Polarizations: Colonial othering and postcolonial reflexivity in Italian literature

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Tiller
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 569425952

The proposed project "Polarizations: Colonial othering and postcolonial reflexivity in Italian literature" will examine the role of fictional texts in terms of their potential for societal structuring, using the example of colonial and postcolonial othering. Othering is understood here as group-specific alteration in the sense of asymmetrical and marginalizing practices of attribution. With the cognitive significance of fictionality as one of the ‘ways of worldmaking’, the emphasis is on the forms and functions of narratives for social routines of world interpretation. These are analyzed, on the one hand, using the example of narrative texts with references to colonialism published between 1900 and 1943, and, on the other hand, using migration narratives created after 1989 that work with references to Italian colonialism. The project focuses on the representation of markers of exclusion of non-autochthonous people in colonial and migration contexts, because through the narration of othering it becomes comprehensible which colonial ordering and coding or postcolonial moderating and reflexive-pointing potentials narrative texts have for the cognitive dynamization of social self-understanding. The project proceeds diachronically (Italian colonialism until 1943 / immigration to Italy since 1989) in order to examine the respective literary modes of othering under colonial and postcolonial auspices and, since they are politically diametrically motivated, to relate them to each other. In addition to racisms, the focus is on gendered attribution practices in particular, which generally operate via sexualized markers: In each case, the body of the victim is addressed in order to stage devalorizing differentiations in a particularly effective way. The starting point for these considerations is that current migration narratives often make explicit reference to the Italian colonial era with regard to specific experiences of exclusion, thus suggesting or lamenting a continuity between migration-induced and colonial othering. For this reason, the project focuses, in addition to decidedly postcolonial migration narratives that refer to Italian colonialism, in particular on literary narratives with colonial references written up to 1943, which translate programmatic positionings of polarizing (pre-)fascist colonialism into canonical narrative patterns, thereby aesthetically inscenting asymmetrical attributions and manifesting epistemic violence in this way. The aim is to describe more precisely the hierarchizing or moderating political potentials of narrative literature in its literary 'made-ness' by analysing the differently 'charged' and 'packaged' modes of othering in colonial and postcolonial narrative texts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants