Local Communities and the Memory of Colonial Deportations
This section is the result of an online workshop, run by Dr Galadriel Ravelli in December 2023, which included local stakeholders from the islands of Ponza, Favignana, Ustica, the Tremiti archipelago and the city of Gaeta. Throughout the workshop, participants were encouraged to engage with the pictures featured in the exhibition and reflect on whether they captured the past presence of Libyan deportees, as well as the implications this has on broader discussions on the colonial legacy in Italy and Europe.
One of the key issues that emerged during the workshop was that, aside from monuments and plaques, the sites represented in the pictures do not effectively capture the past presence of Libyan deportees. All the islands share a common past as former sites of confinement used by various regimes to exile or detain suspected criminals and political opponents. This past is often seemingly intangible when visiting these sites. For example, over time, former dormitory buildings used to detain anti-fascist opponents have been converted into restaurants or private accommodations. In some sites, such as San Nicola island (Tremiti archipelago) and Ponza, these buildings were also used to detain Libyan deportees in previous decades. Should these sites be made visible to an unaware visitor? Do they bear any historical significance? What stories do they encapsulate? How could these sites be re-imagined and transformed to educate about the past?
These questions were part of the conversations developed during and after the workshop. This section of the exhibition matches pictures of local sites with key reflections emerging from the workshop. In doing so, it aims to encourage online visitors to reflect on the absence and presence of the past in former sites of confinement while also voicing the views of some local community members. Throughout the workshop, participants were also asked to caption some of the pictures; some of these captions have been partly incorporated into the main section.
All comments were anonymised.
The author wishes to thank the participants of the online workshop for sharing their views and ideas before, during, and after the event. Some participants have also shared their own pictures, for which they are credited as authors.
