Sandra Ponzanesi

In the name of Europe

‘Europe’ in a sense is a phantom of the past, a name that ‘is history’ rather than society, political, or economics, since the flow of capitalization, population, communication and political action, cross its territory, invest its cities and workplace, but do not elect it as a permanent of specific site. Europe is not only de-territorialized, but also de-localized, put ‘out of itself’, and in the end deconstructed. It may be part of an imaginary, but less and less of the real. (Balibar, 2004, p. 10)

Feminist theory and multiculturalism

Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard and Martha Nussbaum, eds, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0–691–00432–3, £12.95 (pbk) Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. ISBN 1–592–13092–5, £12.95 (pbk) Sneja Gunew, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimension of Multiculturalisms. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0–415–28483–X, £19.99 (pbk) Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. ISBN 0–253–21156–5, £12.95 (pbk) Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, eds, Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. ISBN 0–253–21384–3, £15.50 (pbk)

The Point of Europe: Postcolonial Entanglements

Is Europe a dead political project, as political philosopher Étienne Balibar provocatively wrote in the Guardian on 25 October 2010, addressing the Greek crisis; or is it an unfinished adventure, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman more utopically auspicated in his book Europe: An Unfinished Adventure (2004)? What is the point of Europe? In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo (7 January 2015), in which more than a dozen people were killed and the Syrian refugee crisis, the question is whether Europe still has any function in responding to global frictions. In the light of contending regimes that operate transnationally, such as fundamentalism versus democracy, religion versus secularism, solidarity versus xenophobia, Europe would seem to be in search of a common ground that can realign its self-representations with the reality of a rapidly changing society. This is a society in which other traditions, lifestyles and crises ask for a revision of the very notion of Europe as more accommodating and encompassing of differences as well as offering new forms of solidarity.

Europe in motion: migrant cinema and the politics of encounter

The article focuses on the contested notion of the (new) Europe from the vantage point of migrant cinema. The aim is to explore how cinematic language offers alternative modalities of representation and subjectification in relation to migration, gender and identity. The emphasis of this analysis is on the politics of encounter: how the presumed strangers to Europe are figurations of Europes othered self while also embodying the material practices of exclusion. The politics of encounter is explored in three films made by European filmmakers in which the main female character struggles to negotiate her identity in between colonial legacies and global terror, as in the British-Pakistani Yasmin (Kenneth Glenaan, UK, 2004), between transsexual and transnational politics, as in the case of the Iranian refugee in Unveiled (Angela Maccarone, Germany, 2005), or in between trafficked bodies and renewed citizenship as in the case of the Eastern European immigrant prostitute in The unknown woman (Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy, 2006). These visual and ideological commentaries participate in the redefinition or abolition of the notion of Europe by proposing the representations of the strangers within not from original and unexpected positions but by highlighting the transformation of the ‘European subject’ through the politics of encounter. The article furthermore raises questions about the agency of Muslim women who opt for religion in the midst of the self-professed secular Europe, explores debates on homophobia and the refugees state of exceptionalism and offers a feminist reading of the phenomena of trafficking of women.

Connected migrants: Encapsulation and cosmopolitanization

ABSTRACT Taking a cue from Dana Diminescu’s seminal manifesto on “the connected migrant,” this special issue introduces the notions of encapsulation and cosmopolitanism to understand digital migration studies. The pieces here present a nonbinary, integrated notion of an increasingly digitally mediated cosmopolitanism that accommodates differences within but also recognizes Europe’s colonial legacy and the fraught postcolonial present. Of special interest is an essay by the late Zygmunt Bauman, who argues that the messy boundaries of Europe require a renewed vision of cosmopolitan Europe, based on dialogue and aspirations, rather than on Eurocentrism and universal values. In this article, we focus on three overarching discussions informing this special issue: (a) an appreciation of the so-called “refugee crisis” and the articulation of conflicting Europeanisms, (b) an understanding of the relationships between the concepts of cosmopolitanization and encapsulation, and (c) a recognition of the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of digital migration studies.

communicative spaces of their own: migrant girls performing selves using instant messaging software

In this article, we argue how instant messaging (IM) is actively made into a communicative space of their own among migrant girls. Triangulating data gathered through large-scale surveys, interviews and textual analysis of IM transcripts, we focus on Moroccan-Dutch girls who use instant messaging as a space where they can negotiate several issues at the crossroads of national, ethnic, racial, age and linguistic specificities. We take an intersectional perspective to disentangle how they perform differential selves using IM both as an ‘onstage’ activity through which they express their communal, public and global youth cultural belongings and as a ‘backstage’ activity through which they articulate their individual, private and intimate identity expression. Instant messaging appears to be a space where they can strategically (re-)position themselves. The relationship between the online world of IM and the off-line world is shown to be intricate and complex; at certain points, both worlds overlap and at others they diverge. Despite all existing constraints that are both related to gender restrictions, often disenfranchised family backgrounds, religious dictums, and surveillance by parents, siblings and peers, which affect Moroccan-Dutch girls in specific ways, IM is also understood as a unique space for exerting their agency in autonomous, playful and intimate ways.

