IT303: Week 2 Quando Dio ballava il tango

Diaspora, home, gender

Structure of lecture:

• Introduction to Pariani and text

• Discussion of first chapter

• Diaspora and home

• Images of Home in Quando Dio ballava il tango

Italy and Argentina• After 1900, 3 million Italians went to Argentina and

1.5 million to Brazil• Worked on construction, railways, pampas and

plantations• 1936 – almost 300,000 Italians in Buenos Aires • Around 55% of Argentinians of Italian descent• Seasonal workers – golondrine (rondine/swallows)• Most were men, but a third were women• Women left behind referred to as ‘white widows’.

La Venturina e Corazón; ognuna seguendo il filo di due vite diversissime che non si mescolano l’una con l’altra, ma armonizzano nonostante tutto, perché in qualche punto della distanza che le separa compongono una risposta. Dato che sono nonna e nipote. (p. 28)

Chapter 1

• Language

• Narrative voice

• Gender and migration

• Identity

• Memory

Diaspora:

Etymology

Greek:•Dia (over, through)•Speirein (sow, scatter)

Diaspora as a necklace of scattered pearls (Ali Farah)

Diaspora as web of connections

• Interconnectedness• Attachment• Myth of centre

Characteristics of Diaspora (Safran)

1) dispersal from centre to two or more foreign regions

2) collective memory / myth of homeland

3) partly alienated from host society

4) desire to return home

5) commitment to maintain / restore homeland

6) they relate personally to homeland and share sense of co-ethnicity with other members of diaspora.

Types of Diaspora - Cohen

• Victim diaspora- Jews, Armenians, Africans• Imperial diaspora – British• Labour diaspora – Indian • Trading diaspora – Chinese, Lebanese• Cultural diaspora – Caribbean

Diaspora Space - Brah• Avoids the divisions of native/non-native or

minority/majority. It includes descendants of migrants and the ‘indigenous’.

• ‘Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural and psychic processes.’

• It ‘includes the entanglement, the intertwining of the genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put.’

Donna Gabaccia• Italy has ‘many diasporas’• attachments are to home town (il paese) rather

than Italy (il Paese).• campanilismo• high rate of return part of magnetism of home

town (over half returned)

‘The modern diasporas of Italy were webs of social connections and channels of communication between the wider world and a particular paese (village) or patria (hometown)’ (Gabaccia, p. 3).

Meanings of home• refuge, comfort, protection, security, stability• permanent dwelling (contrast hotel, tent)• denotes a sense of attachment (house v home)• an architectural, psychological, geographical and social

concept • domestic space, gendered space• site of oppression, restriction, entrapment• an idealised, utopian space• constructed on patterns of inclusion and exclusion

• a problematic term for displaced persons or children of migrants

• ‘Soltanto due mesi fa Corazón e la sua bambina erano ancora nelle praterie slargate all’altro capo del mondo; adesso invece il loro orizzonte è qui, in questa angusta cucina di cardenzóni tartati, vigilata da scure fotografie di gente che fu’ (pp. 13-14).

• Come deve essersi sentito prigioniero in questa cascina buia, al suo ritorno dall’America, dopo aver assaggiato l’ampiezza luminosa degli spazi argentini’

• ‘l’atmosfera di chiuso’• ‘spaesato’ spaesamento’.

Regalada Majna’s the life in the village, ‘una vita immobile e senza vie d’uscita; una gabbia, (p. 58-60).

Martinita Colombo leaves home to escape a violent father. ‘una terribile trappola da cui fuggire’ (p. 276).

Raquel Potok, who flees from her home in Poland during the 1930s to escape racial persecution (p. 116).

Pietro Colombo ‘voleva la libertà’

Ambrogio also leaves home ‘in casa Colombo si soffocava’ (p. 111).

Pietro Colombo wants to build a house in Argentina so his children can be born in their own home.

Mafalda Cerutti, ‘il suo paese ce l’aveva nel cuore’, p. 169

Wife of Lot (pp. 216, 225).  

Topics• Language / voice

• Identity

• home

• Loss, nostalgia

• Gender

• Memory

• Intergenerational relationship

• The sea