The Role of Libya in the Construction of Italy’s Collective Self-Portrait

Libya has played a far more important role in Italian colonial and post-colonial policy than the Horn of Africa. It has also represented a sort of laboratory where colonial culture and Italian national identity have taken shape, influencing and reinforcing each other over time. This paper aims to explore what E. Said would call the “ideas, forms, images and imaginings” produced in and about Libya, and their persistence in Italian collective memory. Even though there is no longer room in Italian historiography for the myths and misconceptions that fed the construction of the country’s collective identity during and after the colonial period, outside academia some images and themes have surfaced and resurfaced over time and have persisted to date, to the point of influencing recent national policies.