Composite identities. Percorsi tra cinema, teatro, letteratura, musica, scienze sociali e politiche

The interconnectivity, multiculturalism, and multidimensionality that characterize today’s world encourage scholars and readers interested in such a complex web of intersections to study the mutability of identity and its new multifaceted forms. The latter, today more than ever, rather than manifesting themselves as a blend between various aspects, values, and characteristics, generate a sort of mosaic where identities cannot but emerge in a composite form, in which the various ganglions (or ‘mosaic pieces’ to continue with the same metaphor) contribute to such a rhizomatic image. Rather than proposing a map, which would inevitably be incomplete, this volume aims to be a call to further investigate the concept of identity, encouraging readers to conceive the latter as ever-changing, that is, as a concept undergoing a constant evolution process. While discovering the interlacing between various threads offered by different fields of study, the reader will also notice the abovementioned mosaic image which, by nature, can only be a composite one and, as such, cannot render mimetically (but only suggest) the complexity of nowadays’ identity processes. Ten out of the twelve chapters comprised in Composite Identities are mostly reworkings (in essay form) of some of the most thought-provoking presentations held at a Conference organized in 2020 by the two co-editors of this volume. Two chapters were then added to this core group to propose an even more diversified approach to the topic. Written by professors and researchers affiliated with academic institutions in Europe, U.S., and New Zealand, these contributions invite readers to explore the ‘composite’ nature of identity through various fields of study, such as cinema, theater, literature, and social and political sciences.