The Fishing Net and the Spider Web: Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians

302 Pages·2020·6.149 MB·English

by  Claudio Fogu

MEDITERRANEAN PERSPECTIVES
The Fishing Net
and the Spider Web
Mediterranean Imaginaries
and the Making of Italians
Claudio Fogu
Mediterranean Perspectives
Series Editors
Brian Catlos
University of Colorado - Boulder
Boulder, CO, USA
Sharon Kinoshita
University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA
As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least
two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become
the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting
focus away from histories of the origins and developments of phenomena
predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens
vistas onto histories of contact, circulation and exchange in all their com-
plexity while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and intra-
disciplinary scholarship, making it one of the most exciting and dynamic
fields in the humanities. Mediterranean Perspectives interprets the
Mediterranean in the widest sense: the sea and the lands around it, as well
as the European, Asian and African hinterlands connected to it by net-
works of culture, trade, politics, and religion. This series publishes mono-
graphs and edited collections that explore these new fields, from the span
of Late Antiquity through Early Modernity to the contemporary.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15161
Claudio Fogu
The Fishing Net and
the Spider Web
Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making
of Italians
Claudio Fogu
Department of French & Italian
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Mediterranean Perspectives
ISBN 978-3-030-59856-3 ISBN 978-3-030-59857-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59857-0
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Cover illustration: Suture mediterranee, Costanza Ferrini (2019), photographed by Rosi
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A
cknowledgments
This book has been two decades in the making. Over that period, with its
numerous false starts and null results, I found myself at a dead end on
several occasions. My first thank you must therefore go to all those who
have patiently waited for its delivery and endured repeated assertions that
I was “almost there” or that I was “still working on it”, in response to their
gentle inquiries. Many of those people contributed to my process with
their books, talks, or in person conversations. Those who are still alive will
hopefully find traces of our exchanges in my text and footnotes. But I
must limit myself here to expressing gratitude to those who most directly
impacted the idea and realization of The Fishing Net and The Spider Web.
To my maître à penser Franco Cassano goes my most heartfelt expres-
sion of thanks for the grace of his thinking, his friendship, and his guid-
ance. Dear Franco, our lives have not crossed more than four or five times
since we met some ten years ago, but your pensiero meridiano has illumi-
nated my research path from the day I read it.1 On this path I have, of
course, met many other thinkers and scholars who nourished my own
Mediterranean imaginary. In the early years, my colleagues and dear
friends at The Ohio State University (OSU)—Vicky Holbrook, Vassilis
Lambropoulos, Artemis Leontis, and Gregory Jusdanis—spurred my
interest in the ethical and poetic dimensions of this liquid continent. More
recently, Nelson Moe, Iain Chambers, Edwige Tamalet, Yasser Elhariri,
Olivia Harrison, Pamela Ballinger, and Roberta Morosini, among others,
engaged me on the colonial, postcolonial, and transcolonial complexities
1 Franco Cassano, Il pensiero meridiano (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1996).
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
of the modern Mediterranean. Closer to home, my scholarly collaboration
with Lucia Re, and her writings, disclosed perspectives and angles of inter-
pretation that I am certain she will recognize in this book. Equally pre-
cious has been the mentorship of my dearest colleague Jon Snyder. His
patience with my perennial doubts about the validity of my hypotheses
and my fears of being carried away by Mediterranean “metaphorics” have
given me the confidence I needed to set sail without a clear map, trusting
that I would find the proper islands and harbors on the way to anchor my
chapters. But Lucia and Jon are no mere colleagues; they belong to a
select group of close academic friends whose affection and support has
gone far beyond the scholarly engagements with my arguments, the read-
ing of chapters, or the offer of bibliographic gems. These friends witnessed
the personal growth that went into the writing of this book. The work has
defined my own development, its rhythms, and its challenges for the past
20 years. Wulf Kansteiner knows all about that. He has patiently journeyed
with me on an exploration of meaning and accompanied me in my yearn-
ing for integration between my personal and professional life. Together,
we have co-edited two books, and although the Mediterranean is remote
from his scholarly interests, he has repeatedly indulged me in conceptual-
izing my practice as a historian. Crucially, he has kept me on track by
invoking the memory of our common maestro, Hayden White, and push-
ing me to always think in terms of the practical past.2 I hope my explora-
tion of “Mediterranean imaginaries” in the making of Italians has
responded to Hayden’s call for a historiography that nourishes readers by
