Reversing the gaze : what if the other were you?
Bibliographie
- Auteurs : Makaping Geneviève ; Brioni Simone (1982-....) ; Bellesia-Contuzzi Giovanna ; Poletto Victoria ;
- ISBN : 978-1-9788-3469-9, 1-978834-69-1, 978-1-9788-3468-2, 1-978834-68-3
- Sujets : Camerounaises -- Italie 1990-2020, Immigrées, Noires, Noirs, Exclusion sociale, Relations interethniques, Italy -- Race relations -- 21st century -- History, Italy, Makaping, Geneviève
- Langue(s) : Anglais, Italien
- Description matérielle : 1 volume (xxxii-182 pages), : Couverture illustrée, 21 cm
- Pays de publication : États-Unis, Royaume-Uni
- Collection (notice d'ensemble) : Other voices of Italy
Notes
La ressource est également disponible en format numérique ; Bibliographie pages 175-179. Index
Résumé
'What if the Other were you? What if we were the Other? Being part of an environment is second nature to many of us. For others, it is not. Others are perceived as not belonging to by virtue of their language, appearance, skin color, way of dressing, gesticulating, and speaking. In this book, Geneviève Makaping denounces the structural racism of contemporary Italy, emphasizing the way in which diverse forms of inequality-race, color, gender, class-intersect and feed off each other. Drawing on her own experiences, Geneviève Makaping spins the customary gaze of anthropology around, and the gaze that in colonial ethnography was directed at the so-called uncivilized indigenous and Black peoples, now focuses on the white majority as seen from her point of view. She-a Black Italian woman, whom the white gaze often sees as the Other-has chosen the path of participant observation in order to study the white majority: 'I gaze at myself who gazes at them who have always gazed at me.' This reversal of perspective forces white people who are used to being characterized by 'normality' rather than by 'whiteness,' to experience what it is like to constantly be 'the Other'. Geneviève Makaping's book-challenging, original, incisive-stimulates reflection. It forces readers, not just in Italy but all over our increasingly globalized world, to become aware of and to confront the question of racism through the retelling of everyday occurrences that we might have experienced as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses. But above all it urges us-all of us-to decide what side 'we' are on and what community 'we' belong to. It ultimately poses the fundamental question of who 'we' are.'