Decoding the conqueror’s gaze: A computational approach to Ennio Flaiano’s (post)colonialism

Ennio Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere (1947) has long divided critics over whether it challenges or merely aestheticizes Italian colonialism. This study applies computational narratology methods to investigate this ambivalence through systematic analysis of narrative focalization. Through manual annotation of 5,793 text segments across four narrative categories (Narrator, Conqueror, Indigenous and Description) and their subcategories, we examine how quantitative analysis of focalization patterns illuminates Flaiano’s complex stance toward the Ethiopian colonial campaign. We combine multiple analytical methods with an exploratory bottom-up approach: qualitative analysis of lexical distribution, part-of-speech distribution analysis to identify grammatical signatures of each narrative category and their semantic implications and syntactic role analysis to examine agency patterns in character representation. Statistical testing confirms that narrative categories exhibit robust grammatical distinctions, validating theannotationschema.Theanalysisrevealsadeliberateambiguity:syntacticroleanalysisshows comparablelevelsofagentivitybetweenIndigenousandConquerorcharacters,contrastingwith traditional colonial discourse where colonized subjects are typically represented as passive. Lexical analysis exposes asymmetries in how characters are individuated and how different typesofknowledgeareattributedtoeachgroup.Rather thanconfirmingastraightforward colonial or anti-colonial position, the analysis reveals how Flaiano through narrative techniques, exploiting and subverting genre conventions, consciously deconstructs the propagandistic reassuring ideology. This study contributes both methodologically– by developing an annotation schema for narrative focalization in Italian prose that can be applied to other textsandinterpretively, by demonstrating how computational narratology can document ideological complexity, revealing patterns invisible to traditional close reading alone.