Bianchezza, italianità e violenza sessista

Whiteness, Italianness and Sexist Violence. This essay analyzes how whiteness has been produced and asserted in the terroristic attack occurred in Macerata in 2018 when Luca Traini shot six passersby because of their African origin. The terroristic attack took place a few days after the murder of Pamela Mastropietro – whose dismembered body was also found in Macerata – and a Nigerian man, Innocent Oseghale, was charged with Mastropietro’s murder. I use the notion of ‘cultural archive’ to investigate how racism and the colonial past were and are obscured and therefore evenly reproduced in contemporary Italy, claiming that racism operates transversally in Italian society. The notion of cultural archive is also used to read the meanings embedded in the terroristic attack, interpreting them in relation to the colonial and racist aspects traits of the Italian social fabric. In analyzing the gestures of Traini, the link he made between the murder of Mastropietro, his attack against Black passersby, and the Monument to the Fallen, where he moved after the shooting, I argue that racism and sexist violence are imbricated and reproduced through the valorization enhancement of whiteness as a constitutional trait of Italianness.