Geocorpographical Assemblages of Plants
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DOSSIÊ THE SOUTHS OF “THE WEST”: GEOCORPOGRAPHICAL ASSEMBLAGES OF PLANTS, COLONIALISM AND RACE IN SERGIO LEONE’S METAFIGURAL SPAGHETTI WESTERNS OS SULS DO “FAROESTE”: ASSEMBLAGENS GEO- CORPOGRÁFICAS DE PLANTAS, COLONIALISMO E RAÇA NOS SPAGHETTI WESTERNS METAFIGURAIS DE SERGIO LEONE Joseph Pugliese1 ABSTRACT: Across many of the travelogues on the Italian South produced by northern European writers, both the prickly pear and the agave emerge as coextensive, in identitarian terms, with the South. Both the prickly pear and the agave are, in fact, plants indigenous to the Americas and they only made their way to the Italian South following the colonisation of the New World. In this essay, I examine the effaced history of colonial economies of occupation, plunder and commercial transport that underpins the existence of these two plants in the Italian South. I then proceed to examine the complex and interlayered systems of signification that, in turn, inscribe these plants in the context of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, I contend, must be read as metafigural KEYWORDS:allegories that bring into focus the complex entanglement of colonialism, race, civil war and contradictory identitarian politics. Race,RESUMO: Colonialism, Italian South, Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone agave Ao longo de vários relatosopúncia de viagens sobreagave o Sul italiano, produzidas por autores norte-europeus, a opúncia e a emergem como sinônimos identitários do Sul. Porém, tanto a quanto a são, de verdade, plantas oriundas das Américas, que só chegaram no Sul italiano depois da colonização do Novo Mundo. Neste trabalho, examino a história silenciada de economias coloniais de ocupação, pilhagem e transporte comercial que está por trás da presença dessasSpaghetti duas plantas Westerns no Sul italiano. Subsequentemente, analisoSpaghetti os complexosWesterns e multifacetados sistemas de significação que inscrevem essas plantas no contexto dos de Sergio Leone. Proponho que os de Sergio Leone devam ser lidos como alegorias metafigurais que chamam a atenção PARA a complexa interação entre colonialismo, raça, guerra civil e políticas identitáriasPALAVRAS-CHAVE: contraditórias. Spaghetti Westerns Raça, Colonialismo, Sul da Itália, , Sergio Leone 1 Doutor em Estudos Anglísticos pela University of Sydney (1992). Diretor de Pesquisa do Departamento de Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies da Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. DOSSIÊ Vegetal Nodes Within an Imperial Network etrable barrier a hedge of closely planted cacti can be … R the prickly pear spikes are a eading through the vo- painful obstacle … But we ex- luminous travelogues tricated ourselves from this painful labyrinth (GOETHE, on the Italian South written 1970, pp. 279-289). by northern Europeans from From the eighteenth cen- the eighteenth to the twenti- tury onwards, both the agave eth centuries, I have been re- and the prickly pear become peatedly struck by references Opuntia ficus-indica iconic botanical symbols that to the presence of the prickly Agave americana visually identify the landscapes pear ( ) and of the South. In the paintings the agave ( ) as and prints produced by north- signature plants that marked ern European artists, photog- for the travellers the southern raphers and travellers, the fore- identity of the landscape: to grounded plants literally frame catch sight of either of these the the vistas of the South, precise- plants in the landscape was to South Italian Journey ly as they also graphically signal announce one’s entry into to the viewer its exuberant and . In his exotic vegetation (Figures 1 and (1786-1788), Goethe repeated- 2). This identitarian coexten- ly remarks on the presence of siveness of both the prickly pear the prickly pear in the southern and the agave with the South landscape. The plant embodies, has, indeed, been assumed by for Goethe, both the exoticness southern Italians themselves in of the South and its Orientalist the marketing and promotion impenetrability: As we neared Misterbianco of the South. Both plants have [Catania], cacti appeared in become commodified as mar- the hedges, but entire hedg- keting symbols that sell touris- es of these bizarre-shaped plants, each more beauti- tic fantasies of the South. ful than the last …When we tried to beat a downhill path for ourselves through the gardens into the town, we discovered what an impen- Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. 