Nós, o outro e os outros: a constituição multiétnica capixaba no caldeirão cultural do Espírito Santo, Brasil

This paper aims to analyse the multiethnic constitution of Espírito Santo starting from the report book Encontro das Raças, published in 1997 by the journalist Rogério Medeiros. The book presents interviews with narratives of European immigrants and descendants – Pomeranians, Dutch, Italians, Polish, German, Tyrolean, and Swiss. During its historical, socio-cultural and demographic constitution, Espírito Santo also counted with the participation of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants – in the 19th and early 20th centuries – and Asians, as well as national migrants. Medeiros also discusses and presents narratives of the descendants of Africans, Indians and Portuguese who constitute the first matrix of miscegenation of the capixaba people. The purpose of the present study is to reflect on this relationship that Medeiros calls the “Meeting of the Races” from a perspective of the sense of belonging and power relations established between these various ethnic groups settled in the state from 1847, when the government of the province sought alternatives to transform Espírito Santo economically and initiated, through political actions, the process of installing European immigrants in its lands.

Tiziano Terzani e l’identità proibita

In the travel journalism by Tiziano Terzani the concepts of boundary and identity are often declinated and interpreted differently, and not intended in official perspectives; the attitude of the travelling writer-journalist is always oriented towards a full involvement in the local traditions and characteristics, with the manifest intention of canceling – albeit for the limited time of the journey – the “otherness” or, more precisely, take it, adopting the point of view of others. The paradox – and direct experience of the Tuscan journalist – occurs when, once the distance is cancelled, the country of adoption ends up rejecting him: a story of love and attraction for the Eastern world – in particular the Chinese one – thematic core of many travel reports by Terzani and litmus paper of his own travel journalism.

Persistenza, precarietà e metamorfosi nella scrittura di Nelida Milani

In the writing of Nelida Milani different linguistic registers coexist: the Istro-Venetian dialect, the cultured citations, the Croatian. The outcome is that of an expressive vitality sometimes characterised by rhythmic cadences close to the prose of art and it expresses the potential of the Italian language on which Milani also reflects in her theoretical contributions. This paper intends to highlight how it is precisely the capacity to welcome ‘the other’ to find a writing capable of indicating new expressive paths to the language of Italian fiction.

Hacia un nuevo humanismo

The concept of ‘inter’ (inter-disciplinary, inter-human, inter-cultural, etc.), which is the primary motivation that gives rise to Buber’s dialogical-relational philosophy, is also at the centre of José Isaacson’s philosophical, critical and poetic elaboration. A paradigmatic example is Cuaderno Spinoza (1977), considered by Bernardo Canal Feijóo as “the most important philosophical poem written in the Spanish language”, an extremely original book, of great metaphysical and epistemological depth, written by an extraordinary poet and one of the essential intellectuals of the current Hispanic world who has felt “the imperious need to approach to Baruch Spinoza” (Isaacson), the exiled man par excellence.

Alterità e inesperienza nell’opera di Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is one of the most important interpreters of the West. One of the key points of his work is the analysis of the effects of the “end of the history” (Fukuyama). The protagonist of Underworld says “I long for days of disorder”. History is represented in the first part of his works (Running Dog, White Noise) as Nazism and Hitler’s legacy, while later, in Cosmopolis and in Zero K, it is embodied by immigrant characters. This study analyes how these figures become symbolic images within the framework of the author’s thought.

Representaciones de lo indígena en la literatura contemporánea argentina

In recent decades, the Argentine novel has reconfigured the representation of indigenous people, and in particular that of those who suffered, in the southern territories of America, the destruction of their culture between the 19th and 20th centuries. Our purpose is to observe how, in El entenado (1983) by Juan José Saer, La tierra del fuego (1998) by Sylvia Iparraguirre and La extinción de las especies (2017) by Diego Vecchio, the image of the indigenous ‘other’ becomes part, in universal terms, of the same, through a process that contradicts the national historical account.

‘Pero… yo ¿soy el otro?’

This work investigates, through literary texts and other artistic expressions, the variations, distances and alterations between the ‘I’ and the ‘Other’: possession, total or partial identification, rejection, aversion.

El otro, nosotros y yo

Mexico saw a dramatic rise in violence during the first two decades of the 20th century. While mass media news (tabloid papers, television, internet) fed its audience what Octavio Paz called “the same dish of blood” day after day, these outbreaks of violence found a more internalised and subjective echo in works of poetry. Yet, how can one speak in the first person in the face of horror? What does it mean for poetry to say ‘I’ or indeed ‘we’ in these circumstances, at the risk of veering into civic and patriotic reflections? This article examines the challenges raised by these questions through the works of four contemporary Mexican poets.

L’altro non sono io

Through the analysis of some texts recently published in English, this chapter aims to analyse the recent academic debate in the English-speaking world on the role of identity in the growth of consensus and diffusion of populist parties and movements. The first part of this study reconstructs the origins of the so-called identity politics, starting from the movements for the recognition of the 1980s and in particular from protests against the publication of the book The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie; the second part analyses the meaning of identity and the related concept of identity politics; the third part deals with some aspects of identity politics today and how the academic debate uses the category of white identity in relation to current populist politics; the chapter concludes with some critical reflections both on the use of the category of identity politics and on an interpretation of identity as a monolithic and homogeneous entity.

Migraciones, marginalidades y representaciones de la violencia

This essay focuses on the concept of migration and the representations of migration phenomenon in contemporary literature and comic, with a particular attention to Latin American continent. In Latin America, in particular in the last years, literature is actively involved: in Mexico in the denunciation of migration drama in the U.S.-Mexico border and in Argentina in the denunciation of woman discrimination and femicide, which is so widespread in the continent, and in the subordinate subjects’ life, living at the margins of society.