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2015/10/13/news/legge_cittadinanza_senato-124967907/ (accessed 8 March 2015).33 Following the attacks perpetrated against innocent civilians in cafes, restaurants, at the soccer stadium and at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris in November 2015, and at the airport and subway in Brussels in March 2016, there has been a lively debate on the connection between the proliferation of terrorism in Europe and lack of integration of second generations. See the blog http://www.progetto-rena.it/parigi-e-la-necessita-di-tornare-a-coltivare-un-pensiero-critico/ (accessed 23 February 2016).34 Ubax Cristina Ali Farah, Il comandante del fiume, Rome: 66thand2nd, 2014.35 Pap Khouma, Noi italiani neri. Storie di ordinario razzismo, Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2010.36 Igiaba Scego, 'Salsicce', in Flavia Capitani and Emanuele Coen (eds), Pecore nere, Bari: Laterza, 2005, pp 23–36 (also available in English translation, in Metamorphoses 13(2), 2005, pp 214–225).37 Ingy Mubiayi, 'Concorso', in Capitani and Coen (eds), Pecore nere, pp 109–138.38 Jens Manuel Krogstad, 'What Americans and Europeans Think of Immigrants', Pew Research Center, 24 September, 2015. Available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/24/what-americans-europeans-think-of-immigrants/ (accessed 10 March 2016).39 Jim Yardley, 'Rising Toll on Migrants Leaves Europe in Crisis', The New York Times, 20 April 2015. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/world/europe/european-union-immigration-migrant-ship-capsizes.html?mwrsm=Email (accessed 26 March 2016). According to the data released by International Organization for Migration (IOM), 'the total number of migrant deaths on Mediterranean sea routes to Europe have surpassed 3,329 in the first ten months of 2015. The sea-borne death toll on the Mediterranean for all of 2014 was 3,279'. See https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-update-migrant-deaths-rise-3329-2015 (accessed 18 March 2016). It is important to notice that this data, as well as the death toll of migrants, is constantly changing and it is provided here not to be exhaustive but simply to offer a measure of the scale of such evolving situation.40 'Which Countries Are under the Most Strain in the European Migration Crisis?', The New York Times, 3 September 2015. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/28/world/europe/countries-under-strain-from-european-migration-crisis.html?_r=0 (accessed 4 March 2015).41 See Giulia Barrera, 'Mussolini's Colonial Race Laws and State Settler Relations in Africa Orientale Italiana (1935-41)', in Italian Colonialism: Historical Perspectives, special issue of Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8(3), 2003, pp 425–443.42 For recent collections gathering historical documents and critical analyses of the history of racism in Italy see Riccardo Bonavita, Gianluca Gabrielli, and Rossella Ropa, (eds), L'offesa della razza. Razzismo e antisemitismo dell'Italia fascista, Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2005; Alberto Burgio (ed), Nel nome della razza. Il razzismo nella storia d'Italia, 1870–1945, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999; Centro Furio Jesi, La menzogna della razza, Bologna: Grafis, 1994; Fabrizio De Donno, 'La Razza Ario-Mediterranea', in Fabrisio De Donno and Neelam Srivastava (eds), Colonial and Postcolonial Italy, special issue of Interventions 8(3), 2006, pp 394–412; Roberto Maiocchi, Scienza italiana e razzismo fascista, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1999; Olindo De Napoli, La prova della razza. Cultura giuridica e razzismo in Italia negli anni Trenta, Florence: Le Monnier, 2009; Giuliani and Lombardi-Diop, Bianco e nero.43 The first monographs on the emergence of the new racism in Italy are Laura Balbo and Luigi Manconi, I razzismi possibili, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1990, and Laura Baldo and Luigi Manconi, I razzismi reali, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992. For a more recent reflection on contemporary racism in Italy see: Grazia Naletto (ed), Rapporto sul razzismo in Italia, Rome: Manifestolibri, 2009; and Lunaria (ed), Cronache di ordinario razzismo. Terzo libro bianco sul razzismo in Italia, Rome: Open Society Foundation, 2014. Available at: http://www.cronachediordinariorazzismo.org/il-rapporto-sul-razzismo/ (accessed 26 March 2016).44 This racially motivated homicide is the focus of Dagmawi Yimer's documentary Va' pensiero. Storie ambulanti (DVD, 2013), which chronicles two racist attacks, the above mentioned one that took place in Florence and the second one in Milan, where Mohamed Ba, a Senegalese griot, actor, and educator was