Of pink (and red) paint, Black lives (that matter), and intersectionality in Italy

Intersectionality, both as a theoretical framework and a methodological tool, has only recently been embraced in Italy (see, among others, Bonfiglioli et al. 2009; Perilli and Ellena 2012; Marchetti 2012; Merrill 2006, 2018; Kan 2021; Giovanni Bello 2020; Marini- Maio, Bonifazio, and Nerenberg 2021), a country that has shaped its national identity around the presumed “chromatic norm” (Romeo 2012) of whiteness. The term “intersectionality” was coined later by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) and focuses on the multidimensional discrimination that individual subjects and different groups of people experience based on their race,4 color,gender, and other axes of oppression (class, sexuality, religion, citizenship, nationality, age, etc.), which need to be taken into account in their intersection and simultaneous presence, rather than as separate categories. In Italy, the concepts of race and color have generally been under-represented in the social context at large and undertheorized in scholarly discourse and within feminist movements. This Special Issue originated in the seminar “Intersectional Italy” that we organized for the annual conference of the American Comparative Literature Association in 2020, aiming to promote a conversation on an important issue that is still undertheorized in the Italian cultural context. The brilliant response we received from seminar participants and the lively discussion that developed during the three days of the conference prompted us to coordinate the publication of our reflections.