Italian Diasporic Studies: The Then and Now

In his groundbreaking essay “Breaking the Silence: Strategic Imperatives for Italian American Culture,” Robert Viscusi (1990) championed an articulation of history that includes a collective purpose. While much progress has been made on numerous issues, many Italian/American associations seem to continue to work in a vacuum, moving forward alone on issues.1 Whereas, were more Italian/American groups to work in unison, the Italian/American population at large would benefit, thus encountering greater success in bringing forth a variety of projects that would contribute to an Italian/American agenda.2 To do so, as a collective, we must inevitably reconsider our own thought processes as we reexamine and attempt to promote our “Italian heritage and culture,” as many articulate the overriding sociocultural enterprise.Let us then begin with a question: What is—or, what should be—that rallying point around which Italian Americans might find some sense of commonality? Indeed, both African Americans and Jewish Americans have, respectively, their one issue, as tragic as it may be, that coheres the group. I have in mind, of course, slavery and its dreadful sister of outright discrimination that has resulted from it, for the former; two millennia of diasporic existence and the horrific twentieth-century holocaust, for the latter.What then can we identify as that cohesive force for Italian Americans? Can we look to something like immigration, that timespan from 1880 to 1924, those forty-four years that have now become an historical marker for contemporary Italian Americans? There may indeed also be specific tragedies that come to mind: the 1891 New Orleans lynching, for which we hold the dubious distinction of having been victims of the largest documented white single group lynching.3 One might even underscore historical discrimination, dating back to the nineteenth century and culminating, to date, in something like Everyone Loves Raymond or The Sopranos.Though valid points of discussion, these last two examples do not constitute, in an encompassing manner, that one issue that might unite the Italian/American population in the same way in which other groups cohere. We might thus ponder what is that all encompassing issue that unites, for instance, Latinx. In addition to a strong sense of linguistic camaraderie they may share with regard to their culture(s), it may very well be the migratory experience—a sense of not belonging to the host country—that coheres Latinx.4 Surely, I do not want to be naïve in thinking that Latinx from any and all Latin/American countries have an equal sense of allegiance to the “old country.” Nor do I want to imply that all Latinx have an automatic sense of belonging to that group comprised of Latinx, as categorized in the United States. Nevertheless, we would not err in perceiving a certain sense of commonality that has its origins in the migratory and/or linguistic-cultural experience insofar as they perceive themselves as outsiders and, as such, hold on to their cultures of origin. This combination of difference and linguistic and cultural specificity—based in part on the migratory experience—surely figures as a cohering agent.An analogous formula might thus prove valid for Italian Americans. Immigration and its more than century-long history may very well figure as part of that cohesive agent, however tenuous. A strong sense of commonality is a necessary ingredient for the population to cohere and thus to progress for the study of all things Italian/American to become part and parcel of the mainstream, as it is for other hyphenated groups within the United States. To be sure, one added challenge is that there is greater distance between us Italian Americans and our migratory history, and therefore we need to make that extra effort to bridge that knowledge gap and, in the end, also correct some of the narratives we often hear, one being the question of “legal” vs. “illegal” historical Italian immigration. Hence, in addition to such thinking in a chronologically based mindset, we might, in the end, consider the more complex legacy of said history. In so doing, we enter the realm of diasporic studies, the consideration of the dispersal of Italians beyond Italy's border, in our case in the United States, and how such a legacy from said dispersal has created new, contemporary articulations of the Italian-descendent populations throughout the United States as well as in other parts of world.The notion of a dispersal of Italians and their descendants beyond Italy's borders is what brings us to the notion of Italian diasporic studies. I first used the term in 2006 and subsequently in 2007. At that time, I thought it was understood why we should use such a term, despite what some may have and continue to see as a more historically restrictive use.5 After all, Donna Gabaccia had published her book-length study in 2000. In 2017, I had briefly outlined my use of the term “Italian diaspora” (NB a small “d”) not in opposition to the more popular binomial “Italian/American” rather, I used it then, as I do now, to underscore the concept of necessity of the historical migratory act both in the United States as well as in other parts of the world. After all, “diaspora,” in its many definitions, has at least two that relate to any notion of what we can consider an “Italian diaspora.” As such, then, it can refer to, (1) “any group migration or flight from a country or region,” and, surely more pertinent, (2) “any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland, especially involuntarily” (Dictionary.com, n.d.). I went on to state that the approximately four million Italians fleeing from Italy to the US during the historical period of immigration (1880–1924) constituted a “group migration.” I further declared that, in similar fashion, these same four million immigrants constituted a “group . . . dispersed” beyond “its traditional homeland.” The fact, then, that having remained in their “homeland” might have readily led to subproletariat socio-economic status if not outright starvation for many, the phrase “especially involuntarily” proved equally relevant in our explanation of the use of the phrase “Italian diaspora” (Tamburri 2017, 53–54). That