“Dépaysé”: the linguistic exile of “italic” writers. Antonio D’Alfonso converses with Alessandra Ferraro

Abstract

In 1978, Antonio D’Alfonso founded the publishing house Guernica in Montreal, which published in three languages; with Filippo Salvatore and Fulvio Caccia, he then participated in the birth of Italian-Canadian literature and, with works in English and French, he became a major figure in this artistic movement. In 2021, he inaugurated a more intimate, autobiographical vein (Outside Looking In, Dépaysé) and published an essay, notably “Federazione per il futuro”, where he explores the evolution of the “italic”culture produced in the context of Italian emigration. The conversation is about this culture of which the Italian-Canadian intellectual is the spokesman. Ferraro’s exchanges with D’Alfonso, born within the activities organized by the Centro di Cultura Canadese in Udine, enriched over the years by correspondence and meetings in Montreal, have made it possible to deepen and define the key aspects of his thought and work. His condition as an exile, from a geographical, cultural and linguistic point of view, pushed Antonio D’Alfonso to reflect on his composite identity, to create multilingual and transmedial works and to forge the notion of “italics” to bring out, by trying to define it, the invisible production of Italian writers abroad, children of this emigration that emptied Italy for decades. The loss of their country and their culture of origin intimately marked the emigrants and their children, giving the works born in this context characteristics that derive from this deterritorialization.