stubbed in May 2009. The documentary reconstructs the events through the eyes of survivors Mor Sougou, Cheikh Mbengue, and Mohamed Ba. More information available on the film's website. Available at http://www.va-pensiero.org/scheda-film/ (accessed 10 March 2016).45 Lunaria, Cronache di ordinario razzismo, pp 158–161.46 Alessandro Portelli, 'The Problem of the Color Blind: Notes on the Discourse on Race in Italy', in Paola Boi and Sabine Broeck (eds), Crossroutes – The Meaning of Race for the 21st Century, Hamburg and London: LIT 2003, pp 29–39. For a discussion of Italy's 'postracial amnesia', see Cristina Lombardi-Diop, 'Postracial/Postcolonial Italy', in Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo (eds), Postcolonial Italy, pp 175–190.47 Among the latest scholarly works on race in Italy, see Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh and Anna Scacchi (eds), Parlare di razza. La linea del colore tra Italia e Stati Uniti, Verona: Ombre corte, 2012; Giuliani and Lombardi-Diop, Bianco e nero.48 The foundational work that opened the path to further research on Southern Italians as target of racial thinking is Vito Teti, La razza maledetta, Roma: Manifestolibri, 1993. For an historical reconstruction of the stereotypes attached to Southern Italy, see John Dickie, Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900, New York: S. Martin's Press, 1999; Robert Lumley and Johnathan Morris (eds), The New History of the Italian South. The Mezzogiorno Revisited, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997.49 The latest study on the economy of Southern Italy, issued in July 2015, depicts a catastrophic scenario: the region is at risk of permanent underdevelopment, while the gap between the South and the North has never been larger. The South of Italy is indeed one of the most depressed areas of Europe. The number of people not engaged in education, employment, or training (NEET) is the highest in Europe, much higher than in other Southern European countries such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal. For further details, see Manuela Perrone, 'Svimez: al Sud uno su tre è a rischio povertà. Pericolo di "sottosviluppo permanente"', in Il Sole 24 Ore, 30 July 2015. Available at: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2015-07-30/il-sud-deriva-il-pil-pro-capite-divario-il-resto-paese-torna-livelli-2000-103338.shtml?uuid=ACSFS6Z (accessed 10 March 2016).50 Franco Cassano, Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean, Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme (eds), New York: Fordham University Press, 2012, p 140.51 Luigi Cazzato, 'An Archeology of the Verticalist Mediterranean: From Bridges to Walls', Mediterranean Review 5(2) December 2012, pp 19–31, p 28. More recently, Cazzato has widened the scope of his critical lens by considering Southern Italy within the larger critical paradigm of the 'Global South'. See Luigi Cazzato, 'Global South "in Theory" and Southern Epistemology', in Le Simplegadi XII (12), 2014, pp 41–52. Available at: http://all.uniud.it/simplegadi (accessed 17 March 2016).52 See, for instance, the special issue of the online journal California Italian Studies Journal, 1(1), 2010, edited by Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re, entirely dedicated to the Mediterranean in Italy's cultural history and thought. Available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dk918sn (accessed 6 March 2016). For an articulation of Mediterranean thought, refer to Franco Cassano, Il pensiero meridiano, Bari: Laterza, 1996. For a critical history of Italy from a Mediterranean perspective, see Iain Chambers, Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008.53 Chambers, Mediterranean Crossings, pp 25–26.54 For further details, see Maribel Casas-Cortes et al. (eds), New Key Words: Migration and Borders, special section of Cultural Studies 29(1), 2015, pp 55–87.55 'Un/Walling the Mediterranean – S/Murare il Mediterraneo: Local, National and Trans-Border Artivist Practices for a Poetics and Politics of Hospitality and Mobility', Università degli Studi di Bari 'Aldo Moro'- Dept. ForPsiCom, 2009–2015. Available at https://smuraremediterraneo.wordpress.com/tag/border-art/ (accessed 18 March 2016).56 Agnese Purgatorio, personal email to Cristina Lombardi-Diop, 9 December 2015.57 On this reversed perspective that plays with the dialectical memory of Italy's emigration flows to the New World, see Gian Antonio Stella, L'orda. Quando gli albanesi eravamo noi, Milan: Rizzoli, 2002.58 This is how Ingrid Simon described 'Ronda' in an email note to Luigi Cazzato. Cristina Lombardi-Diop would like to thank Luigi Cazzato for kindly sharing this information with her.59 Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p 12.