Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention

Stephanie Malia Hom

Published by Cornell University Press 2019

Empire's Mobius Strip

Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention

Stephanie Malia Hom

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501739910

Overview
Contents

About this book

Its brilliant prose makes [Empire's Mobius Strip] easily accessible to anyone interested in today's migration crisis in the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world.― American Historical Review

Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention has its roots in early twentieth century imperial ambitions. Empire's Mobius Strip investigates how mobile populations were perceived to be major threats to Italian colonization, and how the state's historical mechanisms of control have resurfaced, with greater force, in today's refugee crisis.

What is at stake in Empire's Mobius Strip is a deeper understanding of the forces driving those who move by choice and those who are moved. Stephanie Malia Hom focuses on Libya, considered Italy's most valuable colony, both politically and economically. Often perceived as the least of the great powers, Italian imperialism has been framed as something of "colonialism lite." But Italian colonizers carried out genocide between 1929–33, targeting nomadic Bedouin and marching almost 100,000 of them across the desert, incarcerating them in camps where more than half who entered died, simply because the Italians considered their way of life suspect. There are uncanny echoes with the situation of the Roma and migrants today. Hom explores three sites, in novella-like essays, where Italy's colonial past touches down in the present: the island, the camp, and the village.

Empire's Mobius Strip brings into relief Italy's shifting constellations of mobility and empire, giving them space to surface, submerge, stretch out across time, and fold back on themselves like a Mobius strip. It deftly shows that mobility forges lasting connections between colonial imperialism and neoliberal empire, establishing Italy as a key site for the study of imperial formations in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Author / Editor information

Stephanie Malia Hom is Executive Director of the Acus Foundation. She is author of The Beautiful Country and tweets @empirestrip.

Reviews

Claudio Fogu, University of California Santa Barbara, author of The Historic Imaginary:

Exploring the historical and contemporary treatment of undesirables by Italian authorities, Stephanie Malia Hom unearths the imperial formations buried beneath the rhetoric of the modern nation state. Her study of forced migration in the contemporary Mediterranean is perfectly timed and destined to become a classic of the transnational turn in Italian Studies.

Pamela Ballinger, University of Michigan, author of History in Exile:

A lyrical and important work that moves between the realms of reportage, historical analysis, and political reflection to illuminate the ongoing crisis of migration in Italy. In both form and content, the text is a hybrid: elegant in its simplicity and brilliant in its execution.

Carefully researched and elegantly written, Empire's Mobius Strip deservedly received the American Association of Italian Studies book prize.... Hom's research offers a model and an opportunity for scholars to start unraveling the Mobius strip of imperial formations that underlie the discipline of Italian Studies. It is an urgent and critical mandate.

Its brilliant prose makes [Empire's Mobius Strip] easily accessible to anyone interested in today's migration crisis in the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world.

Today, she argues, the harsh detentions imposed both on the Roma and on Mediterranean migrants echo Italy's brutal incarceration – and subsequent genocide – of nomadic Bedouin between 1929 and 1933.

The 'migrant crisis' of the past decade has been depicted far too reductively by those who want to frighten people or exploit their sentimentality. But journalists and scholars are now giving us sharper focus and deeper insights... Stephanie Malia Hom, in Empire's Mobius Strip shows with analytical elegance how the treatment of migrants in Italy has roots in the colonial past.

Empire's Mobius Strip offers numerous original perspectives... [and] effectively documents and humanizes the struggle endured by subjects caught up in the twisted loops of imperial formations.

A compelling discussion... Hom's book stands out for its focus on specific sites in Italy and Libya and for the use of archival and ethnographic research to uncover the layers of these palimpsests. Most significantly, Hom disrupts the notion of 'post,' tracing the modern state's continued use of the techniques of empire through detention and bordering practices. For Hom, the infinite loop of the mobius strip represents the influence of colonialism on present-day structures, borders, and movements.

One of the most striking aspects of Empire's Mobius Strip was its artful blend of different discourses: theoretical, historical, journalistic, and personal reflection. At times, the writing is hauntingly poetic.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List Of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Island Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. The Camp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3. The Village Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
Coda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247

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