Stories Against the Empire. The Orientalist Anticolonialism of Leda Rafanelli (1914-1951)

This article examines the development of Italian anticolonial discourse through the writings and political trajectory of Leda Rafanelli (1880-1971), a Muslim anarchist active across the first half of the twentieth century. Mixing biographic and literary analysis, the study situates Rafanelli’s work within the broader context of Italian colonial expansion and the marginal, often clandestine, tradition of domestic anticolonial critique. By analysing a range of her novels, short stories, and journalistic interventions produced between 1914 and 1951, the article explores how Rafanelli articulated a form of «Orientalist anticolonialism» that was both informed by and resistant to dominant colonial imaginaries. The investigation highlights the historical conditions that shaped her anticolonial stance, as well as the contradictions inherent in deploying Orientalist tropes for anticolonial purposes. In doing so, it argues that Rafanelli’s oeuvre offers a valuable entry point for understanding the intersections of anarchism, Orientalism, and anticolonial sentiment in early twentieth-century Italy, and underscores the need to reassess the place of anticolonial voices in the history of Italian colonial culture.