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Bodies crossing borders

Negotiations of race and gender in Colonial and Fascist East‑Africa
Angelica Pesarini
p. 21-38

Résumés

Cet article analyse la fragilité et les contradictions internes du discours colonial fasciste italien sur la « race » et le genre en Afrique de l’Est (1890-1941). L’article montre la complexité des interactions sociales qui se nouaient dans les fissures du discours colonial, malgré l’application des lois raciales, interdictions et sanctions juridiques. L’analyse est supportée par l’étude du matériel de propagande fasciste et des affaires judiciaires liées à la criminalisation des relations interraciales. Enfin, la dernière partie du travail remet en cause l’aplatissement du pouvoir décisionnel des femmes noires et plaide pour la reconnaissance de leur rôle dans l’histoire dans des contextes d’oppression et de discrimination.

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Introduction

1This article focuses on the fragility and the internal contradictions of the colonial and fascist discourse on race and gender in the former Italian colonies in East Africa (1890–1941). To do so, it will start by providing an overview of the racial mapping in the so-called “first born” colony Eritrea in order to demonstrate that despite formal segregation, the “inner” and “ethnosexual” frontiers located within the internal cracks of the colonial discourse on space and bodies were constantly transgressed. The paper, therefore, shows the complexities of the negotiations put in place by racialised subjects within contexts of oppression and subordination, such as the case of fascist East Africa. If before the declaration of the empire the fascist regime made use of the representation of Black women’s bodies to eroticise the war against Ethiopia, straight afterwards it imposed strict separations between African women and Italian men through the enforcement of racial laws. Nonetheless, research shows that the more rigid the discourse on race and gender, the more complex were the negotiations put in place by social actors. The complexities of these scenarios will be illustrated through the analysis of some court sentences related to criminalisation of interracial relationships enacted by the regime in 1937.

The Fenced Camp: Bodies Crossing Borders (1890‑1935)

  • 1 See on this topic: Jaqueline Andall and Duncan Derek, eds, Italian Colonialism. Legacy and Memory (...)

2The first Italian possession in East Africa dated back to 1869 when an Italian shipping company bought the Bay of Assab, on the coast of modern Eritrea. Later, the bay was sold to the Italian state and January 1st, 1890 saw the birth of the first colony Eritrea as confirmed by the royal decree 6592 signed by the king Umberto I and the Prime Minister Francesco Crispi.1

  • 2 Maristella Casciato, Da campo militare a capitale: Asmara colonia italiana e oltre, Rivista Incon (...)
  • 3 Ibid.
  • 4 See the UNESCO website heritage on Asmara: [http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/2024/].
  • 5 Francesca Locatelli, Beyond the Campo Cintato: Prostitutes, Migrants and ‘Criminals’ in Colonial (...)

3The only city in the colony was Massawa, located on the coast of the Red Sea. It was placed under military administration and it became the capital in 1891.2 The area later known as Asmara, which is situated at 2,347 metres above sea level and is the capital of modern Eritrea, was initially occupied by General Baldissera in 1889 and used as a military fort, called by the Italians campo cintato (fenced camp). The campo was set up in a strategic area of the plateau crossing the caravan route coming from Massawa. When in 1899 the Governor Ferdinando Martini moved the capital from Massawa to Asmara3, this process gave rise to the symbolic and physical birth of a new city, whose architectural fame and beauty4 originated from that small military fort known as campo cintato. Over time, the camp became not only the centre of the city and the richest area of Asmara, but it was also the main area of Italian settlements, the place where the administrative and political power was located.5 During the fascist regime in particular, this area became the reified symbol of spatial and racial segregation given that only certain individuals were allowed to freely move within this area.

  • 6 Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development, London-New York, Routledge, 1976, p. 17.

4It is interesting to note how from the very beginning, segregation was at the core of the Italian settlement project in Asmara. The analysis of the first urban plans, drawn up to establish the city, shows how space in the colony was racially mapped since the very beginning of the colonisation in order to create a segregated society and to avoid contact between Italians and the local population. At first sight, Asmara represented the perfect example of the colonial city described by Anthony King, namely an urban area “characterised by the physical segregation of its ethnic, social and cultural component groups, which resulted from the processes of colonialism”.6

  • 7 “Assimilated” were those considered less “civilised” than Europeans and this group included, Jews (...)
  • 8 Giulia Barrera, Asmara. Architettura e pianificazione urbana nei fondi dell’ ISiao, Roma, Istitut (...)
  • 9 Ibid., p. 16.

5This physical segregation typical of colonial cities is noticeable in the first 1908 Piano Regolatore (town plan) promoted by the Governor Salvago Raggi (1907–1915) which divided Asmara into three ethnic areas. A first zone was designed exclusively for white Italians and Europeans’ housing. Native people who used to live in that area before the arrival of Italians were evicted or forced to sell their properties within a year. A second zone was a “mixed” area where Europeans, Africans and assimilati7 could co-habit, although very few Eritreans could afford to live there.8 Then there was a third area, the so-called quartieri indigeni (indigenous quarters), where only colonial subjects, mainly African labourers, could live.9

  • 10 Ibid, p. 23.

