Bloggers

In order for any progress to take place in the intellectual and critical realms of Italian Americana, we cannot simply dismiss ideas with which we do not agree by engaging in absolutisms that stifle further discussion. The irony here, of course, is that the model of modern-day argumentation and discourse has its origins to a significant degree in Ciceronian rhetoric. As we appproach the threshold of yet another year, 2008, well over one hundred years since the onset of the great wave of immigration from southern Italy, in particular, we need to re-adjust our horizons. We need to look backward in order to learn to move forward in a constructive and fruitful manner. Nostalgia, while temporary, is wonderful. When it becomes the driving force in either creative or analytical modes of discourse, we run the risk of remaining in a prison-house of nostalgic recollection that impedes us from moving forward.