Speaker
Description
Title: Hybridity in postcolonial theories. Reflection and challenges.
Description: The goal of the presentation is to tackle the concept of ‘hybridity’ in post-colonial theory by analyzing its connection to colonialism and immigration. According to postcolonial theoreticians, hybridity refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonialism. Linguistic, cultural, political, and racial hybridization take place in the ‘in-between space’ of the colonies, causing the birth of hybrid identities which deconstruct the dominant mainstream narrative of colonial powers. On one hand, during colonial times the concept of hybridity was related to the fear of miscegenation with the local population of the colonies. On the other hand, the term has also been associated with a counter-narrative produced by anti-colonial movements in response to the dichotomy between colonialists and colonized. Nevertheless, the concept itself is the subject of many critiques concerning its relevance for the consideration of local differences and for the reproduction of racial categories of the past.
Speaker: Luca Di Paola has obtained his PhD in International Studies at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” with a thesis in contemporary history titled Black Women in Britain Speak Out: il Movimento delle donne di discendenza africana e asiatica tra migrazioni, anti-imperialismo, lavoro e cittadinanza nell’Inghilterra del secondo dopoguerra (1945-1985). During his PhD, research was done on the oral and written sources at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, where he focused on the political activism of afroCaribbean and Asian women in Britain, and the collections at the National Archives, at the Lambeth Archives, at the Institute of Race Relations and at the George Padmore Institute. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Reading and he participated in several international conferences, such as the Summer School “Black Europe”, held in Amsterdam, and the conference “Gender and Public Space” at the University of Rouen. His research interests focus on migrations, racism, postcolonialism and black feminism. In 2020 he wrote an essay, titled “Claudia Jones tra comunismo, femminismo e anti-imperialismo”, which was published in the book “Marx nei margini. Dal marxismo nero al femminismo postcoloniale”, edited by an italian editor, Alegre.
