Vital Subjects
Race and Biopolitics in Italy
Author(s)
Welch, Rhiannon Noel
Collection
Knowledge Unlatched (KU)Language
EnglishAbstract
Drawing on a range of canonical and non-canonical literary, cinematic and social scientific texts produced in post-Unification Italy, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy is an interdisciplinary study of how racial and colonial discourses shaped the "making" of Italians as modern political subjects in the years between its administrative unification (1861–1870) and the end of the First World War (1919). The book includes readings of texts by Italian thinkers such as Leopoldo Franchetti and Paolo Mantegazza and it offers new readings of well- and lesser-known texts by a writer who has become Italy's most infamous precursor to Mussolini: poet, novelist, and political provocateur Gabriele D'Annunzio. Vital Subjects concludes with an original analysis of an early film that figures prominently in the history of cinema: Giovanni Pastrone's 1914 silent film Cabiria— produced in the wake of the Italian invasion of Libya (1911–12) and celebrating ancient Roman imperialism.
Keywords
Political Science; GeneralISBN
9781781382868Publisher
Liverpool University PressPublisher website
https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/Publication date and place
2016Grantor
Imprint
Liverpool University PressClassification
Politics & government
Politics and government