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“Cement, Guide and Representative for the Exile and the Emigrant”: Ideological Discourse and italianità in L’Italo-Australiano

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The Transnational Voices of Australia’s Migrant and Minority Press

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media ((PSHM))

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Abstract

L’Italo-Australiano was the first Italian-language newspaper in Australia and was published in Sydney for a brief period, in 1885. The chapter analyses the ideological discourse of this newspaper within the historical context of its production. In particular, the analysis focuses on the newspaper’s interpretation of the character of italianità, identifying the way in which such interpretation influenced the definition of the (imagined) Italian community addressed by the newspaper, as well as the terms of the relationship with a homeland whose features were in continual transformation, and with an equally evolving Australian dimension. The study applies a transnational perspective to the analysis, which allows to consider the cross-border interrelations and connections that were involved in the production of the newspaper.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gianfranco Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’: Rifugiati Politici Italiani e Movimento Socialista Australiano” [‘Socialism for the Present Generation’: Italian Political Refugees and the Australian Socialist Movement], Italian Historical Society Journal 20, no. 2012 (2012): 32.

  2. 2.

    “Il Perché” [The whys and wherefores], L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

  3. 3.

    Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation”, in Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997), 13–69. See also: David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, ed., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), 131–150 and 158–9.

  4. 4.

    Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M.Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 1969); Michel Foucault, “On the Archaeology of the Sciences: Response to the Epistemology Circle”, in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, Volume 2, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 1998), 302–327; Stuart Hall, “Encoding, Decoding”, in Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79, ed. Stuart Hall, Doothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis (London: Hutchinson, 1980): 128–138.

  5. 5.

    Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

  6. 6.

    Suvendrini Perera, “Introduction: Fatal (Con)Junctions”, in Asian & Pacific Inscriptions: Identities, Ethnicities, Nationalities, ed. Suvendrini Perera (Bundoora, Vic.: Meridian, 1995), 2.

  7. 7.

    Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 2000), 14–34 and 187–191; Donna Gabaccia, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 24. Migrazioni, ed. Paola Corti and Matteo Sanfilippo (Torino: Einaudi, 2009), 225–48; Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

  8. 8.

    G. L. Buxton, “1870–90”, in A New History of Australia, ed. Frank Crowley (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1974), 166–174 and 184–207; Caroline Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788–1939”, in Australia’s Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, ed. Stephen Castles, Caroline Alcorso, Gaetano Rando, and Ellie Vasta (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), 1–17; Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’”: 25–26.

  9. 9.

    Renato Zangheri, Storia del socialismo italiano. Dalla rivoluzione francese ad Andrea Costa [Volume] 1 (Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1993), 269–333; Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation, 154–158; Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia: The Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), 32–35 and 62–72.

  10. 10.

    T. H. Irving, “1850–70”, in A New History of Australia, ed. Frank Crowley (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1974), 138–152; Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788–1939”, 3–12; James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera The Story of Australian Immigration (West Nyack, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5–10; Joseph Pugliese, “Race as Category Crisis: Whiteness and the Topical Assignation of Race”, Social Semiotics 12, no. 2 (2002): 149–168, https://doi.org/10.1080/103503302760212078; Ann Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy”, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, Jan Gothard, and David Walker (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 8–32; Francesco Ricatti, Italians in Australia: History, Memory, Identity, Palgrave Studies in Migration History (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 53–71.

  11. 11.

    Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788–1939”, 5–9; Tito Cecilia, “Gli italiani in Australia, 1788–1940: una cronistoria”, in Italo-australiani. La popolazione di origine italiana in Australia, ed. Stephen Castles, Caroline Alcorso, Gaetano Rando, and Ellie Vasta (Torino: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1992), 35–37; Gianfranco Cresciani, “Italians Discover Australia 1788–1900”, in The Italians in Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 26–50; Fabio Baggio and Matteo Sanfilippo, “L’emigrazione italiana in Australia”, Studi Emigrazione/Migration Studies 48, no. 183 (2011): 477–99. For a statistical analysis of Italian migration related to the period considered, see: Charles Archibald Price, The Method and Statistics of Southern Europeans in Australia (Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1963), 62–97.

  12. 12.

    Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788–1939”, 4.

  13. 13.

