"Hacerse la América”: procesos de hibridación imaginados en la literatura migratoria ítalo-argentina

The present doctoral dissertation, entitled “Hacerse la América”: procesos de hibridación imaginados en la literatura migratoria ítalo-argentina [“Hacerse la América”: Imagined Processes of Hybridization in Italo-Argentinian Migratory Literature] focuses on global diasporic movements related to the South-South axis involving, specifically, the Italian migration to Argentina. While offering an aesthetic-political interpretation of the Italian migratory phenomenon to Argentina (1880-1930), this project provides a critical paradigm for understanding past and contemporary global diasporas. Essential to the elaboration of the critical framework of this dissertation is the concept of “cultural hybridization” theorized by Argentine anthropologist and academic Néstor García Canclini. This theoretical idea is contextualized within the modern migratory panorama and analyzed in light of the latest theories on global diaspora, miscegenation, hybridism, and nationalism, such as those advanced by Benedict Anderson, Antonio Cornejo-Polar, René Girard, and Antonio Gramsci, among others.

In an effort to label and categorize the effects of globalization, some scholars, such as Steven Vertovec in Transnationalism (2009), have identified a “globalization from above”—that is, the domain of large corporations and international agreements—and a “globalization from below”—that considers minor actors that are not part of state or government organizations. Similarly, this project suggests the contrast between a “hybridization from above”—that is, one that is related to the hegemonic control of the Italian and Argentine elite—and a “hybridization from below”—that is, one that involves subordinate popular social actors who directly experience the effects of migration. Examples of hybridization processes imposed from above by the Italian-Argentine ruling class are collected in the pages of newspapers, novels, and nineteenth-century essays that reveal the intention of selecting international migratory flows through processes of social engineering based on the positivist philosophy, natural hygiene, eugenics, and social Darwinism. Examples of the socio-cultural hybridization processes produced spontaneously by popular communities are the formation of mestizo social groups, the installation of hybrid geographical spaces and liminal places, and the creation of mixed musical, artistic, and linguistic products, such as the language of cocoliche, the vocabulary of lunfardo, and the genre of tango.

The relevance of this project lies in presenting unpublished historical documentation and original literary analysis derived from the numerous field investigations carried out in Rome, Genoa, Milan, Turin, and Buenos Aires since 2016. Focusing on narrative, theater, and music, this dissertation answers the following questions: Through which rhetorical and narrative techniques does Italian and Argentine literature represent immigration?; What social upheavals and aesthetic inclinations does popular art reveal?; How do cultural hybridization processes contribute to the formation of a hybrid community?

"Hacerse la América”: procesos de hibridación imaginados en la literatura migratoria ítalo-argentina

“Hacerse la América”: Imagined Processes of Hybridization in Italo-Argentinian Migratory Literature