Between Past and Present: Allied Sexual Violence as a “Usable Past” in Contemporary Italy

Since the 1990s, Italy has shown a renewed interest in the sexual violence committed by Allied soldiers of color during the occupation of Italy (1943-45) as well as in interracial sexual encounters between Italian women and Allied soldiers—a phenomenon which is connected to the political crises of those years as well as to the increase in non-EU immigration to Italy. In popular histories, television documentaries, and political discourse, this past has been co-opted for various ends, including to stigmatize contemporary male immigrants from Africa and to account for the weak state of Italian national unity in the present.