6Despite apparently fitting King’s definition, the reality of Asmara was far from being as linear as the town plan would make it appear. It is very interesting, for instance, to note that in the second Piano Regolatore promoted by the Raggi in 1914 due to the expansion of the city, it was strictly forbidden for colonial subjects and assimilati to live in zone 1, unless they were “family members” or “servants” of white Italians and Europeans.10 This regulation provides interesting perspectives on the discourse on bodies crossing borders in racially segregated spaces. It shows, in fact, some of the internal contradictions of the colonial discourse and the disjuncture between law and everyday life. If according to the law it was prohibited for black and white individuals to inhabit the same space, in practice they did come into contact, and the law itself included provisions on blood relations between them. This was partly based on economic reasons, as scholar Giulia Barrera notes, given that a total racial separation was not feasible considering the size of the Italian community at that time, and therefore, co-operation was necessary. However, it is interesting to highlight the contradictions at the core of this legal document. The need to formalise borders, in this case to separate housing space, shows that physical-bodily-racial borders had already been crossed. This movement of bodies would challenge the solidity of colonial boundaries, which were not predicated upon clear-cut separations, as the Piano Regolatore would like us to believe. One of the main threats at the heart of colonial boundaries was certainly the crossing of intimacy and the spread of métissage.

  • 11 Nation is spelled with capital N to highlight the reification of this concept.
  • 12 Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, Be (...)

7Although not banned until 1937, interracial relationships in the former Italian colonies in East Africa were not encouraged due to the ‘threat’ of métissage located in the “womb” of the Nation.11 Owing to patrilineality, Italian mixed-race children shared their fathers’ blood, and, if legally recognised, their father’s name, providing them with inheritance rights. The blood bond between white Italian fathers and their mixed-race children certainly challenged crucial categories located at the core of colonial systems –such as “identity” and “citizenship”. Mixing, in particular, represented an ambiguous enemy situated within the inner frontiers of European nation-states, as aptly pointed out by Ann Laura Stoler.12 These interior frontiers, shaped at the intersection of “race”, gender and nation, were dangerous territories, therefore it is possible to observe heavy colonial regulation on these issues. Nonetheless, despite formal and legal prescription, sexual desire transgressed what Joan Nagel defines the “ethnosexual” frontiers, namely:

  • 13 Joan Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, Oxford, O (...)

Erotic locations and exotic destinations that are surveilled and supervised, patrolled and policed, regulated and restricted, but that are constantly penetrated by individuals forging sexual links with ethnic Others across ethnic borders. Ethnosexual frontiers are the borderlands on either side of the ethnic divides…13

8In the Italian colonial context, I argue that these inner and ethnosexual frontiers as theorised by Stoler and Nagel, were located within the internal cracks of the colonial discourse on space and bodies and in the interactions taking place within these cracks. The analysis of urban plans highlights the complexities of such a discourse that predicated Asmara as a colonial city, divided into so-called “ethnic zones”. This was the discourse nourished by the colonial and later on by the fascist authorities.

  • 14 Ann Mcclintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York-Lo (...)

9Nevertheless, despite prohibition and segregation African women and Italian men would frequently live together. In some cases, they would not only share the same bed but also the same table. In other cases, the children born from such unions were legally recognised by their fascist fathers as fully fledged members of the Italian community. This leads us to interrogate the transgression of discursive borders in relation to intimacy and to investigate how the presence of apparently incompatible and contrasting discourses managed to co-exist within the colonial space. For instance: how did the law intervene in the private sphere of “colonised” and “colonisers”? What kinds of interactions could take place in segregated spaces between racialised bodies? What happened when bodies that were not expected to occupy certain places did so? And how did social actors negotiate their interactions in these grey areas? The analysis of the representations of Black women’s bodies is useful here to understand how race, gender and sexuality were central factors located at the core of colonial politics. As historian Ann McClintock argues, imperialism cannot be fully understood without considering race, class, sexuality and the power of gender dynamics. “Gender power”, as McClintock explains, was not a superficial aspect of the imperial mission, rather, it was fundamental for the securing of imperial dominance.14 These considerations can be applied to the Italian case. In regard of Black women, it is interesting to notice how their bodies and sexuality were exploited by the fascist colonial mission to achieve political targets as in the emblematic case of Faccetta Nera.

Fascism, Black Venuses and “Caffè Latte Coloured” Children: The Evolution of Faccetta Nera

  • 15 Fascist jargon to indicate the procreation of mixed-race children.

10On May 9th, 1936 Italy, which had been under fascist regime since 1922, declared the birth of the empire called Africa Orientale Italiana composed of Eritrea, Italian Somalia and Ethiopia. From this moment, racism and racial segregation became part of the State ideology, formally institutionalised and applied through a series of laws and decrees aimed to prevent any contact between members of the so-called “Italian race” and the local population. Not surprisingly, one of the very first targets became interracial relationships and its very immediate and visible consequence, the procreation of mixed-race children, known as meticciato.15

  • 16 Barbara Sorgoni, Racist Discourses and Practices in the Italian Empire under Fascism, in Robert D (...)
  • 17 See Barrera, art. cit.
  • 18 Id., p. 19.
  • 19 Gianluca Gabrielli, Un aspetto della politica razzista nell’impero: il ‘problema dei meticci’, Pa (...)
  • 20 Giulia Barrera, Patrilinearity, Race, and Identity: The Upbringing of Italo-Eritreans During Ital (...)

11Despite the presence of prostitutes and brothels controlled by the State to monitor the physical spaces in which sexual contact took place, long-term Italian residents in the former colonies in East Africa, usually had relationships with local women within a practice known as madamato or madamismo, meaning the fact of having a relationship with a madama. This term referred to women who would temporarily live with Italian men “performing domestic and sexual services and being rewarded in kind and/or money16 ”. Madamato was apparently built on an existing form of temporary marriage in Eritrea known as demoz17 consisting of an Eritrean woman, normally a Christian Coptic, who “commits herself, directly or through her family, to live in conjugal union with a man, for a given length of time, and for the payment of a given sum18”. According to Eritrean customary norms, in case of children born within this context, the father had to provide economic support to his partner and their offspring.19 Historical and archival studies though, show that many of the Italian men who entered situations of madamato dismissed such norms, leaving women and children, especially military officials and those whose presence in Africa was temporary.20

  • 21 See Barrera, op. cit., 1996; Nicoletta Poidimani, Difendere la ‘razza’: Identità razziale e polit (...)

