The Black Mediterranean: A View from Sicily

Abstract

While Italy has recently experienced nationalist drives, Sicily and in particular the City of Palermo, one of the major ports of refuge for countless migrants arriving in Europe from the African shores, has distinguished itself as an experimental site where to rethink and challenge notions of residence, mobility, citizenship and belonging. Through a series of cultural initiatives, Palermo has become a hub for frontline artists, writers, intellectuals, and activists who have gathered to explore the historically and contemporary ways in which black voices have been silenced and black bodies have been ambiguously imagined in Western-dominated global culture. Investigating these questions is fundamental to understand what is happening today in the Mediterranean, a crucial site of the African diaspora since the classic era. Expanding on my theory of the Black Mediterranean formulated ten years ago, referring to an array of literary and artistic texts, my goal is to inscribe, in view of recent events concerning Afro-descendants the world over, the contemporary history of the Black Mediterranean in that of the African Diaspora, showing that it represents only its most recent chapter.