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The Politics of Travel: Eastern Europe in Paolo Rumiz’s È Oriente

Abstract This essay investigates the representation of Eastern Europe in Paolo Rumiz’s È Oriente (2003). It argues that the author’s depiction of the region not only relies — often quite heavily — on the general discourse suggesting an essential difference between Europe’s West and East, but also reflects, more specifically, concerns and apprehensions characteristic of Italian political and cultural life in the last decade of the twentieth century, caused in particular by separatist tendencies in the North and the ascent to power of the far-right. The essay contends that despite Rumiz’s knowledge of the region and his attempts to grasp and understand the predicaments and complexities of the places visited, the author’s depiction of Eastern Europe remains highly reductive and reiterates the cultural discourse which construes the region as the West’s imaginary Other and its repressed cultural alter ego.