presenting them with a “usable past” to address the problems of the pres-
ent. I see no more urgent task today than to reframe the question of col-
lective identity, separate from metaphors of rootedness in land, self-hood,
and chimeric historical truth, and to restore it to the fluid realms of the
imagination and the poetics of relations.
Of course, a book is never just the result of high-sounding objectives
and intellectual dialectics. A lot of help has come my way from people who
have facilitated my research on the ground. I thank in particular Ettore
Zeppitelli who offered his many precious connections and revealed many
secrets of his native Bari to me. My dear friend, Carlo Cigliano, allowed
me to access the historical archive of the Mostra Triennale delle Terre
d’Oltremare in Naples, which prompted me to formulate my early hypoth-
eses for a larger study. I thank all the staff of the Archivio Storico della
Camera di Commercio Italo-Orientale, the Archivio di Stato, and the
2 Hayden White, The Practical Past (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2004).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Biblioteca Provinciale in Bari; of the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles;
of the MART in Rovereto; of the Fondazione Primo Conti in Fiesole; of
the Biblioteca di Storia Patria in Naples; and of the Archivio Storico ENI
in Castel Gandolfo, for their professional courtesy and beyond-the-call-of-
duty help in retrieving documents and publications rarely requested
before. Particular gratitude goes to Costanza Ferrini for allowing me to
use her artwork on the cover of the book, and my photographer-friends
Oscar Canham, Donatella Pandolfi, and Antonio Nasca who have helped
me to capture the illustrations I needed. Finally, I am forever in debt to my
two copy-editors, Simon Dix and David Van Eyssen. They were the first to
lay eyes on the entire manuscript, to offer invaluable comments, and to
fine-tune my occasionally Italianate prose.
What can I say about the larger community of relatives and friends who
have had to hear about this book for so many years without, for a moment,
ceasing to believe in me and my ability to complete it? Collectively, my
greatest fan club has been my friends on the island of Procida—in particu-
lar Domenico, Simona, Lucia, and Elisabetta. I hope the results of your
support will not disappoint you. Words do not come easily to describe the
love I have received from my immediate family, my sister Ilaria, my brother
Marco, Elisa and Giordano, as well as from Assunta, Andrea, Fabio,
Marina, Noriko, Corinne, Oscar, David, Michael, among the many friends
on both sides of the ocean. Grazie.
This, however, is also an opportunity to recognize special debts. First of
all, to my mother, Diana, who took the time in her eighties to read chapter
draft after chapter draft and, even when she was frustrated by my academic
jargon, found a way to talk to me about the book in her own illuminating
words. This book would not be the same without her engagement, but it
would probably still be in gestation without the love, and intellectual stim-
ulation I received from Daniela. She provided me with the support and
encouragement that made the last five years the most productive of my
life, while also remaining my most acute reader and critic, teaching me the
pleasures of achieving ever greater precision of thought and word.
To my dear father, Gianni: although you have not been able to see the
finished book, I am certain you would have loved it. We both know my
scholarly passion for the exploration of imaginaries comes from the many
worlds we built together in my early years and from the fishing net of rela-
tions that was the essence of your being. This book is dedicated to you.
* * *
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction: Mediterranean Imaginaries 1
2 Making Italians, Making Southerners 11
3 The Fishing Net and the Spider Web 33
4 Homo Mediterraneus 83
5 Epiphanic Mediterraneanism 115
6 Between Imperium and Emporion 159
7 Fascist Mediterraneanism 181
8 From Mare Nostrum to Mare Aliorum 235
9 Coda: The Mediterranean Quest(ion) 257
Bibliography 265
Index 285
ix
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 Cratere del naufragio (The Shipwreck Cup). (Courtesy of the
Museo Archeologico di Villa Arbusto (Ischia, Italy)) 34
Fig. 3.2 Francesco Rosselli (attr.), Tavola Strozzi (1472). Certosa e
Museo di San Martino (Naples, Italy). (Courtesy of Ministero
per i beni e le attività culturali e del turismo—Fototeca del
Polo Museale della Campania) 48
Fig. 3.3 Muslim ambassadors to the coronation of Alphonse I King of
Naples. Detail of the entrance gate to Castel Nuovo (Naples,
Italy). (Photographed by the author) 48
Fig. 3.4 The two busts positioned above the entrance of n. 11 Salita di
San Leonardo, Procida (Naples). (Photographed by Donatella
Pandolfi) 50
Fig. 3.5 Donna procidana (Procidan Woman), colored lithograph, Gatti
& Dura (1835). Private collection. (Photographed by
Donatella Pandolfi) 53
Fig. 3.6 (a) The embroidered vest of the Procidan Costume.
Photographed by Antonio Nasca. (b) Particulars of the vest of
the Procidan costume. Photographed by Donatella Pandolfi.
(Courtesy of Elisabetta Montaldo) 54
Fig. 3.7 The Corricella harbor in Procida (Naples). (Photographed by
Donatella Pandolfi) 56
Fig. 3.8 (a) Details of Corricella stairways. Photographed by the
author; (b) Stairway on the deck of the Neptune, a
reconstructed seventeenth-century galleon anchored in the
harbor of Genoa. (Photographed by the author) 57
xi