12Prior to the declaration of the empire, it is interesting to note how the eroticisation of the war against Ethiopia and the possibility of sexual opportunities with young Black women played an important factor in the enlisting of the Black shirts. In 1935, postcards showing young Black women in sensual poses were distributed to soldiers leaving for the battlefront to nourish the idea of available sexual opportunities and to incite the imagination of a largely illiterate male population.21 In this regard, in 1935 the journalist Leo Longanesi would write:

  • 22 Elisabetta Bini, 2003 art. cit., p. 6. My translation.

Italians quickly convince themselves that in Ethiopia there will be work for everyone and they will not have to emigrate anymore. However, the clincher for youth is the publication of nude pictures of Abyssinian women. Never before could one admire pictures of such firm and pointed breasts, especially not southern Italians, who cannot wait to leave. In their eyes, Abyssinia seems to be an endless forest of beautiful breasts at hand.22

  • 23 See Giulietta Stefani, Una colonia per maschi. Gli italiani in Africa Orientale. Per una storia d (...)
  • 24 On the government cinematographic products of the Istituto Luce, see the work of Gianmarco Mancos (...)

13National excitement and approval of the population towards the invasion of Ethiopia was forged by an impressive and capillary work of propaganda aimed to reach Italians on a daily basis. As scholar Giulietta Stefani shows, the result of the propaganda with its continuous highlighting of the war campaign in Africa would mean the average Italian would wake up to the radio news in the morning, see the murals on street walls, and the presence of fascist representatives in the workplace pushing for further production in order to sustain the war effort in Africa, and finally, after they had finished work, whilst performing hobbies such as sports, they would be bombarded with relentless messages filling the air with the reminder of the empire.23 Not only postcards but, radio programs, documentaries, advertisements, films, comics, books, travel accounts and several cinematographic products24 were used to produce what can be called the colonisation of the national imagination, namely the production of a media overdrive of shifting and at times volatile representations used to gain political consensus. In this regard, the changing representation of East African women shows the fickleness of the propaganda messages which adapted rapidly according to the need in that moment. A great example of such shifting representations, embedded in dynamics of gender and race power, is provided by the song Faccetta Nera, literally translated as Little Black Face, written in 1935 by Renato Micheli with the accompanying composition by Mario Ruccione and made famous by Carlo Buti’s interpretation.

  • 25 See Igiaba Scego, La vera storia di Faccetta Nera, Internazionale, August 6th, 2015.
  • 26 See Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg, eds., Marxism a (...)

14Faccetta Nera became one of the most popular songs of that time, sung by the soldiers leaving for Ethiopia and still remembered today in Italy. Interestingly, the regime seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with the song. On the one hand, it turned out to be a national success, played everywhere and cheering leaving soldiers; on the other, a year later Micheli had to modify the first version of the song as the regime accused him of being too complimenting towards the bella abissina and to encourage intermixing and certain citizenship rights.25 In the text, in fact, the Black Shirts address an enslaved little Black face exhorting her to resist against the Ethiopian enemy given that, very soon, the tricolore (the tricolour Italian flag) will land to Ethiopia, will give to her new laws and a new king and will bring her, freed, to Rome. “Pretty black face, beautiful Abyssinian/Wait and see, the hour is coming! /When we are with you/We shall give you another law and another king/Our law is slavery of love/Our motto is freedom and duty/We, the Black Shirts, will avenge the heroes that died to free you!/Little Black Face, little Abyssinian/We will take you to Rome freed/From our sun you will be kissed/You will be in Black Shirt too/Black Face you will be Roman/We will march with you/And parade in front of the Duce and in front of the King”. The lyrics clearly reflect the presence of Africa in the Italian imagination of that time and they imply not only a liberation of brown women from brown men by white men, to use Gayatri Spivak’s words26 but also the conquest of Abyssinia and a special relationship with her pretty black faces.

  • 27 See Stefani, op. cit., 2006, p. 101.
  • 28 Sander Gilman, Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward and Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nin (...)
  • 29 Ibid.
  • 30 See Barbara Sorgoni, Defending the race: the Italian reinvention of the Hottentot Venus during Fa (...)

15The fascination with Africa and her “Black Venuses” had a long history and it was a recurrent theme within European projects of colonialism. In this respect McClintock aptly defines Africa and the Americas as European’s porno-tropics namely “a fantastic magic lantern of the mind onto which Europe projected its forbidden sexual desire and fears (…) the quintessential zone of sexual aberration and abnormality”. In the case of Italy, Stefani argues how Africa was considered a “paradise of the senses at hand for Italian males27” given the belief of African women as sexually insatiable and available. The discourse around Black women’s bodies and their sexuality, as somehow excessive and deviant, can be traced within the scientific racist theories of the late nineteenth century and embodied in the myth of the famous “Hottentot Venus”. Behind the myth, though, lies the story of a young South African woman named Sarah or Saartjie Baartman. Born in 1789 as a Khoisan woman, Saartjie worked as a domestic in a Dutch family. In 1810, when she was in her early twenties, arrived in London, having signed a contract to be exhibited within the famous “freak shows” and international exhibitions. In 1814 she was brought to France where, besides the shows, she became the source of great interest of French scientists, including naturalist George Cuvier. What attracted the curiosity of the audience and French scientists was some of Baartman’s physical features, namely her protruding buttocks, due to steatopygia, and the form of her labia, enlarged and elongated. This was the result of her genitalia being manipulated and considered as a sign of beauty among Khoisan women.28 These features were identified as sexual “anomalies” and the sign of her “pathological diversity”. The size of her genitalia being “much more developed than those of whites” was associated to an equally developed sexual appetite and an inferior stage of human development, closer to those of primates.29 According to evolutionary theories of human development, the Hottentots were considered as the “missing link”30 between apes and human and therefore, Baartman became the crystallised evidence of Black women’s bodies and sexuality.