12 DOSSIÊ Figure 1. Thomas Brabazon Aylmer, Rock and Promontory of Scylla, Cal- abria. (Picture credit: Author) Figure 2. Carlo Brogi, Contorni di Napoli, Positano, Piante di fichi d’India. (Picture credit: Public domain) 13 Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. DOSSIÊ Inscribing representations ward journey from the Ameri- of the agave and the prickly cas, across the Atlantic and into pear in terms of autochthonous the Mediterranean countries symbols of southern Italian of Portugal, Spain and thence identity is a foundational con- southern Italy. The Spanish tradiction. Both the prickly pear Empire supplies the propellant and the agave are, in fact, not that enables this eastward tra- native to the South; both plants jectory. After a series of wars are indigenous to the Americas of Spanish succession, in 1504 and they only made their way Spain assumed control of the to the Italian South following Italian South. For over two cen- the colonisation of the New turies, the South became one World. The entry of the prick- more colony of the Spanish ly pear into Europe has been Empire. Characterised by the tracked back to 1493, the year expansion and consolidation of that Christopher Columbus re- feudal structures of exploitative turned to Lisbon following his oppression, theLa twolunga centuries note del landfall on various islands of Viceregnoof Spanish imperial rule have the New World (CILENTANO. been termed: “ IT, 2017). The agave has been ” – the “long night of recorded as having been intro- viceregal rule” (PLACANICA,2 duced from the Americas into 1999, p. 195-235). Both the the countries of the Mediterra- prickly-pear and the agave, in nean in the sixteenth century other words, are inscribed by (DA VARI LETTERATI, 1822, p. the forces of a double colonial- 222). The seemingly autochtho- ism: the Spanish colonisation of nous and regional coordinates the Americas and the virtually of southern identity that are coterminous subsumption of embodied by these two plants the Italian South under Spanish need, in other words, to be his- rule. Both plants work to delin- torically situated and geopoliti- eate that geopolitical formation cally dispersed. Their entry into that I have elsewhere termed the Italian South traces an east- the “Mediterranean-Atlantic” 2 This and all other translations from the Italian are by the author. 14 Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. DOSSIÊ (PUGLIESE, 2008, p. 8). have undergone in the course of Situated within this histor- the cultural histories that have shaped them and that they have ical context, both plants emerge L’America nel Sud: Imperial as vegetal nodes in a vast net- andshaped Colonial in turn. Histories and work of imperial relations. The Spaghetti Westerns anthropocentric dogma of veg- etal life as immobile, because rooted to the earth, is here chal- The 1960s saw the efflores- lenged along a number of axes: cence in Italy of a genre of the botanical, political, mercantile, American Western that came to economic and aesthetic. The be termed the “Spaghetti West- spatio-temporal transmigra- ern.” In this essay, I will use the tion of the prickly-pear and aga- term “Spaghetti Western,” in ve eastward across the Atlantic contradistinction to the “Ita- and the lands of the Mediterra- lo-Western,” for the following nean proceeds to configure veg- political reasons: the genre of etal life as semiotically fluid and the Spaghetti Western is one discursively mobile. Reflecting that was largely developed by on the complex and mutating southern Italian directors and relations that bind humans to writers, and it was consciously plants, Michael Pollan notes pitched to southern audienc- that: “Witting or not, all these es in the home market of what characters have been actors in a was termed at the time as the coevolutionary drama, a dance “Roxy, Calabria” (FRAYLING, of human and plant desire that 2006, p. 63). The “Roxy, Cal- has left neither the plants nor abria,” furthermore, needs to be the people taking part in it un- situated within larger transna- changed” (2003, p. 261). Identi- tional configurations in order fying the prickly pear and agave to address its expansive dias- as co-actors in larger human poric dimensions. The “Roxy, dramas is what will enable me Calabria,” as placeholder for the to shed light on the semiotic South, extended its reach to key permutations that both plants population centres of south- ern migrants in places such as Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. 15 DOSSIÊ Australia. Post-World War Two, Western,” I want to map the co- Australia, like the US, Canada extensiveness between the sig- and Germany, was a key desti- nifiers “spaghetti” and “South- nation for southern migrants erners”; this coextenisveness fleeing the chronic poverty of can be illuminated by offering the South. As a boy who grew a brief politico-semantic his- up in 1960s Sydney, I have vivid tory of pasta and the historical memories of watching Spaghet- coining of “macaroni eaters” ti Westerns at the Australian as a way of designating South- equivalent of the “Roxy, Cal- erners (MONTANARI, 2013, p. abria”: the Grosvenor Theatre, 44). From the eighteenth cen- Summer Hill, in Sydney’s In- tury onwards, Southerners ner West. Italian films, includ- were called “macaroni eaters.” ing Spaghetti Westerns, were The pasta eaters of Naples, for screened on a Saturday night to example, became tourist at- packed crowds of working class tractions. They would stage Southerners. The atmosphere spaghetti-eating performanc- in the Grosvenor Theatre was es in the streets of Naples for one of excitement, social ex- tourists lazzaroni(Figure 3).