Il marketing identitario nella letteratura italiana della migrazione
Identity Marketing in the Italian Migration Literature

Summary/Abstract: In this article I propose to examine one of the most widespread genres in Italian Migration Literature, autobiography, reflecting on the ways in which the narrative of self is taking place against the background of a possible marketing of identity. Following Graham Huggan’s seminal work on the commercialization of cultural otherness, I will therefore take into consideration the migrant narrative not only as a space of resistance and deconstruction of the dominant power structures, but also as a product of the cultural market, involved in those same structures. Focusing on a specific case study, Educazione siberiana by Nicolai Lilin – whose text will be analyzed in a complementary way to the context and to the paratext – I will investigate the degree of adherence of these writings to the neocolonial paradigms, exploring the logic of branding of cultural otherness and the marketing strategies of identity, and tracing a path that leads the figure of the migrant author from “cultural transfer” to “cultural otherness”.

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