  • 31 Stefani, op. cit., 2006.
  • 32 Poidimani, op. cit., 2005, p. 126.

16The ambivalent fascination with these bodies was, therefore, a recurrent theme also in the Italian imagination31 and used as an incentive for the invasion of Ethiopia. Yet, in 1936 after the creation of the Empire and new theorisations on race purity, the regime started to enforce a shift vis a vis the representation of Black women. Radios were prohibited from playing Faccetta Nera32 and the regime tried to replace the popular jingle with a new song called Faccetta Bianca, little white face. Faccetta Bianca, was a young and beautiful white Italian woman waving in tears at her Black Shirt man leaving for Africa. The attempt miserably failed and Faccetta Bianca never managed to replace her seductive black counterpart in Italian popular culture. Nonetheless the propaganda machine had been set in motion. On January 1937, seven months after the birth of the Empire, the editors in chief of six satirical magazines were summoned to the headquarters of the Minister of Press and Propaganda in Rome to be instructed on the new lines that they should follow in order to support regime’s views, such as:

  • 33 Ministro della Cultura Popolare cited in David Bidussa et al., eds., La menzogna della razza: doc (...)

The satirical press can and has to fight against hybridism making races of colour look like as physically and morally inferior, for instance highlighting Black women’s ugliness, and the distance that divides the civilisation of Whites compared to the civilisation of Blacks.33

17The myth of Faccetta Nera started to be destroyed on national newspapers. From being a beautiful and pretty face, Faccetta Nera started to be portrayed as a smelly and ugly African woman, the symbol of an unacceptable degeneration. In 1936, the journalist Paolo Monelli published on the first page of one of the most important Italian newspapers an article titled according to an Italian saying, Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi (Wives and oxen have to be from your country). The newspaper had a run of 400,000 copies. Disgust and feelings of racial superiority, embedded in heteropatriarchal colonial logics, are expressed in the following extract:

  • 34 Monelli quoted in Poidimani, op. cit., 2005, p. 11. My translation.

If I were the emperor, you know what would I do? I would take the author of the lyrics of ‘Faccetta Nera’ and I would force him to live two or three weeks –what am I saying?– two or three days, and I swear to God that two or three hours would be more than enough in an Abyssinian hut with a little black face. With one of these Abyssinians, Galla or Amhara or Sciangalla or Sciona, I will leave him the pleasure of choosing, all filthy of an ancient filth (...) Faccetta Nera’s lyrics are worse than stupid. They represent a mentality that we would like to have already killed off (...) above all love is a factory for children. Now what would our storyteller like to do to a Faccetta Nera? A son? A meticcio? Here the singer’s ignorance becomes a crime against the race (...) We have to populate the Empire with people similar to us and not to disseminate melancholic bastards (...) It is not tolerable for healthy, strong, ancient people to be promiscuous with loser barbarians.34

  • 35 Lessona cited in Bidussa, op. cit., p. 290. My translation.

18Also the Minister of the Colonies wrote in January 1937 an article published on the front page of La Stampa (one of the most important national newspapers) entitled “Race Politics”. Here Lessona introduced the forthcoming new decree framing interracial relationships and explicitly defining mixed race people as a “caste of unstable individuals”, a “painful plague”, a “source of ill-fate” and an “abnormal branch of the human family”35. According to the Minister, Italian male promiscuity with African women meant not only a physical contamination, but also a social degradation for Italian stirpe. This was the cultural and political landscape that saw the production of the first racial law.

Interracial Relationships and Racial Laws

  • 36 R.d.l. 19 April 1937, no. 880, turned into l. 30 December 1937, no. 2590.

19As mentioned earlier, with the proclamation of the empire interracial relationships became the target of the fascist racial decrees aimed to stop the procreation of what Monelli called “melancholic bastards” or called in jargon meticci. Thus, according to the first racial law, promulgated in April 1937: “The Italian citizen who, in the territory of the Kingdom or the colonies, has a relation of a conjugal nature with a colonial subject of the Africa Orientale Italiana, (…) will be punished with imprisonment from one to five years.36

  • 37 Barrera, art. cit., 2004, p. 157.
  • 38 Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 43.
  • 39 Four Power Commission of Investigation for the Former Italian Colonies, Report on Eritrea, London (...)

20The issue with mixed-race children was not certainly new. As early as 1905, just fifteen years after the creation of first colony Eritrea, the Public Prosecutor in Asmara, Ranieri Falcone, affirmed in a public speech that interracial relationships were widely practised in Asmara and this could be detrimental to Italian prestige in the colony.37 Paradoxically, it is at the pinnacle of racial segregation and physical separation in the colonies that the highest number of mixed-race children was registered. If in 1931, a third of the children born in the colony were mixed (approximately 515 individuals), in the three years of the racial law period, lasting from 1937-40, in Asmara alone there were 2,594 registered births and an unknown number of unrecognised children.38 Furthermore, through the massive presence of approximately 300,000 Italian soldiers temporarily staying in Eritrea due to the war against Ethiopia, the number of Eritrean women living with Italian men jumped from 10,000 in 1937 to 13,000 in 1939, and eventually rising to 15,000 in 1940.39

21The data seem to highlight a disjuncture between law and practice occurring in a period of formalised institutional racism. The more rigid the discourse, in fact, the more complex and articulated seemed to be the negotiations of the everyday life. If according to the royal decree of 1937, it became a crime for Italian citizens to have a relationship of conjugal nature with a “non-Aryan” subject, by reading through the lines of court sentences punishing such a crime, one can glimpse some of the heterogeneous and complex negotiations enacted by social actors in fascist East Africa.

