Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ricordare l’Africa? Memoria e oblio da Conrad a Scola

Abstract. Unlike other forms of colonization, the Italian conquest of Africa has traditionally been depicted as more benevolent than other European colonial enterprises, with Italian invad- ers described as ‘brava gente’. On the contrary, more detailed research has discovered that Italy perpetrated the same violence and oppression as other European countries, in particular during the ‘Fascist African Adventure’, and that there has been a deliberate censorship of its most dele- terious aspects. In this respect, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been approached by Ital- ian intellectuals, writers, and movie directors as a filter through which it was possible to recon- sider in more explicit terms the relationship between Italy and its former African colonies. This is the case of Ettore Scola’s movie Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? (1968), a free adaptation of Heart of Darkness that reconfigured through the language of ‘commedia all’italiana’ Conrad’s reflections on colonial exploitation and brutali- ty. Finally, Marco Consentino, Domenico Dodaro and Luigi Panella’s historical novel I fantasmi dell’impero (2017) uses Heart of Darkness as a framework within which to dramatise Italian bru- tality and political corruption in Ethiopia during the Fascist regime.