Colonial discounters. Italian and Italo-diasporic literary negotiations with the indigenous presence

From Ippolito Nievo’s classic Confessioni di un Italiano to the most recent fiction by Adrián Bravi, Paolo Malaguti and Laura Pariani, South American indigenous cultures appear as a somewhat recurring, albeit often sketchy, presence in the literary productions of some of the most influential and perceptive Italian and Italo-diasporic writers. How do such representations occur? What are their contexts of reference? What can we glean from them? To what extent do they play an instrumental role within their tailored creative framework, and/or are, instead, revealing of a larger attitude enacted by a bona fide “colonial” Italy toward an unforeseen and disturbing Other? Can we speak of a “neo-indigenous” trend in Italian literature, and more broadly in Italian culture? A summary explorations of the most indicative pages of Bravi’s L’idioma di Casilda Moreira (2019) and Verde Eldorado (2022), of Paolo Malaguti’s Piero fa la Merica (2023), and of Laura Pariani’s Selvaggia e aspra e forte (2023) can guide to a first approach, hopefully complicating the repetitive clichés of our well-intentioned and self-serving academic jargon.