Hospitality and Mobilities

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!". He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. 

Bram Stoker, Dracula.

Blood: A critique of Christianity

Blood: A Critique of Christianity - Gil Anidjar Blood, in Gil Anidjar's argument, maps the singular history of Christianity. A category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining, Western culture, politics, and social practices and their wide-ranging incarnations in nationalism, capitalism, and law. In Part One. The Vampire State, Anidjar analyzes the role of blood in medieval Christianity and its subsequent influence on the Western civilization- in particular how it founded and shaped the three fundamental concepts of modernity: nation, state and capital. In Part Two. Hematologies, Anidjar explores the space occupied by blood in the literary canon of the Western world, engaging with Greek culture, philosophy and psychoanalysis

What's so special about blood?

Migration and Identity: Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Migration and identity are relevant topics in Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The plot evolves around Changez, a Pakistani migrant in America, who struggles between two identities and is torn between the clash of two different worlds. As a matter of fact, after 9/11 and the following invasion of Afghanistan, he starts to resent America and he feels a crippling sense of displacement. His disillusionment will lead him back to his native country.

An interview with four immigrants

Italy is one of the most important destination countries for migrants in Europe. Around 500.000 regular migrants live there and the annual growth rate of migrant presence is, together with Spain, the highest in Europe. Italy is currently struggling to deal not only with the legal immigrants but also with the illegal ones. As a matter of fact, many of these undocumented immigrants use the sea route as a way to enter in the country. This problematic situation has increased tension within Italian cities, as well as feelings of animosity towards immigrants.
A week ago we decided to interview some immigrants living in Northern Italy in order to understand how they are treated by Italians, whether or not they feel welcomed, and if they are still victims of racial bias. The interview took place in four different cities - Brescia, Treviso, Mantua and Venice - and has been translated in English

Venice, post-cosmopolitan city?

In the volume Post-Cosmopolitan cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence, Venice is listed among post-cosmopolitan cities, that is places once famous for being cosmopolitan but which are no longer so in the twenty-first century.

Cosmopolitanism: the migrant and the city

"City life is carried on by strangers among strangers" 

Zygmunt Bauman

Analysis of the characters in the novel

     "Speak of me as I am" (Oth, V, II, 342). Othello's final words point to the interconnections that can be established between one's story and one's identity; specifically, to the process of identity construction determined by the act of story-telling. As pointed out by Calbi, Othello's invitation to relate his story is not without complications: as a migrant, the general has in fact inhabited a "multiplicity of personalities" (Calbi, 39) which makes it difficult to pinpoint his identity and, therefore, to "speak of" him Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood, answers Othello's plea by linking his story to those of other displaced figures from early modernity to our postcolonial globality. The discourse around the migrant is thus re-articulated through a plurality of voices which by addressing each other across time and space function as tiles in a composite mosaic of European racism and anti-semitism. Not only does Phillips propose a new way of looking at history, "through the prism of people who have normally been written out of it" (Jaggi, 26), but he also creates a narrative space where the "displaced and the dispossessed" (Phillips, 5) can reappropriate their voices and tell their own stories. By interlocking narratives of Jewish and Black oppression, Phillips let these marginalized figure address each other and their respective sufferings: the figure of the migrant is re-shaped through the dialogue established among outsiders. This essay will attempt to analyze the juxtapositions between the characters of the novel and to explore the role of narration in relation to identity construction.