‘How can you feel guilty for colonialism? it is a folly’: colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right

Griffini, Marianna (2022) ‘How can you feel guilty for colonialism? it is a folly’: colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right. European Politics and Society, 24 (4). pp. 477-493. ISSN 2374-5118

Abstract

This paper draws attention to the role of colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right. Italy’s colonial past has been long confined on the fringes of memory in Italian politics and in the Italian public debate. While recent academic attention has been devoted to the selective colonial memory transpiring from Italian cultural products, scarce attention has been paid to colonial memory in contemporary Italian political parties’ discourse. Therefore, by applying Critical Discourse Analysis to semistructured interviews with Italian populist radical right representatives from the Lega and Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), this paper aims at investigating which role colonial memory plays in these parties’ discourse. This paper argues that the Lega and FdI reproduce colonial discourse in constructing the image of the contemporary immigrant Other. At the same time, they forge a selective memory of Italy’s colonial past, cleansed from its most controversial aspects.

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Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2022.2058753
Item Type:	Article
Disciplines:	Social Science > Politics, IR, Sociology & Anthropology
Depositing User:	Marianna Griffini
Date Deposited:	12 Sep 2024 13:09
Last Modified:	12 Sep 2024 13:09
URI:	https://nul.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/1051

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