    Ricatti, Italians in Australia, 54. On Italian migrants’ racial categorisation in different contexts of migration, as well as on the origins of the internal racial hierarchisation of Italians, see also: Joseph Pugliese, “Race as Category Crisis: Whiteness and the Topical Assignation of Race”; Aliza S. Wong, Race and the Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861–1911: Meridionalism, Empire, and Diaspora, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 47–77; Dewhirst, “Colonising Italians”.

  14. 14.

    Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Australian Historical Population Statistics” (cat. no. 3105.0.65.001), 2019, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3105.0.65.001Main+Features12016?OpenDocument.

  15. 15.

    Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia 1788–1939”; Cecilia, “Gli italiani in Australia, 1788–1940: una cronistoria”; Gianfranco Cresciani, “The Italians in Sydney”, Sydney Journal 1, no. 1 (March 2008).

  16. 16.

    Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’”: 25–26. On the Anglo-Italian Treaty (1883–1940) see: Catherine Dewhirst, “The Anglo-Italian Treaty. Australia’s Imperial Obligations to Italian Migrants, 1883–1940”, in Italy and Australia: An Asymmetrical Relationship, ed. Gianfranco Cresciani and Bruno Mascitelli (Ballarat, VIC: Connor Court Publishing, 2014), 81–113.

  17. 17.

    “Italians in Sydney. The Chinese of Europe”, The Australian Star, 8 December 1887. By using the term “wall-eyed celestial”, the author refers to Chinese people through a stereotypical and offensive image association (enhanced by the use of the absolutising singular).

  18. 18.

    Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism”.

  19. 19.

    Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera, 8.

  20. 20.

    Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism”.

  21. 21.

    “Italians in Sydney”, The Australian Star, 16 December 1887.

  22. 22.

    “Italians in Sydney”, The Australian Star, 16 December 1887. About Sceusa’s defence of the “Italian race”, see also: Francesco Sceusa, Hail Australia! Morituri Te Salutant! (Sydney, Jarrett & Co., 1888), https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-570166992.

  23. 23.

    Salvatore Costanza, Socialismo, emigrazione e nazionalità tra Italia e Australia (Trapani: Corrao, 1995); Gianfranco Cresciani, “Sceusa, Francesco (1851–1919)”, in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1988), http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sceusa-francesco-8351; Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’”.

  24. 24.

    See for example: “Dall’Australia. Un po’ di geografia. Le elezioni e i socialisti” [From Australia. Some geography. The elections and the socialists], Avanti!, 15 March 1897. The socialist newspaper Avanti! was first published in Rome in 1896. For a short biography on these Italian socialist migrants, see: Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’”: 43–45; Costanza, Socialismo, emigrazione e nazionalità tra Italia e Australia, 107–123. On Pietro Munari, see: Ezio Maria Simini, “Un Operaio Agli Antipodi: Pietro Munari, Italiano in Australia”, Altreitalie, no. 14 (1996): 52–70. On Giuseppe Prampolini, see: Fabio Grassi, “Un socialista tra l’Italia e l’Australia”, Affari Sociali Internazionali 1, no. 1 (March 1973): 101–14.

  25. 25.

    Costanza, Socialismo, emigrazione e nazionalità tra Italia e Australia, 120.

  26. 26.

    Costanza, Socialismo, emigrazione e nazionalità tra Italia e Australia, 63–76; Simini, “Un Operaio Agli Antipodi: Pietro Munari, Italiano in Australia”.

  27. 27.

    Cresciani, “‘Socialismo per La Generazione Presente’”.

  28. 28.

    I Figli del Popolo [The sons of the people], L’Italo-Australiano, 5 May 1885.

  29. 29.

    “Il Perché”, L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885. The producers were aware that not all the Italians in Australia approved of the newspaper’s approach: “It [L’Italo-Australiano] will not be related to any political party, but rather [it will be] the organ of all the Italians in Australia, or at least of the majority of them” (“L’Italo-Australiano”, 1 June 1885).

  30. 30.

    “Agli Italiani di Sydney e Australia” [To the Italians in Sydney and Australia], L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885.

  31. 31.

    “Il Perché”, L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885.

  32. 32.

