Introduction. Memory and Identity

Abstract

This issue of «Scritture migranti» splits into a series of contributions with different aims. On the one hand, examples of artistic phenomena from literature and theatre—in a collaborative construction of word and image—once again explore representations of the figure of the migrant and reflect on the sociological implications that arise from the confrontation between memory of the past (also understood in a colonial sense) and current events. In this capacity, the variety of the studies collected here demonstrates precisely how migratory processes are irreducible to a fixed image of migrant identity, which often circulates in society as a well-tested tool of political and ideological propaganda. On the other hand, the journal’s investigation deepens its objectives with the introduction of a new line of research, marked by linguistics and sociolinguistics, which offers a new look—aimed at the relationship between identity and society, invention and norm, langue and parole—capable of detailing, in writing as well as in speech, the symbolic constraints that are often an extreme experience for migrant people. Studying the “migrant language,” then, can only improve our awareness of the social tensions of our present.