Archiviare altrimenti: riflessioni ‘postcolonialitaliane’

My ‘postcolonialitalian’ reflections wish to offer a broad critical framework for the first issue of the journal From the European South, which contains a unique survey of the presence and the potential of postcolonial critical theory and practices in the Italian context. Archives of the future: Italy, the postcolonial and the time to come is thought of as a shared space of investigation and interaction among different forms of knowledge and of contemporary cultural and artistic production, which re-open and radically revise Italian archives from a postcolonial perspective. Following the aims of the postcolonialitalia research project (University of Padua, 2012-15) the contributions in this issue sound the epistemological impact of the postcolonial paradigm on canons and disciplinary borders, make visible the country's (post)colonial legacy, and produce fresh re-readings of our historical and cultural tradition. This complex work is premised on a review of the institution of the archive as proposed in this essay, and on recent reflections in ‘archival discourse’ that have affected the way we think of and produce knowledge through (what I have termed) ‘postcolonialitalian’ lenses. The essay also asks how we might bring to light the new faces of our country by means of a postcolonial perspective developed in/from the South that may offer alternative readings of the 'locations' of Italian culture.