said, and as a point of departure, let us then embrace John Armstrong's 1976 definition of diaspora as “any ethnic collectivity which lacks a territorial base within a given polity, i.e., is a relatively small minority throughout all portions of the polity” (393).Gabaccia, rightfully so, wants to distinguish between what Robin Cohen (1997) labeled “victim diasporas” (Africans and Jews) and those who left Italy by “exercise[ing] considerable choice over when to leave and where to go. Theirs was no involuntary or sudden gathering into an exile without end” (Gabaccia 2000, 6).6 Cohen states the following about the Jewish diaspora: “Jewish diasporic experiences were much more diverse and more complex than the catastrophic tradition allows and . . . such an interpretation was imposed as well as internalized, advanced as well as contested” (2). I cite these two groundbreaking scholars to underscore the complexities of the overall discourse of “Italian diaspora,” specifically, and, more broadly, “diaspora” as a general concept.7That said, we may indeed go back as far as 1985 concerning redefinitions of the notion of diaspora. Richard Marientras (1985) stated that for some people, diaspora “se prouve dans le temps et s’éprouve par le temps” (225; is proven in time and is experienced through time). Namely, a diaspora is a fluid phenomenon, something that is defined by its evolution and not just one, static historical moment with a seeming end point; a possible case in point is the historical Italian immigration from 1880 to 1924. In fact, with regard to this notion of fluidity with specific attention to Italians, we can hark back to Sam Baily's work on what he calls the “Aragonesi diaspora.” Baily's use of the word “diaspora” might be one of the first to adopt such a term vis-à-vis an “Italian dispersal,” as I would like to label it here. Baily's use dates back to 1990, when he delivered a paper at the annual conference of the American Italian Historical Association in New Orleans.8 Two years later he published a markedly elaborated version in Studi emigrazione (1992).9 There are two important characteristics of his essay that underscore the necessity of problematizing the notion of “Italian migration” and its legacy. First, the complicated aspects of the enterprise. Baily prefers to use the phrase “social network” to the more traditional “chain migration”; the latter speaks to a linear chronology and direct linkage, whereas the former speaks to the notion of linkages that are more “complicated and often multi-dimensional” (Baily 1992, 43n2). Referencing a new trend in migration studies at the time of his essay's publication, Baily stated at the outset: “Migration scholars have during the past decade increasingly emphasized the centrality of social networks to the migration process. These scholars view social networks as an essential infrastructure in the overall migration system, an evolving collective mechanism that links the larger economic and political structures in both locations of origin and destination with the individual migrants” (Baily 1992, 43; emphasis added).The multidimensional characteristic of said linkages are steeped in economic and political class structures. In addition, Baily suggests that we also consider the origin of departures and the geography of arrival. All of this, we come to understand, is part of an evolving mechanism that, in the end, impacts the individual. This reminds us of Fischer's notion of the pluralism of artistic invention and interpretation which, by its very nature, cannot exclude the individual artist and reader/viewer who has found “a voice or style that does not violate [his/her] several components of identity” (Fischer 1986, 195).The second aspect of Baily's reconsideration of migration in terms of diaspora is chronology. Within this new perspective of social networks and linkages, we also need to reconsider the notion of chronology. When we think in terms of immigration, especially given the more contemporary terms of “flux,” “migrations,” and the like, we often think in historical terms. That is, for instance, we hark back mentally to the so-called forty-four years of Italian migration to the United States. Namely, we look back, ignoring all notions of what followed and, to be sure, the notion of “now.”Baily, indeed, highlights the necessity of a refinement of methodology that takes into consideration the where and the when. He states: “Most importantly, we need to broaden and explore more systematically our use of the critical dimensions of time and space” (Baily 1992, 44). Namely, we need to eschew the notion of static time and embrace, instead, the concept of an evolution of the migratory experience so that we can better understand the relationship (i.e., “linkage”) between the then and now (i.e., “time”) and how these linkages develop depending on the individual's geographical location as well (i.e., “space”). At this early stage in the first half of the 1990s, Baily is not alone in his notion of the evolution of ethnicity. Gianfranco Rosoli (1994) stated as much: “In his most recent essay on the Aragonesi diaspora (1992), Bailey analyzed a network in Colorado until the fourth and fifth generations. This allowed the author to evaluate the long-term meaning of migration and especially the changing nature of ethnicity” (Rosoli 1994, 312). Within this framework of “evaluating the [history and] long-term meaning of migration” in all of its specificities, one then can place it within the context of “the chang[ed] nature of ethnicity” and, ultimately, understand more fully the legacy that has evolved. Such a process allows us to comprehend, in the long run, the manifestations and articulations of our ethnicity today apropos of its above-mentioned history and long-term meaning.It is, in the end, a question of the conglomeration of the passing of time and the interconnections of the various events that take place over the long chronology that underscores an evolution of notions. This interlinking phenomenon of time and events allows, as well, for the changing definition of “Italian diasporic” culture since the concept thereof is no longer based in history only; rather, its many facets include all relevant manifestations and articulations of the then and now.