  • 40 The two authors conducted reserch at the Archivio Storico Diplomatico, Ministero per gli Affari E (...)
  • 41 If the majority of Barrera’s material is available in English, Gabrielli’s work has been publishe (...)

22In this regard, two archival studies on this topic, conducted respectively by Giulia Barrera and Gianluca Gabrielli, help us to understand the complexities of madamato and how the Italian fascist and colonial system tried to deal with this issue. The two historians conducted research at several sites40 and had the opportunity to access the original documents related to court sentences punishing the new crime. Some of the cases they have brought to light reveal particularly useful material to further illustrate the negotiations on the intimate life enacted in Fascist East Africa between Italian men and African women.41

  • 42 Gabrielli, art. cit, 1997, p. 45.

23In cases of madamato, the judges had to investigate the nature of the relationship occurring between the two parties. To do so, they had to ascertain if the relationship involved any emotional components other than just sexual needs or, more precisely, if the relationship presented signs of a sentiment defined in juridical jargon as affectio maritalis. This expression, as a judge defined it in 1938, indicated a “special bond” (speciale vincolo) existing between an Italian man and an African woman, meaning not only sharing the same house (comunanza di tetto), but also the sharing of the same bed (comunanza di letto) and the sharing of the same food at the same table (comunanza di mensa).42 From his archival research, Gabrielli identifies two main elements clearly indicating to the judges the presence of affectio maritalis: a “material” element (i.e. regular sexual intercourse) and a “moral element”. The moral element can be further split between “external factors” such as co-habitation, assistance, sharing of meals etc. and “spiritual” or “psychic” factors such as emotions and feelings such as jealousy exclusivity, affection (i.e. gratuity of sexual intercourse). One of the main dangers noted by the judges was the risk of insabbiamento, or the fact of “going native” by the part of the Italian man. Some of the cases highlight not only the negotiations on love and race undertaken by the defendants but also how the law intervened to detect such a crime.

  • 43 Carabinieri is a police corps originally created by King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy in 1814. Duri (...)

24An interesting court case occurred on 13 January 1938, and it concerned the Italian Giuseppe Puccinelli and the Eritrean Ascalè Zaudiè, denounced by Carabinieri43 for having a “suspicious” relationship. Both Ascalè and Giuseppe confessed the crime. As the sentence states, having spent una nottata d’amore (“a night of love”) together, Giuseppe asked Ascalè to stay with him not only to continue having regular sexual intercourse, but also to look after him and his house. They both told the same story and provided the same details. The only difference concerned the duration of their relationship. While Giuseppe confessed that it lasted only fifteen days, Ascalè stated that they lived together for three months. Reading through the sentence, specific details indicating affectio maritalis are found by the judge, as he writes in his sentence:

  • 44 Sentence of 13 January 1938, Court of Addis Ababa, in Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 89.

They lived together in the same house, more uxorio, sleeping in the same bed, eating at the same table, the same food and, furthermore, from the same plate.44

25As Gabrielli notices, an important element indicating the presence of something more than just sexual needs was the gratuity of sexual intercourse between the two defendants, along with other tasks undertaken by Ascalè in the house. In the light of these facts, the Judge declared that Giuseppe and Ascalè had a veritable conjugal relationship in which both the material and moral elements were present. The first one was established by the fact that they both admitted having regular sexual intercourse, while the moral element was shown not only by the cohabitation and the mutual assistance, but also by the presence of:

  • 45 Ibid.

That special bond, or spiritual link that is affectio maritalis (…) union or community of life. It is not possible to conceive and have a more perfect community of life than the one that existed between these defendants.45

  • 46 Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 51.

26By reading some of the sentences one may notice the construction of Black women’s bodies framed as a tool to satisfy Italian men’s pleasure. In this regard, it is particularly striking to learn how the law did not punish sexual exploitation or violence against local women. If a defendant managed to prove that he would “use” a native woman only as a maid and as a means to satisfy his sexual needs, he would be discharged. In this respect, Barrera provides us with the case of Cerullo dating 1938. Cerullo claimed his use of violence on a local woman working for him whenever he wanted sexual intercourse and it was precisely this woman who denounced the crime in order to avoid experiencing further violence.46 By admitting the use of violence in order to coerce sexual acts, Cerullo was released because his violence was not considered as a sign of jealousy, which could have been interpreted as a proof of his feelings. According to the verdict, Cerullo’s way to satisfy his sexual needs, namely through the use of physical violence, was an “acceptable” way for an Italian man to have sexual relations with an African woman.

  • 47 Sentence 19 November 1938, Court of Gondar, cited in Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 95.
  • 48 Ibid.

27A similar case, illustrated by both Barrera and Gabrielli concerns Giovanni Spano, who, unlike Cerullo, was condemned precisely because of his furious jealousy towards his madama, a woman called Destà Agos. This latter told the judges that Giovanni had asked her to be his “wife” and she accepted the offer, thus they used to live in the same house, sharing not only the same bed but also the same table. She would look after the house while he would pay for her expenses “like if they were husband and wife”. He even offered her a dress that she brought to court.47 Yet, Destà denounced Giuseppe’s “violent jealousy” and the fact he forbade her from speaking to any other man, especially if white, and to go on the street. Due to venereal diseases Giuseppe was hospitalised and Destà, left without a “means of subsistence”, decided to provide her sexual services to other men, as she affirmed. Being aware of the news and enraged by his jealousy, Giovanni ran away from the hospital and went to Desta’s place in order to beat her. Despite affirming in court that Desta’ was “just a prostitute” to him, Giuseppe was condemned. According to the judge, his jealousy towards Destà indicated that their relationship involved physiological needs and that he clearly had feelings for her. If he had treated Destà as a prostitute and had paid for their sexual encounters, there would have been no crime48.

