THE SOUTHS OF “THE WEST” : GEOCORPOGRAPHICAL ASSEMBLAGES OF PLANTS, COLONIALISM AND RACE IN SERGIO LEONE’S METAFIGURAL SPAGHETTI WESTERNS.

Abstract

Across many of the travelogues on the Italian South produced by northern European writers, both the prickly pear and the agave emerge as coextensive, in identitarian terms, with the South. Both the prickly pear and the agave are, in fact, plants indigenous to the Americas and they only made their way to the Italian South following the colonisation of the New World. In this essay, I examine the effaced history of colonial economies of occupation, plunder and commercial transport that underpins the existence of these two plants in the Italian South. I then proceed to examine the complex and interlayered systems of signification that, in turn, inscribe these plants in the context of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, I contend, must be read as metafigural allegories that bring into focus the complex entanglement of colonialism, race, civil war and contradictory identitarian politics.

Keywords

• race
• colonialism
• italian south
• spaghetti westerns
• sergio leone