“Long Live Anarchism” and Its Southern Discontent
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DOSSIÊ “LONG LIVE ANARCHISM” AND ITS SOUTHERN DISCONTENT: SOUTH-VERTING THE “TRANS-” OF RADICAL TRANSNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE IN IL RISVEGLIO “VIVA O ANARQUISMO” E A SUA DISSENSÃO SULISTA: SUL- VERTENDO O “TRANS-” DO CONHECIMENTO RADICAL TRANSNACIONAL EM IL RISVEGLIO Lara Palombo1 ABSTRACT: Il Risveglio This study proposes the re-orienting of the radical transnational politics exchanged in the first anti-fascist and anarchist newspaper , produced in 1927 in Australia. It combines a critical analysis of its transnational and translocal political imaginaries with an examination of the linkages of its “trans” of gender, race, class and imperial relations to unsettle its responses to the historical, Italian based southern discontent. It argues that its focus on the social question and the predominance of northern-based responses to women’s equality and the racialisation of migrants effaces and negates the lives of diaspora from the southern regions. This negation also intersects with its support for the formation of a white working class and negation of Indigenous sovereign ontologies and epistemologies in the settler colony of Australia. This paper demonstrates that KEYWORDS:the effacement of the southern discontent is re-configured across varied and relational systems of radical diasporic knowledge. RESUMO: Anarchism, Southern Italy, Australia, Discontent, Diaspora. Il Risveglio Este estudo propõe reorientar as posturas políticas, radicais e transnacionais, compartilhadas através do primeiro jornal antifascista e anarquista , publicado em 1927 na Austrália. O presente trabalho combina uma análise crítica dos seus imaginários políticos transnacionais e translocais, com uma investigação sobre as conexõesIl doRisveglio seu prefixo “trans-”, referido a gênero, raça, classe e relações imperiais, com as dissensões históricas baseadas no Sul da Itália. Argumentamos que o foco de na questão social e a predominância de respostas norte-cêntricas a questões como igualdade para as mulheres e a racialização dos migrantes, silencia e nega as trajetórias diaspóricas oriundas das regiões meridionais da Itália. Esta negação também intersecta o apoio à formação de uma classe trabalhadora branca e a negação de ontologias e epistemologias de soberania indígena dentro do espaço colonial australiano. Este trabalho demonstra que o silenciamento da dissensão sulista é reconfigurado transversalmente através de vários sistemas relacionais de conhecimento radical 1 Doutora em Mídia, Música, Comunicação e Estudos Culturais (2015) pela Macquarie University, Sydney, Austrália. Atualmente atua como Professora Colaboradora nessa mesma instituição acadêmica. DOSSIÊ PALAVRAS-CHAVE: diaspórico. , a Anarquismo, Itália do Sul, Austrália, Dissensão, Diáspora. G Living The Revolutionuglielmo’s unique after years of Brigantaggio history form of guerrilla warfare that (2010), on the erupted in the southern regions activism of radical Italian of Calabria, Apulia, Molise, migrant women in the US, Campania and Sicily after the starts by recounting how these unification of Italy. Although diasporic women directly driven by varied social and or indirectly, have been part political concerns, they are of the upraising since the especially known for rejecting unification and formation of the ruling of the Piedmontese the Kingdom of Italy. It recalls and working with peasants how the national uprising of in armed resistance against 1892 was started by a group the state and the new class of women in the southern city of landowners (GUGLIELMO, of Palermo who were joined 2010, p.33). This historicizing of by neighbouring collectives the political ruptures within the and eventually formed the south that ground anarchism “fascio delle lavoratrici” and radical migrant women (union of women workers) in the US, partake in what I with over 1,000 members. would argue is the unfinishable This agitation and the violent transnational imaginary of attempts to quash it, spread diaspora that animates a South- over time from the South to the verting to the heterogeneous North with industrial workers political/s of the south! joining peasants as they were It is the south-verting of the chanting “…Long Live Anarchy! radical-political writing by way Long Live Social Revolution” of an unfinishable transnational (GUGLIELMO, 2010, p.11). imaginary that is the focus of Guglielmo however, is also clear this paper. I propose here a that these organized socialist critical re-orienting of a radical, and anarchist eruptions arrived western transnational and 61 Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. DOSSIÊ Il Risveglio diasporic politics exchanged circulates a northern and insular in the newspaper form of knowledge that