L’io in esilio. Italiani e spagnoli in Argentina: studi di caso

ABSTRACT During the nineteenth century autobiographical writings (autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters) deviate from the Rousseauian path and place at the centre of the stories the figure of the exile, of the stateless person, of the apatrida, of the refoulé, in which new problems and visions of the world are condensed. The narration of exile is from now an unsubstitutable part of life’s trajectory — enunciated for the first time from the highly symbolic nucleus of youth. It takes the form of an individual shipwreck and a forced expulsion from a repulsive and oppressive social fabric. But twentieth century dictatorships will generate new forms of exile, linked not only to political proscription — from confinement to expatriation — but to new strategies of racial persecution — from deportation to the Lager. This paper seeks to analyse how some autobiographical texts of Italian and Spanish exile in Argentina, highlight new semantic fields and new visions of the world beyond the appropriation of consolidated narrative strategies. Moreover, the testimonies of Italian Jews and Spanish political dissidents in Argentina are an essential tool for interpreting the phenomenon of migration and contemporary transnationalization and create the setting for a comprehensive debate on individual and collective identity.