In her 2013 La Sapienza doctoral dissertation on the second half of the nineteenth century notes and diaries of Italian Navy mariners, Dr Dimpflmeier developed a framework for looking at how the representation of otherness is presented in Italian travel accounts. The time frame of her research has been chosen on the basis of the fact that during the second half of the nineteenth century, shortly after the reunification of Italy, a period of Italian presence on the international seas began: it was geared to building diplomatic contacts, helping to find countrymen and Italian explorers missing in different parts of the world, and looking for potential colonies. For the first time after the Maritime Republics, Italy started to project again her dreams on the sea, slowly igniting the possibility of building a maritime power on the Mediterranean Sea that could support her new presence in the European and international contest for territory and influence. A particular ‘sea mystic’ that silently influenced the empowerment of the Italian Navy, playing a strategic part in the Italian nation building process and early intermingling with Italian colonial ambitions. During these voyages, amounting to eleven circumnavigations of the globe and twenty-one oceanic campaigns from 1866 to 1890, Italian naval officers had the chance to come into contact directly and for the first time with the most diverse populations: from the Japanese to the Chinese, from the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia to the inhabitants of Papua-New Guinea. In her dissertation, Dr Dimpflmeier considered Italian mariners’ travel notes and diaries, partly available in the ‘Rivista Marittima’, the official journal of the Italian Royal Navy, or published as independent volumes, as travel narratives influenced by the new Italian politics of navalism, which was focusing on building a strong and powerful image of the Navy on the seas and of Italy as a civilized nation. In particular, she studied how Italian Navy officers used to picture ‘Others’ as a means of building a positive self-image of a nation at the top of the scale of civilization. Following analysis and research into travel notes, she showed how one can learn not only about other populations but in particular about the way of looking at them. Thanks to her travel notes examination, in fact, it is possible to extract and interpret the topoi of speech between Italians and ‘Others’ and to understand, by contrast, how much they tell us about Italian identity, Italian-ness, and how it was being developed shortly after unification, in relation to other nations and to the increasing dissemination of a strong colonial idea. Post-colonial research in particular has underlined the importance of the role played by non-European images in the self-representations of ‘civilized’ populations and their respective nationalisms. The reflections developed by Edward Said on ‘Orientalism’ are interesting as an extension of the Foucaultian notion of discourse applied to the socio-cultural relationships between the West and its others, which connects the production of knowledge to the exertion of power and calls into question the same western representations. Considering imperialism a meta-discourse that affects every practice and representation of the period, and western identity and modernity only understandable in relation to the construction of an exotic, primitive, savage or barbarian other, Dr Dimpflmeier focused on a post-colonial re-reading of the diaries and travel notes, considered as a privileged way to search for the imaginary transfigurations of Italian identity conflicts. Her analysis of the accounts – on the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, Papuans, Tahitians and Africans – show old ways of representing indigenous populations interwoven with new knowledge, both carrying different systems of describing and comprehending otherness, such as cannibalism, science, pity, civilization, classicism, exoticism, comedy. Seen as a whole, these representations are built on very precise dichotomic opposites, from which emerges the image of an advanced, civil, modern and colonial Italian-ness. As Dr Dimpflmeier demonstrates, these descriptions, even though not univocal, reflect the process of legitimating the Italian colonizer’s role, who tries to define himself by contrast finding and enhancing those characteristics that can make him a ‘good colonialist’. Shaping an ideological limes, the pre-existing images are re-functionalized to build Italian civility, showing that Italy felt ready to share the ‘white man’s burden’. In the end, before the general overlapping of naval politics with the expansionistic Italian interest for Africa, it was the Italian Navy, even though with ups and downs, which conducted an active action whose aim was to promote Italy internationally, combining sea presence, identity and national power. The travel accounts analyzed can be considered a part of a more general colonial discourse influenced by the dynamics of recovery of the inheritance of the military values of the Risorgimento – i.e. by all the different efforts to re-evaluate and reinforce the image of Italy during the 1870s and 1880s , including the publication of the travel accounts themselves. Building on work on Italian late nineteenth representation of otherness, Dr Dimpflmeier has explored the existing Italian ‘colonial discourse’ of the time, largely shared with the rest of Europe and persisting even without colonies, both in higher and popular cultures. In this milieu, travel accounts written by navy officers gave her the opportunity to verify the process of re-functionalization of these largely pre-existing images in the international maritime environment in the period preceding the conquest of the first Italian colony and in strict connection with the building process of the Italian nation.

Navigando attraverso l’Alterità. L’identità italiana nelle relazioni di viaggio della Marina Militare della seconda metà dell’Ottocento(2013 Jun 13).

