Unsettled spectres of Italy's settler colonial wars and a genealogy of Italian anti-Blackness: a diasporic perspective

In this article, I work to disclose the complex histories of empire, settler colonialism and race that intertwine two nation-states: Italy and Australia. My aim is to articulate the relations of colonial and racialised power that bind the two states and to disclose how these relations are intimately connected to the question of how I became a diasporic settler subject of the Australian settler colonial state. A family photograph serves as the point of departure for this article. By staging a genealogical analysis of this diasporic artefact, I embark on a labour to expose the relations of colonialism and race that are at once inscribed in the photo and that exceed the delimiting frame of a family photograph. These complex relations bring to light expansive historical vistas that bind a singular diasporic artefact to a transnational matrix of historical forces of violence and displacement. I conclude the essay with a move that contextualises these transnational forces within the charged register of the white supremacist present and the unfolding global scenarios of anti-Black violence.