On the Waterfront: Truth and Fiction in Postcolonial Cinema from the South of Europe

This essay deals with the role of postcolonial cinema in articulating and visualizing issues of migration, uprooting and alienation, with specific relation to Europe and the Southern Mediterranean shore. Cinema as a transnational medium is particularly suitable for conveying denunciation and social critique. Yet this must be combined with an understanding of how the different cinematic traditions and genres contribute, in specific aesthetic and ethical ways, towards conveying the message and impact on the audiences. The scope of this essay is to theorize migration in the context of postcolonial cinema and to discuss the space occupied by the documentary (genre/form) within the framework of postcolonial cinema that deals with migration. This will be done through the close reading of two migrant films produced in Spain and Italy, respectively: 14 Kilómetros (2007) and A Sud di Lampedusa (2006), both of which are concerned with the question of border crossing and African migrants’ attempts to reach the southern shore of Europe, following very different visual registers. This raises questions about the political and cultural contextualization of migration to Europe from Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, in which the Mediterranean assumes a new protagonist role that reconfigures our ideas about the porosity of Europe and the liquidity of cinema.

The Postcolonial Turn in Italian Studies

To date, Italy’s imperial enterprises have received little attention in comparative colonial studies. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller write, it was not until recently that Italian colonialism was accounted for in Italian national history. This positions historical studies on Italian colonialism in a double marginalization, with respect to its role in modern Europe, and with respect to its construction of the Italian national consciousness. However, though more limited in time and geographically restricted than that of the French and British empires, Italian colonialism had a significant impact on the development of metropolitan conceptions of race, national identity, and imagination (Ben-Ghiat and Fuller).

Genres and Tropes in Postcolonial Cinema(s) in Europe

Transnational migration and questions of identity are amongst the most powerful forces of social transformation in contemporary Europe. Hence, representations of migrant, exilic and diasporic experiences as well as the dynamics of postmodern multiculturalism have assumed a prominent position over the past three decades in European mainstream and art-house cinema (see, e.g. Berger and Komori 2010; Berghahn and Sternberg 2010; Loshitzky 2010; Ponzanesi and Blaagaard 2011; Ponzanesi and Waller 2012 on this topic). Located between national, transnational and global modes of production, distribution and reception, these films not only rely on the colonial heritage of Europe’s past, but also on its present-day sociopolitical and cultural influences. Consequently, both the narration and aesthetics of the so-called ‘postcolonial cinema’ deal with the waves of migrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia moving into the European Union, with inclusion, exclusion and pluri-ethnicity as well as with modalities of representation and politics of encounter. Therefore, the contributions in this special issue reflect three main key aspects – Europe, postcolonialism and cinema – which are not separated terms but intertwined and connected with one another in multiple ways, inflecting and generating a plurality of nuances. This approach requires a preliminary agreement on what has to be understood under the heading of ‘postcolonial cinema’, which is of course an open alliance with many other categories. For example, the terms ‘migrant cinema’ and ‘postcolonial cinema’ are often used interchangeably, yet the latter has a wider theoretical and aesthetic resonance. As an established concept in Film Studies, ‘migrant cinema’ – also termed ‘accented cinema’ by Hamid Naficy (2001) – introduces a complex and eclectic mix of styles, conventions and forms, often emanating from non-Western traditions. Naficy therefore identifies three types of ‘migrant cinema’ based on the modes of production: firstly, that made by exiles; secondly, that made by members of a diaspora; and, thirdly, ethnic and identity film-makers (2001, 10–17). Nevertheless, migrant film-makers are not the only directors focusing on the topics of migration, multi-ethnic conviviality, Otherness and Europeanness. Moreover, as Sandra Ponzanesi points out, each national cinema deals with ‘migrant themes, characters and issues’ (2011, 74) in different genres, periods and ways, with local and national film-makers dedicating their filmic production to this topic.

Of shipwrecks and weddings: borders and mobilities in Europe

Abstract This essay proposes a new visual politics of Europe’s borders that foregrounds encounters and trespassings. It focuses on the analysis of several films that deal with the migrant drama but in particular on two films that have received wide international acclaim: Io Sto con la Sposa [On The Bride’s Side] (2014) and Fuocoammare [Fire at Sea] (2016). The films deal with migration as a humanitarian crisis but are not simple acts of denunciation. They are also not straightforward documentaries but offer innovative visual registers that defy categorization into fixed genres, such as the road movie or observational documentary. On the Bride’s Side uses the format of a travelling wedding party that disregards both legislation restricting free mobility in Europe and the cynicism about the hopelessness of the migrant condition. The film was realized through an online crowdfunding campaign unprecedented in Italy. Fire at Sea presents the tragedy of Lampedusa outside of the regular schemes and screens, combining the migrant drama with the ordinary lives of people on the island, mostly through the perspective of a 12-year-old boy, Samuele, whose lazy eye becomes a metaphor for the short-sightedness of Europe. Both films propose a new aesthetic of the border, forging new imaginaries for Europe where spaces of solidarity and cosmopolitanism are still possible.