Loredana Polezzi’s research while affiliated with University of Warwick and other places

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Publications (11)


La meglio Italia: Le mobilità italiane nel XXI secolo
  • Article

July 2015

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2 Reads

Italian American Review

Loredana Polezzi

Description, appropriation, transformation: Fascist rhetoric and colonial nature

July 2014

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34 Reads

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5 Citations

Modern Italy

During the period of Fascism, a variety of discourses and representations were attached to colonial landscapes and to their uses. African nature was the subject of diverse rhetorical strategies, which ranged from the persistence of visions of wilderness as the locus of adventure to the domesticating manipulations of an incipient tourist industry aiming to familiarise the Italian public with relatively tame forms of the exotic. Contrasting images of bareness and productivity, primitivism and modernisation, resistance to change and dramatic transformation found their way into accounts of colonial territories ranging from scientific and pseudo-scientific reports to children's literature, from guidebooks to travel accounts, all of which were sustained not just by written texts but also by iconographic representations. This article will look at the specific example of accounts of Italian Somalia in order to explore Fascist discourses regarding colonial nature and its appropriation. Documents examined will include early guidebooks to the colonies, a small selection of travel accounts aimed at the general public, as well as the works of a number of geographers and geologists who were among the most active polygraphs of the period, and whose writings addressed a wide range of Italian readers.


Rewriting Tibet

February 2014

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20 Reads

The Translator

Between the 1930s and the 1950s a series of books on Tibet written by Italian explorers were translated into English. This article analyzes the way in which the Italian texts present the ‘personae’ of the authors and their respective relationship with national, international and imperial discourses of the period. The analysis then moves on to describe how, by operating shifts in such narrative devices as authorial voice and tense structure, the English translations modified the relationships between narrator, reader and object of the narration, thus appropriating the texts and rewriting them in accordance with the conventions of the English travel writing tradition, the expectations of the British public, and the discourse of Empire (or, later, the postcolonial discourse of tourism).


Translation, Travel, Migration

February 2014

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161 Reads

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32 Citations

The Translator

Over the past few years, the connection between travel and translation has gained currency among scholars of a number of disciplines, including critical theory, postcolonial studies and anthropology. Yet the increased visibility of both translation and travel has tended to hide, rather than highlight, the complexity of social as well as representational phenomena linked to both spatial and linguistic mobility (which encompass, on the one hand, economic migration, exile and self-exile, diasporas and other forms of displacement, and, on the other, interlingual translation and interpretation, self-translation, and instances of multilingual production). A tendency to use terms in a rather loose and often figurative manner has resulted in a frequent shift of attention away from actual practices and their protagonists: the people who travel and translate, for themselves and for others. The present article argues in favour of an approach to mobility and translation phenomena which highlights their cultural and historical specificities while also foregrounding the socio-political implications of both practices and their interconnections. Such an approach calls into question a number of traditional assumptions, including the ability of travel writers to write selectively for a home audience, and the negative aura surrounding the translator as a potential cultural traitor. Additionally, stressing the impact of complex instances of mobility on the contemporary world also invites us to rethink binary models of identity and of translation, positing multiply translated (and translating) subjects as the protagonists of today’s global communication processes.


Migration and Translation: Introduction

January 2014

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74 Reads

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6 Citations

Migration and translation are distinct yet closely linked phenomena. They both relate to forms of mobility which deeply affect human life, and have done so through history. Yet in today’s world, with its increasingly visible tensions between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’, they are becoming even more crucial to the way in which we communicate, organize social structures, regulate contact and understand the ethics of individual as well as collective interaction.


Il pieno e il vuoto : Visual Representations of Africa in Italian Accounts of Colonial Experiences *

November 2012

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30 Reads

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11 Citations

Italian Studies

The article examines the role played by photographs and other kinds of illustrations in accounts written by Italian travellers to Africa from the beginning of Italy's colonial experience till today. Using sample publications from Liberal Italy, the years of Fascism, and the post-colonial period, it analyses the way in which texts and images interact, constructing complex representations of people and places which cannot be reduced to any 'realist' and 'factual' interpretation. The insistence on particular images as well as the absence of others played a key role in producing representations which responded to the needs of propaganda, or occasionally managed to signal the author's self-distancing from the goals and practices of Italy's colonial politics.