  • 49 Judge Rosso, 1940 cited in: Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 49.
  • 50 Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 111.

28One of the main factors indicating madamato and considered particularly serious by judges was the case in which the relationship was structured on an “equal basis”.49 Namely, when an Italian man, despite his supposed racial superiority, would treat a local woman as an equal subject or, in other words, as a white woman. Such dangerous features were identified in behaviour like endearment towards the local partner, financial and emotional assistance in cases of sickness, worrying for the safety of the partner. As Gabrielli remarks, these were considered dangerous gestures going beyond the “dominator-dominated scheme”.50 Two of these cases deserve attention. The first one relates to the defendant Fenzi, whose crime was so evident that he was immediately condemned. The sentence mentions parts of letters that Fenzi’s sister sent to the defendant in which she talked about his partner, a woman called Hascè. In her letter, Fenzi’s sister expressed terms of affection and endearment towards Hascè while trying to comfort her brother suffering for Hascè’s absence:

  • 51 Sentence 23 August 1939, Ibid, p. 110.

I am very sorry to hear that dear Hascè is not anymore with you. You know, maybe it is better because when one falls in love, one suffers immensely… Anyway, when you see her say hello from me and convey my affection like a true sister would.51

29These few lines were taken as an indication that the relationship between Fenzi and Hascè was one of a “conjugal nature” and structured “on an equal basis”. Particularly serious was the case of a certain Seneca who was condemned to a year and one-month imprisonment. The judge’s sentence explores the relationship Seneca had with his partner, as follows:

  • 52 Sentence 31 January 1939, Court of Addis Ababa, Ibid, p. 11.

He confessed that he had taken with him a native woman; that he had brought her with him during his transfers; that he loved her; that he allowed her to eat and sleep with him; that he spent all his savings with her; that he had offered presents to her mother; that he had paid for some medical treatments to heal her ovaries in order to have a baby with her; that he had hired some natives to work as servants for her; and that he had prepared a letter to His Majesty the King and Emperor to obtain authorisation to marry the native woman or, at least, to live with her.52

  • 53 Ibid.

30Seneca’s case was sentenced as a case of insabbiamento, which is to say Seneca “went native”. The gravity, according to the judge, lay in the fact that the defendant did not just sexually desire an African woman, but that he elevated her to the rank of a “life partner”. She was present in every aspect of his life, not just the sexual one53. Therefore, this defendant’s condemnation was particularly harsh. As mentioned, he was condemned to a year and one month in jail; an amount of time considered by the judges long enough to:

  • 54 Ibid.

Clear the mind of the Italian and to dissipate the female in hundreds of other contacts in order that this would diminish her value in the eyes of the national and that would bind her to new interests and maybe new cupboard loves.54

31The analysis of these judicial sentences provides a new understanding of the heterogeneity of the relationships occurring in colonial times. Reading between the lines, the judges reveal information on the negotiations occurring between interracial partners during the racial law period, and these seem to touch upon a variety of scenarios. In some cases, there were genuine feelings and the desire to build a future together despite the odds, as in the case of Seneca. Being aware of the legal prohibition, he even planned writing a letter to the King of Italy himself to request the permission to marry his loved one. The case of Fenzi is also quite revealing, considering his sister not only knew about her brother’s relationship with an African woman, but she also expressed touching words of affection and sisterhood towards Hascè. Yet, in other cases the scenario involved physical and sexual violence. In the case of Spano, for instance, his jealousy and feelings of possession and exclusivity towards his partner caused his condemnation in court. Quite disturbing, however, is the case of Cerullo who was not sentenced by the court because raping an African woman was not considered inappropriate or a crime. On the contrary, the real crime was to love one.

  • 55 Between 1896 to 1907 there were 100 acknowledged girls for 114 boys, see Michela De Giorgio, Le I (...)
  • 56 Ibid, p. 40.
  • 57 David I. Kertzer and Mario Barbagli, eds., The History of European Family, Volume Three, Yale, Un (...)

32It is important to highlight that conjugal violence and sexism were not present only in the colonies. These were common features of an overall patriarchal system that many Italian men brought with them. In nineteenth-century Italy, like in the rest of Europe, biological life was gendered from its beginning and gender norms had immediate effects on women’s lives. Between 1896 and 1920 in Italy, female mortality was higher than that of males, especially in the first year of life. Fewer girls were acknowledged and life expectancy for Italian women was thirty-four years, unlike in Sweden, England and the Netherlands where in 1900 life expectancy for a new born girl was between forty-five and fifty-five.55 Higher female mortality was due to, amongst other factors, different levels of care provided to women and men and to a different social and economic value attached to it.56 Furthermore, women from poor economic backgrounds were seen as “replaceable”, and thus positioned in a disadvantaged situation in terms of provision of care and nutrition.57 In such a context, in which women’s life did not equal a man’s life, conjugal violence was not an unknown phenomenon to many Italian women, too. When transported to the colonies, this system of violence and discrimination aggravated due to the racial component and this gave rise to specific and contingent intersectional forms of violence. The inequality experienced by African women was multilayered due to the fact they were not just women, rather black women. It is important to highlight, however, that despite structures of dominance and power imbalances, African women were not passive subjects and that they negotiated their own everyday interactions with Italian men.

