Omitted Frames, Forgotten Citizens: A Critical Examination of the Cultural Politics of Citizenship in Contemporary Italy

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This study explores how Italy’s reluctance to confront its colonial and fascist past, along with deeply ingrained essentialist notions of national identity, citizenship, and belonging, continues to influence discursive interventions, including counter-hegemonic efforts. By focusing on the less explored arena of the progressive cultural politics of citizenship, the study explores how processes of omission and forgetting infiltrate discourses advocating for inclusion and citizenship rights. Drawing on a framework influenced by postcolonial and cultural studies and guided by thematic and framing analysis, this study examines the discursive constructions of “newness,” “inclusion,” and “moderation” sustained by deliberate or unconscious omissions within a variety of texts sourced from political-institutional, scholarly, and advocacy arenas. The study argues that discursive omissions, on the one hand, sustain a careful and moderate politics of negotiation with the dominant regime of representation to secure the advancement of the citizenship reform project, while, on the other hand, they perpetuate essentialist models of national identity rather than reclaiming inherently and historically transcultural national belonging and citizenship.