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Postcolonial Italy pp 175–190Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Postracial/Postcolonial Italy

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Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

Abstract

In the wake of the historic election of the first black president of the United States, the ex-prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, in greeting the event, made an uncanny remark that shocked the world. Smilingly, he referred to Barack Obama as “young, handsome, and also tanned.”1 Berlusconi’s ambiguous reference to Obama’s racial identity was intended as a humorous compliment, he later explained. In his view the remark, which derided Obama’s racial identity in an attempt to erase it, was indeed comical since it supposedly revealed that the power of the state cannot possibly be embodied in a black body which, by definition, the state power seeks to exclude. Consequently, Berlusconi reduced Obama’s blackness to a cosmetic trick—a blackened face, a burned face, a form of whiteness in disguise, a tan, something to be laughed at.

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Authors
  1. Cristina Lombardi-Diop
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Cristina Lombardi-Diop Caterina Romeo

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© 2012 Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo

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Lombardi-Diop, C. (2012). Postracial/Postcolonial Italy. In: Lombardi-Diop, C., Romeo, C. (eds) Postcolonial Italy. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281463_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281463_12

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44817-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-28146-3

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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