Gli sguardi degli altri. Rappresentazioni e autorappresentazioni dei migranti nel paesaggio urbano = The Gaze of the Other. Representations and Self-representations of Migrants in the Urban Landscape

Abstract

The Gaze of the Other. Representations and Self-representations of Migrants in the Urban Landscape. The “being here” of the migrants acquires meaning only when related to the presence of somewhere “there”, in a polyphonic relation. The dialectic of their gaze tends to withdraw in mainstream media speech. The Italian scenario, in this sense, is particularly significant, as it often abuses of the emergency frame: the Others are invaders, the diversity is a threat. The perception of and interaction with the urban landscape, then, reveals to be crucial: to explore alternative narratives could lead to a change of perception. Recently, Italian cinema has been concerned with these issues. Two examples are particularly meaningful: the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti productions, namely the collective film Benvenuti in Italia (2012) and Dagmawy Yimer’s Va’ Pensiero (2013), and Tumaranke (2018), a juxtaposition of videos made by thirty-eight young asylum seekers. Both modalities of self-representation seem to be extreme: strongly hetero-directed in the former case; strongly self-directed in the latter. This paper will discuss a third way of representing the relationship between diasporic subjects and urban landscape: a hetero-represented self-representation, that is, a process of hybridisation that tends to highlight the distance and irreconcilability of both approaches.