Afro-Italian voices: Podcasting and sonic resistance

Abstract

This article explores the pivotal role of podcasts in challenging dominant cultural narratives about race, diversity, and identity in Italy. The Italian media landscape frequently equates race and cultural diversity with immigration, fostering a perception of transience that positions Blackness as inherently exogenous to Italian identity. In this context, podcasting has emerged in recent years as a medium that facilitates more complex, deeply rooted, and less essentialized conversations about the experience of being Black and Italian. This article undertakes an analysis of these recent efforts, with a particular focus on The Chronicles of a Black Italian Woman, a podcast that situates Italian Blackness in conjunction with other experiences of being Black in the diaspora. This podcast endeavors to understand Afro-Italianness beyond the singular and often reductive representations promulgated by mainstream media. It invites us to reconceptualize and perceive the state of being Black and Italian as integral and intertwined, rather than as mutually exclusive or contradictory. Rather than predominantly framing Black Italianness in relation to migration or exclusively associating it with acts of resistance and survival, this article explores how podcasting has provided a quiet, intimate space where Black Italians are not compelled to constantly counter mainstream representations. Instead, they are afforded the freedom to simply exist.