    Joseph Pugliese, “Migrant Heritage in an Indigenous Context: For a Decolonising Migrant Historiography”, Journal of Intercultural Studies 23, no. 1 (2002): 5–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/07256860220122368.

  33. 33.

    “Il Perché”, L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885.

  34. 34.

    Pugliese, “Migrant Heritage in an Indigenous Context”. On Italians and whiteness, see also: Joseph Pugliese, “Race as Category Crisis: Whiteness and the Topical Assignation of Race”; Ricatti, Italians in Australia, 53–59.

  35. 35.

    W. G. McMinn, Nationalism and Federalism in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 99–127; Costanza, Socialismo, emigrazione e nazionalità tra Italia e Australia, 71–88.

  36. 36.

    “Advance Australia!”, L’Italo-Australiano, 3 March 1885. The title is in English, but the article is in Italian.

  37. 37.

    “Advance Australia!”, L’Italo-Australiano, 3 March 1885.

  38. 38.

    “Advance Australia!”.

  39. 39.

    Marilyn Lake, “Race and Gender in Australia”, in Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 159–76; Ann Curthoys, “Disputing National Histories: Some Recent Australian Debates”, Transforming Cultures Ejournal 1, no.1 (March 2006): 6–18, https://doi.org/10.5130/tfc.v1i1.187.

  40. 40.

    Ricatti, Italians in Australia, 3 and 35–39; see also: Ellie Vasta, “Italian Migrant Women”, in Australia’s Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society, 140–54.

  41. 41.

    “Le mine d’oro di Solferino” [Solferino gold mines], L’Italo-Australiano, 1 June 1885.

  42. 42.

    “Aurei consigli” [Golden advice], L’Italo-Australiano, 1 June 1885.

  43. 43.

    Cose Locali [Local issues], L’Italo-Australiano, 1 July 1885.

  44. 44.

    On the myth of Garibaldi, see: Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale, 2007). On martyr cults and religious symbols and narratives transposed onto secular and nationalistic discourse in nineteenth-century Italy, see: Lucy Riall, “Martyr Cults in Nineteenth-Century Italy”, The Journal of Modern History 82, no. 2 (2010): 255–287, https://doi.org/10.1086/651534; Alberto Mario Banti, “Deep Images in Nineteenth- Century Nationalist Narrative”, Historein 8 (2012): 54–62, https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.37.

  45. 45.

    Gentile, La Grande Italia.

  46. 46.

    Cose Locali, L’Italo-Australiano, 1 May 1885; “V. Garibaldi”, I Figli del Popolo, L’Italo-Australiano, 1 June 1885.

  47. 47.

    “Quanto costano le monarchie” and “Quanto costano le repubbliche” [How much monarchies cost; How much republics cost], L’Italo-Australiano, 1 June 1885.

  48. 48.

    “Our Rome letter”, L’Italo-Australiano, 1 May 1885. The title is in English, but the article is in Italian. The aristocracy accompanying the Queen is here ridiculed through association with typically rich, northern-Italian food: “mortadella”, a smooth-textured pork sausage; “panettone”, a kind of spiced cake; and “stracchino”, a soft cheese.

  49. 49.

    Cose Locali, L’Italo-Australiano, 1 May 1885.

  50. 50.

    “Trieste”, Notizie Italiane [Italian news], L’Italo-Australiano, 12 January 1885. See also Sceusa’s oration at the commemorations for Garibaldi’s death, reported in L’Italo-Australiano, 6 June 1885.

  51. 51.

    Ilaria Vanni Accarigi, “The Transcultural Edge”, Portal : Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 13, no. 1 (2016): 3, https://doi.org/10.5130/portal.v13i1.4829.

  52. 52.

    Vanni Accarigi, “The Transcultural Edge”, 4.

  53. 53.

    Pugliese, “Migrant Heritage in an Indigenous Context”, 6.

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  1. The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia

    Marianna Piantavigna

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    Catherine Dewhirst

  2. University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Richard Scully

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Piantavigna, M. (2020). “Cement, Guide and Representative for the Exile and the Emigrant”: Ideological Discourse and italianità in L’Italo-Australiano. In: Dewhirst, C., Scully, R. (eds) The Transnational Voices of Australia’s Migrant and Minority Press. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43639-1_3

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