Italy’s Multidimensional Forgetting: Narratives, Contested Memories, and Solidarity

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This article introduces the concept of “multidimensional forgetting” and the theoretical framework of the special issue Italian Amnesias: Multidimensional Forgetting in Contemporary Italy. Building on recent developments in memory studies, postcolonial studies, Black Mediterranean geographies, political theory, narrative hermeneutics, and Italian literary and cultural studies, the introduction argues that to understand Italy’s relationship with its past, we need to consider multiple forms of forgetting and weave together the concepts of cultural memory and political responsibility. Italy’s difficulties in coming to terms with its past are the result of enduring cultural narratives that have shaped a self-absolving doxa about Italy’s past wrongdoings and ongoing structural violence. To challenge the cultural stereotypes, national myths, and narrative habits that feed the disavowal of Italy’s implication in histories and present scenes of violence, we need to consider the multiple causes, means, and effects of Italy’s distorted self-image. This introduction invites us to do so by addressing Italy’s politics of memory in a cross-referencing, expansive, and intersectional fashion and by introducing the ten articles included in the special issue. The goal of these contributions is to map the construction of social forgetting in Italy’s cultural and public debates, explore its consequences throughout the decades, and identify attempts to counter it through forms of critical interaction that foster transcultural solidarity and responsibility. We aim to intervene in Italy’s relationship with its past in order to problematize the present and the future of a country that is currently at the heart of the global far-right, white nationalism, and neo-fascist political resurgence, and that plays a crucial role in the racially exclusionary politics of Fortress Europe.