Black Spaces: African Diaspora in Italy

Description

Black Spaces examines how space and place are racialized, and the impacts on everyday experiences among African Italians, immigrants, and refugees. It explores the deeply intertwined histories of Africa and Europe, and how people of African descent negotiate, contest, and live with anti-blackness in Italy. The vast majority of people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe are from West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Their passage is part of the legacy of Italian and broader European engagement in colonial projects. This largely forgotten history corresponds with an ongoing effort to erase them from the Italian social landscape on arrival. Black Spaces examines these racialized spaces by blending a critical geographical approach to place and space with Afro-Pessimist and critical race perspectives on the lived experiences of Blackness and anti-blackness in Italy." Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgments Colonization and Immigration Timeline Glossary Introduction: Witness to the Unthought Position Black Spaces Historical Context Africa and Europe Methodology Chapter Outline Notes 1. Africa-Italy: A Genealogy of Relational Places The Myth of Italian Innocence: Erasing Colonialism Spatial Technologies of Violence: Genocide and Concentration Camps Forgotten Voices: The Debre Libanos Massacre Ways of Looking Notes 2. Black/black Spaces: Lived Experiences and Geographic Logics Portraits of Everyday Life Black Social Death Black Spaces Social Bordering Social Life and Social Death Raciality in the 21st Century Notes 3. Unarchived Everyday Violence Italian Context Not So Trifling Everyday Geography of Racialized Contacts Empowerment in the Face of Social Erasure Notes 4. The Death of Sylvester Agyemang: Can You Be BLACK and Bear This? Witness, Memory, and Loss Community and Africanness-as-also-Blackness Alternative Stories Notes 5 Grammar and Ghosts: Refugees and Migrants in Italy African Refugees Black Fugitives Refugees and Race The Mediterranean Crossing Border Work Detention and Mobilization Notes Conclusion: Re-Imagining Future Geographies Note Bibliography Index