“A sort of collective amnesia has swallowed up the experience of Italian emigration, of Italian colonialism, of Fascism, the knowledge of the complexity of Italian society itself. The residual imagery serves only to create boundaries between the newcomers and the host society.”
—Vanessa Maher’s Immigration and Social Identities, 168
One of the main points that this article discusses is the how the immigrants are perceived by the native Italians and the dynamic of their interaction or perception. This quote touches on the issue of how the Italian culture is defined and how it separates itself from foreign cultures. The author provides examples of writers who point out that Italians share a common culture, but they have forgotten their history. The Italians identify with each other through a common language, popular culture, way of life, and countless of other factors. However, Maher seems to argue that, collectively, Italians have forgotten about their history when connecting with one another. This is termed as a “complex and selective social amnesia” (Maher 168). Through collective amnesia of
The collective amnesia phenomenon described by Maher seems to imply that native Italian’s purpose of differentiating the foreigners serves more to exclude than identify which group they belong in. The lumping together of distinct groups of people in general categories such as Moroccan, African, and Oriental appears to be more than stereotyping. It is more a way to distinguish the “other.” The distinction may not stem from the history of the “other” and its impact on
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