This proposal places itself at the center of the postcolonial debate by arguing that the term post-colonialism, understood as a historical period, is problematic for Italy, given the country’s conspicuous lack of a debate on its colonial past. A deconstruction of the canon in light of a “contrapuntal perspective” such as the one laid out by Edward Said’s seminal rereading of canonical novels and cultural events as reflecting imperial attitudes, references, and experiences (Said, 1993) has not occurred in Italy. In spite of the international interest in Gramsci as a postcolonial thinker, Gramsci’s thought has not yet stirred in Italy a conspicuous and consistent postcolonial theoretical debate. Why? One possible reason may be found in the lack of a “mondializzazione” of the Italian academic and intellectual post-war debate on subaltern culture.
Given this general premise, the proposal analyzes how the term “postcolonialismo” is often conflated with the celebratory idea of “multiculturalism.” While “multiculturalismo” remains a vague aspiration, its alternative, that is, integration is viewed as the process whereby the mingling of ethnic differences within the Italian hegemonic context yields no distinct identity or culture. Against the grain of an understanding of the postcolonial moment as either a vague multiculturalism or integration, the paper suggests that a more contrapuntal exploration of the continuity between the colonial moment and its retrospective constructions in the present is indeed the best remedy against apocalyptic or celebratory perspectives.