Restanza. Linguistic, Literary and Geographical Imageries of Permanence
In an era marked by constant migratory flows and by dominant narratives of unstoppable urban and technological development, often intertwined with the abandonment of places deemed marginal, the concept of restanza has emerged as a key lens of analysis. This concept, coined and developed by the anthropologist Vito Teti (2022), challenges the passive and defeatist view traditionally associated with those who choose, or are compelled, to remain. Restanza is neither immobility nor mere survival; rather, it represents a dynamic and complex mode of inhabiting, a choice that involves an ongoing and profound process of identity, cultural, and territorial reconfiguration. Those who remain engage daily with the spectre of absence, with the layered memory of places and with the continual reworking of tradition, finding themselves in a state of suspension between the weight of nostalgia and a forward-looking sense of agency.
This conference aims to explore restanza as a productive analytical category for understanding the social, cultural, and linguistic transformations of the contemporary world. Scholars are invited to submit contributions that investigate the multiple dimensions of restanza, with the goal of fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.
The first area of investigation concerns the SLA dimension, with particular attention to the role of interlanguage (Selinker, 1972) or transitional competence (Corder, 1967). Phenomena such as fossilisation contribute to shaping learners’ linguistic identities through the retention of idiosyncratic features. The inherent instability of interlanguage is especially evident at intermediate stages of acquisition (cf. the CEFR threshold level). Furthermore, sociolinguistic proposals focusing on the persistence of linguistic minorities and dialects in national and international landscapes will be considered, as well as contributions on language policies aimed at protecting them, and phenomena such as linguistic and cultural transmission and erosion. Papers on heritage languages (HL), the permanence of linguistic identity, and the resistance of certain languages or varieties to linguistic change, even in contact scenarios, are also welcome.
Within translation studies and translation practice (literary, editorial, specialised, and audiovisual), restanza can be understood as a privileged space of liminality: a contact zone in which the source language-culture remains within the target language-culture, allowing the latter to become the site for the «experience of the foreign» (Berman, 1985). From this perspective, translation may be conceived as a practice of resistance to the norms of the receiving system. Phenomena that ensure the persistence of alterity such as loanwords, calques, neologisms, archaisms, register hybridisation, the preservation of realia and culturemes, as well as rewritings and paratextual devices (notes, prefaces, glosses) - function as forms of hospitality for the foreign and contribute to the construction of a linguistic and cultural restanza within the translated text.
In the literary context, restanza can be interpreted as a form of inhabiting the threshold: an ambiguous and dynamic permanence that oscillates between subjectivities characterised by ineptitude and the impossibility of fully adopting dominant models of action and mobility. This condition can be expressed in different ways, including specific figures and devices, such as interstitial places, ghost towns, disturbing presences or absences, and non-linear temporalities. In particular, within the genres of fantastic fiction and weird fiction, this ineptitude assumes a distinct subversive connotation: whilst the boundary is not crossed, it is instead inhabited; similarly, the liminal space is not violated, but rather preserved as a pivotal site with the capacity to critically challenge the dominant discourse of progress. The same mediation device, a canonical component of fantasy, generates what Lugnani (1983) identifies as «threshold effect»: by entering the domain of the supernatural, a mental short circuit occurs in the subject, leading to a genuine «experience of bounds» (Benedetti, 1983). Finally, from a postcolonial perspective, the act of remaining encompasses a rediscovery of ethnic roots and identity constructions, in opposition to models of development and modernisation imposed from the ‘outside’. Reflecting on the political and global implications of restanza, dominant migration narratives are examined in order to redefine the concept of borders: not merely geopolitical lines to be traversed, but social and cultural spaces to be inhabited.
Within the discipline of philology, attention is directed towards the examination of restanza as a remnant within papers, variants, and writing processes: not the finished work, but rather its transitional states the forms of permanence and recursiveness that inhabit notes, minutes, notebooks, drafts, variants, and other working materials. The tendency of certain authors to reutilise material can be explained through the concept of remnants, which functions here as an operative analytical category. This concept is understood as a poetics of retention and reworking, visible both in genetic dossiers and in intertextual trajectories. The relationship between remnants and authors’ papers is further investigated through the study of writers’ archives and the reconstruction of an author’s extant corpus beyond their published works.
Alessandra Di Pietro