Colonial Fever: A Tropological Reading of Race in Napoleone Colajanni’s Critiques of Italian Colonialism

This essay examines Napoleone Colajanni’s critiques of Italian colonialism, focusing on his text Politica coloniale (1891). A medical doctor, sociologist, and elected deputy in the Italian parliament, Colajanni spoke with moral, professional, and political authority on this topic. Contemporary proponents and critics of colonialism, including Colajanni, commonly envisioned the debate in abstractions, employing metaphors that connected the colonial debate to contemporary scientific advances in germ theory, as well as to discussions of sexual or amorous passion and agriculture. This reading of Colajanni’s Politica coloniale contributes to the literature on Colajanni himself, as well as to historical understanding of critiques of racial and colonial politics in Italy, and to examinations of how a particular set of metaphors is flexibly adapted in political discourse to serve complex and even contradictory ends within different discourse fragments.