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V. 28 N. 1 (2024): Gendered Cosmopolitanism in Colonial and Post-Colonial Egypt

Fausta Cialente’s “Middle East” Through Anticolonialism and Antifascism in Egypt

  • Alessandra Marchi
Inviata
January 8, 2025
Pubblicato
2025-01-08

Abstract

The role of the allophone press in Egypt was particularly important for the circulation and ela
boration of radical ideas and struggles from the end of the 19th century until the Second World 
War. During the 1940s, the Italian writer Fausta Cialente (1898–1994) published the independent 
magazine “Fronte Unito” (1943–46), which was intended to be an instrument of information and 
education for the development of the new Italian state after the fascist regime, and to critically 
think about class and gender divisions, labour and colonial exploitation and the life of the Italian 
colony in Egypt. All these elements are also present in Cialente’s literature, nourished by her life 
in Egypt between 1921 and 1947. This paper interrogates the links between the anti-fascist and 
pro-democracy political struggle and the anti-colonial views expressed in Cialente’s writings 
and militancy in a country where, according to the editors, the imperialist mentality reigned 
among all communities and influenced their power and subaltern relations.