Uncovering the Afterlife of the Italian Empire
The project Uncovering the Afterlife of the Italian Empire examines the concealed legacies of Italian colonialism. Through a programme of engagement with creative practitioners and the museum sector, it explores how the afterlife of the Italian empire can be uncovered and its enduring effects exposed to critical examination and debate. The project seeks to develop interdisciplinary approaches to the legacies of colonialism and widespread engagement with its methods of enhancing awareness of the afterlife of the Italian empire.
It has been developed in partnership with the curation agency Attitudes: spazio alle arti, the British School at Rome, the Goethe Institute London, the Italian Cultural Institute London, the Museo delle civiltà in Rome, and Senate House Library.
The project is an Impact and Engagement Fellowship funded by the AHRC.
For enquiries about this project contact the Project Investigator Professor Charles Burdett (charles.burdett@sas.ac.uk) or the Project Manager, Cathy Collins (cathy.collins@sas.ac.uk).
Photo: Centro rurale, Libya. © Francesca Di Pasquale
About the Project
In a world in which we see mounting nostalgia for fascism and increasing cases of state-sponsored xenophobia, it is more important than ever to develop our understanding of the workings of past authoritarian regimes and how the processes of thought and imagination that they promoted continue to exercise a powerful, though concealed, agency in the present. The focus of the project is the Italian empire which, intrinsically linked to the development of fascism (1922–45), stretched across large parts of north and east Africa, encompassing Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, and Somalia.
More specifically, the project is concerned with the afterlife of the empire. It seeks to enhance understanding of how ideas, attitudes, and images that belonged to the matrix of colonialism have continued within mainstream Italian culture in the decades since the war and how they are apparent in debates concerning migration and multiculturalism.
Pursuing an integrated programme of research and interaction with a range of creative producers, the project investigates how different media allow us to understand the ongoing legacies of Italian imperialism. It examines the extent to which the expansionist phase of the fascist regime is acknowledged within contemporary discourse in Italy. It looks at the architectural remnants of imperialism in Italy and at how sites like the EUR district in Rome (intended as a model of the ideal colonial city) have been the subject of representation, contestation, and remediation. It looks at the collections of colonial artefacts held by the Museum of Civilizations in Rome and how the curatorial staff of the museum, together with contemporary artists, are seeking to explore the meanings of these collections. It looks at the extensive literary corpus, produced for the most part by writers of African and Italian origin, and how this corpus provides a crucial means of developing awareness of the surreptitious continuation of thought processes associated with colonialism.
The project’s integration of research with inquiry into different areas of creative practice aims to produce a series of connected activities and outputs that are designed to develop public consciousness of the legacies of empire. These include a single-authored study of creative remediations of the history and consequences of Italian expansionism in the interwar period; recorded interviews with writers, curators, and artists; a video projection on the themes of the project and ways of integrating research with curatorial and creative practice; pedagogically oriented resources and policy recommendations on how knowledge of the legacies of colonialism can be disseminated across the museum and educational sectors. In addition, Senate House Library will use its extensive interdisciplinary holdings and expertise to create new practices of participatory research and literacy to bridge the gap between researcher knowledge and the lived experience.
A series of events and workshops closely associated with the project will take place during the academic year 2024–2025. These include a presentation of the work of Ethiopian-Italian author, singer, and musician, Gabriella Ghermandi (29 October 2024); a workshop on museum culture and decolonial practice with contributions from the British Museum and the Museo delle Civiltà (8 April 2025); a workshop, with the participation of Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, Vittorio Longhi, and Francesca Melandri, on how work on colonial legacies can be disseminated to wider publics (21 and 22 May 2025); and a workshop on developing antifascist pedagogies (date to be confirmed).