Conclusions: The Recognition of Women’s Agency

33The aim of this article was to show the complexities of the colonial discourse on race and gender, highlighting, on the one hand, the disjuncture between colonial prohibitions and everyday practices; on the other the transgression of physical and symbolic barriers within the cracks of colonial discourse. To do so I focused on Italian colonialism and fascism in East Africa and in particular on the use and representation of Black women’s bodies and sexuality in connection to colonial dominance. Despite the urge felt by the colonial government and later the fascist regime to formalise racial, physical and bodily borders, I suggested that the inner and ethnosexual borders were constantly transgressed by African women and Italian men and the visible sign of such transgression was represented by interracial households and ‘mixed race’ offspring. The analysis pointed out some important contradictions. If the work of fascist propaganda in relation to the representation of African women showed the crystallisation of certain categories and the colonisation of the imagination, the court cases punishing interracial relationships underlined that a strict rigidity of the discourse on race and gender caused social actors to negotiate life situations in complex ways. In the case of interracial relationships, the scenarios illustrated by the court sentences brought about a plethora of scenarios such as sexual exploitation and violence, relationships based on genuine love, desire to build a future together, opportunism, and so on. These scenarios showed a complex heterogeneity underlining the active, even though limited, role of African women often overlooked by historiography. Reading the Italian literature on the representation of Black women’s bodies and sexuality and madamato, it is striking to notice in certain cases the lack of agency recognised to African women and the consequent flattened, powerless and passive historical role attributed to them. While some authors recognise and stress exclusively violence, oppression and coercion, it is necessary to acknowledge that these were not the only scenarios as, by doing so, one may deprive these women of their agency to define their own experiences and narratives.

  • 58 Karen Viera Powers, Women and the Crucible of the Conquest. The gendered Genesis of Spanish Ameri (...)

34Referring to the conquest of Mexico, for instance, Karen Vieira Powers points out how Maya women’s histories have been classified by scholars into paradigms, such as “whore”, “victim of rape” or “complicity with the Spaniards58”. Although rape and complicity were effectively at the core of colonisation, such a generalisation of women’s experiences denies scenarios of physical attraction, mutual consent, economic opportunism, political alliances, genuine love, etc. Powers, therefore, points out the importance of examining gender roles and experiences in order to highlight different ranges of women’s lived experiences.

35A good example is provided by the photographic representation of African women in the Italian colonial context. In her work of analysis of pornographic images, historian Silvana Palma defines the young women posing naked for the photographer Luigi Naretti as “unaware models” emphasising their “innocence” and the coercion of the poses. In her analysis she describes the models as:

  • 59 Silvana Palma, Fotografia di una colonia: l’Eritrea di Luigi Naretti, Quaderni Storici, XXXVII, 1 (...)

Black Venuses who, not infrequently, show with all evidence their unfamiliarity to the camera. Above all, through an uncontrollable sadness in their gaze or expression, they show the violence they endure through imposed poses that they do not understand, which last infinitely long, over which they have no control.59

  • 60 Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, Temple Universi (...)
  • 61 Ruth Iyob, Madamismo and Beyond: the Construction of Eritrean women, Nineteenth-Century Contexts,(...)
  • 62 Iyob, op. cit., 2008, p. 230.

36This was certainly true in many cases, however, it is necessary to talk also about those Black models who negotiated and gained an economic income from posing naked in front of a camera; those who refused to pose tout court when they had the opportunity to do so and, very importantly, those who enjoyed posing naked in front of a camera. As Deborah Willis and Carla Williams underline in their historical study on the use of images portraying naked Black women, issues of exploitation are not as easy to grasp, and images seen as negative or derogative still bear complexity and contradictions. By denying these aspects, one may end up denying the complexities of Black women’s sexuality and their role in building their visual history.60 Going back to the figure of madama, research shows that there were a number of reasons why a woman decided to become a madama and how some of these women used colonial categories to their advantage and in anti-colonial movements. Eritrean scholar Ruth Iyob, for instance, shows that although many madamas had been subjected to sexual violence, some improved their lifestyle and prestige within local communities exploiting precisely their networks with the “power-holders61”. Moreover, several madamas who had used the economic power to open some businesses, especially taverns, let their commercial spaces be used for secret and forbidden anti-colonial meetings.62 It is crucial, therefore, not to fall into dichotomised discursive traps that may silence women’s experiences. By considering these women exclusively as “victims” and passive subjects, we may dismiss the importance of their personal narratives, trapping their experiences into crystallised categories. Although it is necessary to bear in mind that colonial relationships occurred in racially segregated spaces marked by great power imbalance, it is equally important to challenge dichotomised categories, such as “coloniser” and “colonised”, in order to understand the negotiations occurring in the interstitial spaces of colonial boundaries in which emotions were embedded at the intersection of colonial prescription and everyday practice.

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Notes

1 See on this topic: Jaqueline Andall and Duncan Derek, eds, Italian Colonialism. Legacy and Memory, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2005; Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, Roma- Bari, Laterza, 1976; Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, eds, Postcolonial Italy. Challenging National Homogeneity, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

2 Maristella Casciato, Da campo militare a capitale: Asmara colonia italiana e oltre, Rivista Incontri di Studi Italiani, 28 (1), 2013, p. 47

3 Ibid.

4 See the UNESCO website heritage on Asmara: [http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/2024/].

5 Francesca Locatelli, Beyond the Campo Cintato: Prostitutes, Migrants and ‘Criminals’ in Colonial Asmara (Eritrea), 1890–1941, in Francesca Locatelli et Paul Nugent, African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Spaces, Leiden, Brill, 2009, p. 219.

6 Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development, London-New York, Routledge, 1976, p. 17.

7 “Assimilated” were those considered less “civilised” than Europeans and this group included, Jews, Arabs, and Indians. Therefore, they were considered ‘assimilated’ to Africans and considered colonial subjects. See: Locatelli, op. cit.

