by Rutvica Andrijasevic

Denied Autobiographies. Immigrants in the lagers of the present is a book that contributes to breaking the silence and theorization about the so-called ‘camps of temporary residence’ (CPT) in Italy, better known as detention and/or removal camps for undocumented migrants.[1] The author, Federica Sossi, a Professor of Theoretical Philosophy and an activist for the rights of migrants in Italy, has elaborated on the notion (and practices) of lagers and the heritage of the shoah in her previous books. In Denied Autobiographies she proposes to think detention centers --established by the state, surrounded by the walls and barbed wire, and hidden from the view-- as forms of contemporary lagers, or better as “spaces of disappearance” of migrants: some migrants get deported, some die (in the camps or during the deportations), and the more fortunate ones are released but the stories of all of them emerge only on rare occasions.

In the summer of 2001, Federica Sossi, together with two other researchers, undertook the project of interviewing the migrants in detention camps in Milan, Agrigento and Turin. However, having obtained the permission to enter the detention camps did not grant her much liberty in conducting the interviews; the interviewees were usually selected for her by the direction of the camps, she was allowed to move only in restricted spaces, and the interviews took place in the presence of the guards. The book, divided in three parts, presents the narratives of migrants in three detention camps. Within these three parts, each chapter relates stories and carries the names of migrants the author has spoken with: Fatima, Yudmilla, Affin, Gianna, Assam, Costantino, Misha, Affin, and Lofti. Sossi’s project is twofold. First, she is committed to making migrants’ voices heard and their stories tangible. Second, her sharp criticism and analysis aim at denouncing the immigration laws and the institutions that exclude migrants and transform them into ‘non-persons’, to say it with Alessandro Dal Lago[2]. 

However, Sossi’s writing is imbued with a deep tension, which revolves around the two questions: how to retain and regain a subject position for those whom the state excludes and silences, and how to do so within the detention camps/spaces of disappearance? Sossi discusses this difficulty in the preface of the book and critiques the social sciences’ method because it allows for author’s invisibility in the text, thus enhancing the process of the objectification of the ‘object’ of the research. In the attempt to solve this tension, Sossi adopts a style, a form and a method not typical of a sociological inquiry; she opts for a first person narrative which inscribes her within the text, and gives space for reflection about legal, professional, cultural and linguistic distances that separate her from the interviewees. Through its interminable sentences and incessant repetitions, the stream of consciousness --chosen as a privileged narrative form-- succeeds in conveying the dullness and absurdity of the detention camps.

While the use of the monologue and the stream of consciousness successfully draws attention to the detention camps and the immigration law as practices of everyday racism and social exclusion towards the migrants, it fails to open a space for the materialization of the stories of the migrants themselves. By positioning herself as the protagonist of the narrative and by approaching the interviewees stories’ through the frame of her own self, Sossi’s work does not solve nor challenge the relationship between ‘subject’ (the author) and ‘object’ (the interviewees) of research but instead widens the distance between the former and the latter and perpetuates the silencing of migrants’ voices, an operation which results in yet another denial of their biographies.

The author’s critical view of her own personal and professional location --an operation absolutely indispensable in producing a reflexive and transparent scholarship—had no need to result in the negation of the ‘other’. The relationship between ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ of the scientific research, as well as the supposed neutrality and transparency of scientific inquiry, have been addressed by various strands of feminist scholarship. Scholars in feminist epistemology and  post-colonial feminist theory have shown how our economies of knowledge are grounded in the division between (knowable) objects and (knowing) subjects organized along the lines of race and gender, and how these divisions uphold the existing social relations of domination. Aiming at eroding universalism and neutrality of the Western thought, feminists have asserted an epistemological project grounded in politics of location and situated knowledges. An insight into these theoretical framework could have helped Federica Sossi to approach differently the relationship between ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ of scientific inquiry and to use her own situatedness, as well as that of the interviewees, as useful tools in undermining the hierarchies of knowledge production. 

While Denied Autobiographies remains unsuccessful in challenging the mechanism of ‘othering’ of migrants, it raises a crucial issue of methodology. The book prompts the reader to reflect about the importance of method and location in challenging some of the basic categories upon which Western scientific epistemologies are organized, and in (re)formulating knowledge in a way to deal responsibly with migrants’ stories. An intellectual and political project that struggles for social justice, as that of Federica Sossi, should not make invisible (again) those migrants whom the state (and the media) seek to write out of the citizenship script. Instead, Sossi’s sharp critical account of legal and discursive mechanisms of exclusion and removal of migrants from Italian society would gain in strength if grounded in migrants’ knowledges. This mode of reading, anchored in the epistemological experiences of migrants, would constitute a framework attentive to making visible the politics of knowledge production as well as conceptualizing questions of justice starting from migrants’ lives and interests.