“I come from a country that is no more”

Dario Miccoli

doi:10.7202/1051663ar

journal article Sep 27, 2018

“I come from a country that is no more”

Dario Miccoli

Ethnologies Vol. 39 No. 2 pp. 51-68 · Consortium Erudit

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Abstract

Based upon a corpus of literary texts by Jewish authors born, or descendants of families that lived in North Africa and Egypt and that in the 1950s and 1960s migrated to Israel, France or Italy, the essay looks at nostalgia as a foundational trope in the Mediterranean Jewish historical imagination. Nostalgia is analyzed as a literary chronotope, that allows these writers to come to terms with a complex and ambivalent past while, at the same time, reflecting upon its repercussions on the postcolonial present and future. What comes out is an original archive of memories travelling across the Mediterranean, that while shedding light on the ruptures and continuities between colonial and postcolonial times, reflects on the possibilities of coexistence and reconciliation – or, on the other hand, on the cleavages – that still exist between Jews and Arabs, Europe and North Africa, the Diaspora and Israel.

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Published: Sep 27, 2018
Vol/Issue: 39(2)
Pages: 51-68

Authors

D

Dario Miccoli

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Cite This Article

Dario Miccoli (2018). “I come from a country that is no more”. Ethnologies, 39(2), 51-68. https://doi.org/10.7202/1051663ar

“I come from a country that is no more”

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