8 Giulia Barrera, Asmara. Architettura e pianificazione urbana nei fondi dell’ ISiao, Roma, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2008, p. 14.

9 Ibid., p. 16.

10 Ibid, p. 23.

11 Nation is spelled with capital N to highlight the reification of this concept.

12 Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002, p. 199.

13 Joan Nagel, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 14.

14 Ann Mcclintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York-London, Routledge, 1995, p. 67.

15 Fascist jargon to indicate the procreation of mixed-race children.

16 Barbara Sorgoni, Racist Discourses and Practices in the Italian Empire under Fascism, in Robert D. Pratt, eds., The Politics of Recognizing Difference. Multiculturalism Italian-Style, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002, p. 45; see also Giulia Barrera, Dangerous Liaisons: Colonial Concubinage in Eritrea (1890-1941), Program of African Studies Working Papers,1996.

17 See Barrera, art. cit.

18 Id., p. 19.

19 Gianluca Gabrielli, Un aspetto della politica razzista nell’impero: il ‘problema dei meticci’, Passato e Presente, 15, p. 77-105.

20 Giulia Barrera, Patrilinearity, Race, and Identity: The Upbringing of Italo-Eritreans During Italian Colonialism, in, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, eds., Italian Colonialism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 100.

21 See Barrera, op. cit., 1996; Nicoletta Poidimani, Difendere la ‘razza’: Identità razziale e politiche sessuali nel progetto imperiale di Mussolini, Roma, Sensibili alle Foglie, 2009.

22 Elisabetta Bini, 2003 art. cit., p. 6. My translation.

23 See Giulietta Stefani, Una colonia per maschi. Gli italiani in Africa Orientale. Per una storia di genere, Verona, Ombrecorte, 2006.

24 On the government cinematographic products of the Istituto Luce, see the work of Gianmarco Mancosu.

25 See Igiaba Scego, La vera storia di Faccetta Nera, Internazionale, August 6th, 2015.

26 See Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana, Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988, p. 271‑313

27 See Stefani, op. cit., 2006, p. 101.

28 Sander Gilman, Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward and Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Arts, Medicine and Literature, Critical Enquiry, 12, 204-242, p. 213.

29 Ibid.

30 See Barbara Sorgoni, Defending the race: the Italian reinvention of the Hottentot Venus during Fascism, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8(3), 2003, p. 411-424.

31 Stefani, op. cit., 2006.

32 Poidimani, op. cit., 2005, p. 126.

33 Ministro della Cultura Popolare cited in David Bidussa et al., eds., La menzogna della razza: documenti e immagini del razzismo e dell’antisemitismo fascista, Centro Furio Jesi, Casalecchio di Reno, Grafis, 1994, p. 147. My translation.

34 Monelli quoted in Poidimani, op. cit., 2005, p. 11. My translation.

35 Lessona cited in Bidussa, op. cit., p. 290. My translation.

36 R.d.l. 19 April 1937, no. 880, turned into l. 30 December 1937, no. 2590.

37 Barrera, art. cit., 2004, p. 157.

38 Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 43.

39 Four Power Commission of Investigation for the Former Italian Colonies, Report on Eritrea, London, 22 June 1948, app. 111, memorandum, in: Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 43.

40 The two authors conducted reserch at the Archivio Storico Diplomatico, Ministero per gli Affari Esteri (ASDAMAE), Archivio Eritrea (AE) Addis Ababa Tribunal.

41 If the majority of Barrera’s material is available in English, Gabrielli’s work has been published only in Italian therefore, unless specified, all translations from Italian are mine.

42 Gabrielli, art. cit, 1997, p. 45.

43 Carabinieri is a police corps originally created by King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy in 1814. During the fascist regime, Carabinieri were in charge of suppressing opposition in Italy and in the colonies.

44 Sentence of 13 January 1938, Court of Addis Ababa, in Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 89.

45 Ibid.

46 Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 51.

47 Sentence 19 November 1938, Court of Gondar, cited in Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 95.

48 Ibid.

49 Judge Rosso, 1940 cited in: Barrera, art. cit., 1996, p. 49.

50 Gabrielli, art. cit., 1997, p. 111.

51 Sentence 23 August 1939, Ibid, p. 110.

52 Sentence 31 January 1939, Court of Addis Ababa, Ibid, p. 11.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Between 1896 to 1907 there were 100 acknowledged girls for 114 boys, see Michela De Giorgio, Le Italiane dall’ Unità a oggi: modelli culturali e comportamenti sociali, Roma, Laterza 1992, p. 39.

56 Ibid, p. 40.

57 David I. Kertzer and Mario Barbagli, eds., The History of European Family, Volume Three, Yale, University Press, 2003, p. 65.

58 Karen Viera Powers, Women and the Crucible of the Conquest. The gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

59 Silvana Palma, Fotografia di una colonia: l’Eritrea di Luigi Naretti, Quaderni Storici, XXXVII, 109, 2002, p. 102. Emphasis added.

60 Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, Temple University Press, 2002, p. 39.

61 Ruth Iyob, Madamismo and Beyond: the Construction of Eritrean women, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 22, 2008, p. 229.

62 Iyob, op. cit., 2008, p. 230.

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Angelica Pesarini, « Bodies crossing borders »Rives méditerranéennes, 60 | 2020, 21-38.

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Angelica Pesarini, « Bodies crossing borders »Rives méditerranéennes [En ligne], 60 | 2020, mis en ligne le 03 janvier 2021, consulté le 16 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rives/7272 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rives.7272

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Angelica Pesarini

Lecturer on Social and Cultural Analysis at the New York University, Florence, Italy

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