Navigando attraverso l’Alterità. L’identità italiana nelle relazioni di viaggio della Marina Militare della seconda metà dell’Ottocento

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13/06/2013

Abstract

In her 2013 La Sapienza doctoral dissertation on the second half of the nineteenth century notes and diaries of Italian Navy mariners, Dr Dimpflmeier developed a framework for looking at how the representation of otherness is presented in Italian travel accounts. The time frame of her research has been chosen on the basis of the fact that during the second half of the nineteenth century, shortly after the reunification of Italy, a period of Italian presence on the international seas began: it was geared to building diplomatic contacts, helping to find countrymen and Italian explorers missing in different parts of the world, and looking for potential colonies. For the first time after the Maritime Republics, Italy started to project again her dreams on the sea, slowly igniting the possibility of building a maritime power on the Mediterranean Sea that could support her new presence in the European and international contest for territory and influence. A particular ‘sea mystic’ that silently influenced the empowerment of the Italian Navy, playing a strategic part in the Italian nation building process and early intermingling with Italian colonial ambitions. During these voyages, amounting to eleven circumnavigations of the globe and twenty-one oceanic campaigns from 1866 to 1890, Italian naval officers had the chance to come into contact directly and for the first time with the most diverse populations: from the Japanese to the Chinese, from the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia to the inhabitants of Papua-New Guinea. In her dissertation, Dr Dimpflmeier considered Italian mariners’ travel notes and diaries, partly available in the ‘Rivista Marittima’, the official journal of the Italian Royal Navy, or published as independent volumes, as travel narratives influenced by the new Italian politics of navalism, which was focusing on building a strong and powerful image of the Navy on the seas and of Italy as a civilized nation. In particular, she studied how Italian Navy officers used to picture ‘Others’ as a means of building a positive self-image of a nation at the top of the scale of civilization. Following analysis and research into travel notes, she showed how one can learn not only about other populations but in particular about the way of looking at them. Thanks to her travel notes examination, in fact, it is possible to extract and interpret the topoi of speech between Italians and ‘Others’ and to understand, by contrast, how much they tell us about Italian identity, Italian-ness, and how it was being developed shortly after unification, in relation to other nations and to the increasing dissemination of a strong colonial idea. Post-colonial research in particular has underlined the importance of the role played by non-European images in the self-representations of ‘civilized’ populations and their respective nationalisms. The reflections developed by Edward Said on ‘Orientalism’ are interesting as an extension of the Foucaultian notion of discourse applied to the socio-cultural relationships between the West and its others, which connects the production of knowledge to the exertion of power and calls into question the same western representations. Considering imperialism a meta-discourse that affects every practice and representation of the period, and western identity and modernity only understandable in relation to the construction of an exotic, primitive, savage or barbarian other, Dr Dimpflmeier focused on a post-colonial re-reading of the diaries and travel notes, considered as a privileged way to search for the imaginary transfigurations of Italian identity conflicts. Her analysis of the accounts – on the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, Papuans, Tahitians and Africans – show old ways of representing indigenous populations interwoven with new knowledge, both carrying different systems of describing and comprehending otherness, such as cannibalism, science, pity, civilization, classicism, exoticism, comedy. Seen as a whole, these representations are built on very precise dichotomic opposites, from which emerges the image of an advanced, civil, modern and colonial Italian-ness. As Dr Dimpflmeier demonstrates, these descriptions, even though not univocal, reflect the process of legitimating the Italian colonizer’s role, who tries to define himself by contrast finding and enhancing those characteristics that can make him a ‘good colonialist’. Shaping an ideological limes, the pre-existing images are re-functionalized to build Italian civility, showing that Italy felt ready to share the ‘white man’s burden’. In the end, before the general overlapping of naval politics with the expansionistic Italian interest for Africa, it was the Italian Navy, even though with ups and downs, which conducted an active action whose aim was to promote Italy internationally, combining sea presence, identity and national power. The travel accounts analyzed can be considered a part of a more general colonial discourse influenced by the dynamics of recovery of the inheritance of the military values of the Risorgimento – i.e. by all the different efforts to re-evaluate and reinforce the image of Italy during the 1870s and 1880s , including the publication of the travel accounts themselves. Building on work on Italian late nineteenth representation of otherness, Dr Dimpflmeier has explored the existing Italian ‘colonial discourse’ of the time, largely shared with the rest of Europe and persisting even without colonies, both in higher and popular cultures. In this milieu, travel accounts written by navy officers gave her the opportunity to verify the process of re-functionalization of these largely pre-existing images in the international maritime environment in the period preceding the conquest of the first Italian colony and in strict connection with the building process of the Italian nation.
13-giu-2013
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/918448
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