Vital subjects race and biopolitics in Italy, 1860–1920
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Abstract
In December 1887, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Crispi introduced
uniied Italy’s irst legislation on emigration with the following words: he Government cannot remain an indiferent or passive spectator to the
destinies of [emigrants]. It must know exactly where they are going and
what awaits them; it must accompany them with a vigilant and loving
eye…it must never lose sight of them in their new home […] to turn to its advantage the fruits of their labor. Colonies must be like arms, which
the country extends far away in foreign districts to bring them within
the orbit of its relations of labor and exchange; they must be like an
enlargement of the boundaries of its action and its economic power. (Ati
Parlamentari, 2a sessione AC 85)
Crispi was referring to what had become one of the central questions for
policymakers ater Italian uniication: how to address the fact that millions
of hard-working and newly nationalized Italians were leaving Italy, more
and more oten permanently, in search of beter fortune in Europe and, in
ever-increasing numbers, across the Atlantic (Fiore 71–82). In this period,
colonies were considered both the “spontaneous” setlements of emigrants
abroad and the planned setlements in East Africa for which, as early as 1887,
Italians had been sent to ight in deadly batles.1
In describing the state’s role in the regulation of emigration, Crispi stages
a convergence between two modes of government. In the irst of these two
modes, government is a disciplinary agent, whose surveying (and “loving”)
eye is armed with knowledge and aimed at individual emigrant bodies. In the
second, the aim of government shits to include individuals as elements of a
national population, whose borders and numbers must expand, enveloping
new territories and reproducing itself, in order to survive. his second
mode of government, known as biopolitics, was, in 1887, yet to be named as
such, though European nation-states had long been operating under similar
imperatives
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