effaces in 1927 in Australia. More Imperial and racial knowledge specifically due to limited that legitimates the white capacity to access all its possessiveness of the settler editions, I focus on the analysis state in Australia and negates of the articles from 1 August Indigenous sovereign struggles 1927, that is translated and and the racial embodiments investigated by state authorities of southern Italian diaspora with the view to shutting down (FABER, 2009, p.7; CRESCIANI, the newspaper. This circulates 1979). amongst Italian-Australian The concept of diaspora as part of establishing transnationalism that I apply international opposition to the here is derived from the way spread of Italian Fascism and this newspaper is part of exposes of the violence of the global networks that exchange Regime. This newspaper as I anti-fascist and abstracted demonstrate is defined by way radical and diasporic anarchist of a prevalent transnational and thinking. The transnational translocal anti-fascist political political imaginary produced by imaginaries that seemingly its exchanges opens a focus on disrupt the legitimacy of fascism what Hirsch and Van Der Walt and the coherence of capitalism define as the “supranational and sovereign governance by in its connections and the state, the family, religion, multidirectional flows of nationalism, patriotism and the ideas, people, finances” racial hatred. The newspaper’s across geopolitical spaces by imaginary, however, remains countering and going beyond silent on the question of a politics oriented by national women’s equality and grounds and state sovereignty (2010, its social question in ways p.xxxii). This also configures that continue the historical a translocal diasporic politics effacement of the southern that localize anarchist political discontent. The newspaper Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. 62 DOSSIÊ imaginary through a politics and exchanges between organic of emotion that re-orient and non-organic transnational diasporic communities against and translocal formations the immorality of fascists (KINNA 2012; NEWMAN, in Australia. This translocal 2015; BERMAN, 2017). These politics is also shown to are activists that counter the circulate a hate politics in historical criminalisation of Australian that disrupts the Communists and Anarchists affective sentimentality of across geo-political spaces, nationalism, patriotism and including the censoring of racial hatred. The transnational Italian based and diasporic political imaginary is derived press by Italian fascism and from known and unknown Australian Government (TOSCO, male radical journalists, 2002, p.226; PALOMBO, 2015). social commentators, political They circulate what Berman activists and philosophers (2017) also calls a “critical that were translated in Italian optic” that opposes and and circulated by ways of works to destabilize modern transnational networks that capitalism, fascism, and liberal moved across Australia, states governance and its Italy, Switzerland, United interdependence to other Kingdom, United States, France, sovereign institutions such Argentina, Egypt, Hungary to as the law and religion and name a few (CRESCIANI, 1979; begins to consider women’s HIRSCH & VAN DER WALT emancipation. 2010; FABER, 2009). These In the second part of the supranational movements paper, taking a cue from Jessica are oriented by the historical Berman’s (2017) recently po- criminalisation, illegality and sed the question if “the Trans persecution of its exponents in Transnational is the Trans including their forced exiles, in Transgender?” and combine escapees but also their ongoing the initial focus on a whole en- travels, diasporiticization, compassing category of trans- international collaborations Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 2, 2017. 63 DOSSIÊ nationalism to the analysis of ween otherwise disparate sub- the unfinishable combinato- jects (p.12). Reconfigurations rial workings of the hyphena- of power through these cros- ted prefix “trans-“ of gender, sings do not necessarily defy race and nation (STRYKER e policed borders but create the CURRAH, 2014). As proposed possibility of alliances between by transgender studies theo- and across transmediterre- rists Stryker, Currah and Moo- nean communities in ways that re (2008), these crossings and transform what remains vio- movements open the whole lently in place. Borrowing from encompassing notions of trans- the focus on the hyphenated nationalism and translocalism prefix of “trans-“, I combine the to the explicit relationality of analysis of transnational and the linkages and intersectiona- translocal knowledge with the lities of “trans-” that also resist examination of the combinato- foreclosure by attachment to rial workings of the “trans-” of any single suffix (RUNYON, n.d.; gender, race and