Translation and migration

September 2012

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935 Reads

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96 Citations

Translation Studies

The link between translation and migration is a recurrent trope of recent critical writing. Its popularity underlines the increased centrality of both notions (and corresponding practices) in contemporary society, as well as the anxieties associated with them. Starting from translation as a linguistic activity, this article asks in what ways language practices connected to migration can be linked to translation. It considers the different positions occupied by migrants as agents or objects of translation, and the sites where translation and self-translation take place. The language practices which emerge from migrant writing are then discussed as a possible example of self-translation, asking whether the migrant-as-artist can offer at least a partial response to negative models of translation as a form of control over linguistic heterogeneity. Finally, the article examines the connection between migration, translation and political action, suggesting the need to understand how these relate to a contemporary biopolitics of language.





Citations (4)


... This is also in line with the view in translation and interpreting literature that translation by migrants and refugees serves as a vehicle of freedom, providing them with the choice of how to express and "present themselves the way they want to be understood" (Mladenova, 2022, p. 29). It affords them freedom to create and share their culture and knowledge, and contribute to the host society (Mladenova, 2022; see also Inghilleri, 2017;Polezzi, 2012). ...

Reference:

The use of Google Translate for language learning in emergency forced displacement contexts: Ukrainian adult learners of English in Australia
Translation and migration
  • Citing Article
  • September 2012

Translation Studies

... Of course, there could be many possible answers to these questions. The fact that a new generation of historians and anthropologists is exploring and shedding light on the long-lasting ecological legacies of Italian colonial violence and war is certainly a step in the right direction (i.e., Armiero & Biasillo, 2022;Biasillo, 2021;Polezzi, 2014). Similarly, the recent proliferation of cultural festivals focused on the environment and issues of sustainability (such as the "CinemAmbiente" in Turin or F. Arminio's "La luna e i calanchi" ["The Moon and the Gullies"] in Aliano, Basilicata), and the growing display of performative events engaging with important socio-environmental issues (such as Noel Gazzano's L'insopportabile contraddizione [The Unbearable Contradiction] (Gazzano, 2016) are encouraging signs of a new and much-needed ecological awareness. ...

Description, appropriation, transformation: Fascist rhetoric and colonial nature
  • Citing Article
  • July 2014

Modern Italy

... This radical transformation was enabled by technological, economic and sociological, factors, such as the development of steampowered ships and of the railway network, the growth of Anglo-American economy and a greater emancipation of women with more female travelers (Schriber, 1995). Moreover, after unification, new routes to Southern Italy and the islands were opened, so that travelers' attention was no longer limited to the classic destinations in the North and Central Italy, such as Venice, Florence and Rome (Ouditt and Polezzi, 2012). ...

Introduction: Italy as place and space
  • Citing Article
  • June 2012

Studies in Travel Writing

... Este artículo se desarrolla a partir del marco teórico que considera la estrecha interrelación entre migración y traducción (entre otros, Cronin, 2000;Polezzi, 2006;Vidal Claramonte, 2013;Inghilleri, 2017;Nergaard, 2021;Simon y Polezzi, 2022), ya que se propone investigar el trabajo de la escritora Jhumpa Lahiri, quien conoció en su biografía la experiencia del movimiento, tanto geográfico como lingüístico y cultural. De hecho, en el caso de Lahiri, nacida en Londres de padres indios, crecida en Estados Unidos y trasladada durante una temporada a Italia, es crucial considerar que distintos movimientos, ya sean geográficos o metafóricos, marcan su vida e impactan en su identidad, conllevando procesos de traducción. ...

Translation, Travel, Migration
  • Citing Article
  • February 2014

The Translator