Il frigorifero come antroposcenario. Un portale verso l'Occidente per migranti

Among the material objects that stand to symbolise our consumers’ society, the fridge plays a central role. In the imaginary of the migrant, particularly, the fridge ends up being a fetish-like object, partly fascinating partly monstrous. It might be fascinating for the amount of edible goods it contains, and it can be monstrous exactly for the same reason, for it contains too much food. It seems able to satisfy a migrant’s bulimic hunger and also to produce nausea and rejection, leading him/her to anorexia. These two extremes are revealed in migrants narratives. Anita Desai, for instance, chooses the fridge to characterize certain aspects of American society (“Winter Landscape” 2001), in her short stories as well as in her well-known novel Fasting and Feasting (1999). More recently, No Violet Bulawayo in her novel We Need New Names, seems to have followed Desai’s steps in depicting the story of a girl’s migration from hunger in Zimbabwe to a feasting off American culture. America, in particular, seems the country where the fridge, together with food, symbolises a portal to opulence as well as a disgusting and obscene monument to disillusion. Philippe Kourilsky analyses the object-fridge as a material presence in Le Temps de l’Altruisme (2009) in today’s consumerism. The aim of this paper is to analyse its iconic value, its effects on the psychology of migrant-characters and on the discourse of resilience.