L’altro come selvaggio e come povero nel discorso dei missionari cattolici italiani [The other as savage and as poor in the discourse of the Italian Catholic missionaries]

Abstract

This paper focuses on the discourse about the Other in a group of Catholic missionaries by starting from the analysis of the magazine Le Missioni Cattoliche. Published by the Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions, later Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), the magazine has been collecting the chronicles and accounts of mission life for decades, presenting it in a completely new way to the general public. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the discursive transformations that affect those more radical ‘Others’ that are represented by ethnic and linguistic minorities in non-European contexts. Through the analysis of the missionary reports over a period ranging from 1872 to 1962, the transformation that the categorization of these others undergoes between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second Vatican Council is highlighted. This, to demonstrate that this shift is indispensable for the formulation of the many innovations introduced by the Second Vatican Council, as well as for the general spirit that characterizes this Council. For a very long time, the understanding of these specific human communities passes through the category of ‘the savage’, which is rich in specific traits and a precise function and is not only characterized by a series of constantly repeated traits but defines, by antithesis, the identity of the same European, rational, civilized, and Christian man. By its own nature the savage is, and remains, irreducible to the civilized European. The passage to the new global Catholic community announced by Council II requires a new categorization and understanding of those same groups. At level of missionary narrative, a progressive reclassification of the otherness takes shape, the category of savage slowly disappears in favor of the already widely used category of ‘the poor’. The once savage, can, in his capacity as a poor man, be included in that unprecedented global and multifaceted ‘us’, which usually starts right from Vatican II.

Keywords

• other
• savage
• poor
• catholic missions
• vatican council ii
• literature
• sociology
• italy