Abstract In the context of Italian colonialism, relations between the colonisers and the colonised have often been constructed and conducted through materialities (objects, things and artefacts) as means for the transmission, exchange and exercise of power. Practices of architecture, infrastructure and spoliation have then created and intensified systems of circulation connecting the metropole to the periphery. Along this axis the movement of materialities justified the colonial order within a capitalist system of production, trade, migration, communication and conquest. This dissertation interrogates the relationship between ‘materiality’ and ‘circulation’ as central categories of analysis that allow the evaluation of Italian colonialism as a historical event and the deciphering of the complexities of Italy’s post-colonial present. It offers an in-depth analysis of specific materialities that from the earlier phases of Italian colonisation in the Horn of Africa and Libya up to the post-colonial present have circulated between Italy and its colonies, tying the centre to the periphery. This thesis reveals that as a parallel to the movement of humans between the metropole and the colonies, between the Global North and the Global South, an ensemble of materialities – road infrastructure, an obelisk, anthropometric artefacts and skeletal remains - seem to be epistemologically crucial in describing power relations between the colonisers and the colonised in both the colonial and post-colonial epochs. Formerly instrumental for civilisational claims of Italian superiority in relation to native populations, since decolonisation these materialities have turned into objects of dispute, emblems of postcolonial identities and bargaining chips for posthumous justice for colonial violence and pillage. Within such a context, the discourse on memory and the elaboration of the colonial past together with the definition of new power relations and techniques of government over ‘others’ – migration policies, development and humanitarianism – constantly develop while revolving around those same materialities that, in the first place, served the purposes of the colonial mission. 2 Contents Declaration for PhD thesis ............................................................................................. 6 Abbreviations ................................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 10 Aims and arguments ............................................................................................................ 10 Case selections .................................................................................................................... 13 Methods of analysis and sources ......................................................................................... 15 Chapters outline .................................................................................................................. 18 Chapter One: Materialities and Circulation within Italian Colonial and Post-colonial History ......................................................................................................................... 22 From the colonial to the postcolonial .................................................................................. 22 Introducing Italian colonialism ........................................................................................... 22 Italy within the colonial frame ........................................................................................... 25 Italian colonial endeavours ................................................................................................ 28 Italy’s post-colonial relations ............................................................................................. 35 Understanding Circulation .................................................................................................. 40 Foucault’s governmentality and biopolitics ......................................................................... 40 From colonial to post-colonial governmentality and biopolitics ............................................ 42 Foucault, humanitarianism and development ....................................................................... 45 Understanding materiality .................................................................................................. 50 Theories of materiality ...................................................................................................... 50 The materiality-effect and the actor-network theory ............................................................. 53 Materiality in circulation ................................................................................................... 55 Materiality and territory .................................................................................................... 57 Materiality and architecture ............................................................................................... 59 Human materiality ............................................................................................................ 61 ‘Materialities in circulation’ and the post-colonial question .................................................. 64 Chapter Two: the Litoranea Libica, a Motorway for the Empire ............................... 67 3 A postcard from Libya ....................................................................................................... 71 Drawing metropolitan Libya .............................................................................................. 74 The Litoranea Libica on the Fourth Shore ......................................................................... 76 The motorway enters the conflict ....................................................................................... 84 The postcolonial life of the Litoranea ................................................................................ 86 El Alamein’s legacy on the fascist asphalt ......................................................................... 90 Conflicting narratives on the road to El Alamein .............................................................. 92 Chapter Three: the Litoranea Libica in Post-colonial Libya. Reparations, Migration and Humanitarian Government ................................................................................... 98 Colonial reparations and post-colonial bargaining ........................................................... 101 The Friendship Pact: “Asphalt for Migrants” ................................................................... 104 The motorway: symbol and tool ...................................................................................... 108 2011: the humanitarian scramble for the Mediterranean .................................................. 109 The case of the Choucha camp ......................................................................................... 113 Lampedusa and Manduria: humanitarianism in Italy ....................................................... 117 Italy “re-connects” to Libya ............................................................................................. 120 Imaginative geographies at humanitarian borders ........................................................... 122 Chapter Four: The Circular Life of the Obelisk of Axum ........................................ 128 The way to Axum ............................................................................................................. 131 The loot ............................................................................................................................ 132 The return ......................................................................................................................... 137 The Axum affair within the Italian discourse on civilisation ........................................... 139 Overlapping national identities ........................................................................................ 144 The obelisk’s troubled identity .......................................................................................... 146 Materiality and paternalism .............................................................................................. 150 The obelisk between exchange and forgetfulness ............................................................ 154 Chapter Five: After Axum. The Aesthetics of Development, Humanitarianism and the War on Terror ..................................................................................................... 159 FAO/11th September in the square of the empire .............................................................. 162 Post-colonial biopolitics .................................................................................................... 166 The twin space of Rome and Africa in the post-colonial square ...................................... 169 Foucault in the Horn of Africa .......................................................................................... 175 The FAO/11th September palimpsest ................................................................................ 179 4 Enemies and victims ........................................................................................................