Webinar: Dr. Joseph Viscomi, “Decolonising Community. Extraterritoriality, Historical Time, and the Departure of Italians from Egypt.”

This talk aims to rethink political community-formation by considering the role of extraterritoriality in conditioning the national and imperial contexts of Italian residents in Egypt from 1882 to the 1950s. Arguing that ‘community’ has been taken for granted in studies of the modern Mediterranean, Dr. Viscomi will discuss the emergence of a political community of Italians from Egypt (italiani d’Egitto) by reflecting on their anticipated, actual and remembered departures. In doing so, this talk works against the teleological narrative of decolonisation as rupture in order to illustrate the processes which together compelled over 40,000 Italians to leave Egypt by the 1960s.