Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective

This chapter introduces the volume and discusses related theoretical issues. This volume seeks to map an understanding of the Italian experience onto the broader picture of diasporic stories, though with an anchor in the Australian-Italian experience. It brings together key essays and testimonials that frame a picture of Italy’s rich legacy at “home”, in Europe more widely, and in the (post)colonial sphere, with a particular emphasis on the Australian experience. The essays collected here focus on the way an Italian Australian story has emerged and evolved in its own unique way. In some respects it might be possible to defi ne Australia, through this community, as an Italian space, very much inscribed and described by the many voices that characterise it. What is clear throughout these pages is that past, present and future circulate through and around each other, just as notions of nation – colonial, postcolonial, emigrant and immigrant – jostle for purchase in what is in fact a contested space always under negotiation.