"Milano Corea" di Montaldi e Alasia the poster 1/27/2011
Like any classic, Milan, Korea and Alasia Franco Danilo Montaldi (Donzelli 2010, pp. 335, E. 28, introductory note by Guido Crainz) opens a lot of reading - in terms (also actualizing) migration history, history of sociology and social sciences, urban history, labor history ... To me, that I read fifty years after its prima pubblicazione,fa effetto soprattutto il modo in cui è stato prodotto. C’è un’espressione americana – leg work, lavoro di gambe – che descrive la fatica fisica e la minuziosa osservazione in cui consiste quello che si suole chiamare “lavoro sul campo”. Alasia e Montaldi hanno lavorato di gambe per fare questo libro: andando a cercare le fonti nelle periferie, nei comuni del circondario, nelle “coree”, gli agglomerati spontanei generati (come i borghetti dei baraccati a Roma) dalla modernità e dalle ingiustizie del “miracolo italiano”, facendo il “giro di Milano” per andare a vedere le facce e i vestiti di chi stava seduto sulle panche in attesa di una minestra in the parish, to understand the complicated daily journeys of those who put together a life from the fragments of exclusion and marginalization, literally building the house with the debris and recovered the remains of building sites.
Footwork means to walk, and then look at the world from street level (the lawn of the alley, across the moat, the park at night, over half of the floor of the house built car) - not so much from the bottom up and horizontal. Get down to street level is a way of traveling seeing the details that escape the hegemonic gaze from above and is also a significant gesture of humility: it means giving up the arrogance implicit the role of "observer" in connection with reifying the 'observed ", and instead disporsi listening, learning comes to a meeting between people who look at each other (inter \\ view then this means). That this, finally, is the beginning of each field research: a proposed meeting, a recognition of not knowing, a look at what you do not see.
Italy's economic miracle is full of places and people not seen as "Korea" Milan is the amount Alasia and Montaldi north of the "land of remorse" and "indie world" by Ernesto De Martino and Partinico Sicilian Danilo Dolci. For this reason, the conventional tools of sociology, especially in the version parsonsiana then dominant positivist but also in the technocratic liberalism which argues Montaldi life, are inadequate to the knowledge of these realities. We want something more open, something in which the agenda of questions and problems is not a priori but was derived from observing and listening without preconceptions. Thus, Alasia Montaldi and are among the founders of that select group of researchers, all out of the academy and on the margins of official policy, using primarily the stories - biographies, life stories, but simply stories: Danilo Dolci, note (which was Alasia allievo e collaboratore), Rocco Scotellaro, il Goffredo Fofi dell’Immigrazione meridionale a Torino, e io ci metterei anche Gianni Bosio. E non è un caso se, come fa notare Guido Crainz nell’introduzione a questa nuova edizione, quegli anni sono stati raccontati soprattutto dal cinema e dalla letteratura.
Credo che sia stato Erich Auerbach a dire che ci sono due modi per affrontare un dilemma: quello logico di Atene e quello narrativo di Gerusalemme. Sono entrambi necessari, e Montaldi e Alasia li padroneggiano entrambi (forse l’unica concessione alle modalità espositive delle scienze sociali del tempo è proprio la separazione fra il discorso analitico autoriale dell’ampio saggio introduttivo e quello narrativo delle life stories), but since the introduction of chapters on the suburbs, the park, the avenues, you realize how the story mode, enter the exhibition essay. Why does the story always goes beyond expectations and a priori bounds of interpretation, digressive, elusive, full of details not required and therefore no longer necessary, empty heavy fabric and eloquent silences, invaded by the imagination and desire, the narrative is always richer than they can say a comment and analysis. Above all, the story, especially the story of memory, is an individual creation that defies the necessary abstractions and generalizations of quantitative and statistical summary e ci mette sotto gli occhi l’immagine di un mondo fatto non di caselle rese identiche per renderle misurabili, ma mosaico di tessere una diversa dall’altra – di individui ognuno irriducibile e unico - che solo con immaginazione e partecipazione possiamo comporre in un insieme dotato di senso.
Le coree e le periferie milanesi raccontate in questo libro, allora, contengono molto più cose di quanto non ne prevedesse la nostra ragione indagatrice. Contengono il mondo antico che è ancora presente nella memoria e nell’identità – la terra del padrone che si misura in quattro ore di cavalcata per attraversarla, l’assalto dei briganti alla carovana in Molise, il memorabile viaggio dalla Sadegna a Milano attraverso Civitavecchia e Genova alla scoperta di un mondo nuovo, il primo cinematografo, la prima automobile, le guerre – e una modernità di carta fatta di licenze, tessere, permessi, verbali, multe, fogli di via, certificati, documenti… in un’Italia in cui le leggi fasciste ancora vigenti fanno di questi migranti dei clandestini indesiderati e senza documenti.
Mi rendo conto di stare facendo forse quello che Alasia e Montaldi volevano assolutamente evitare: leggere Milano, Corea come un “libro letterario” (mi viene in mente una celebre frase del romanziere afroamericano Richard Wright, che non voleva scrivere un libro su cui anche “le figlie dei banchieri” si potessero commuovere). Ma forse i tempi sono cambiati, and literature and sociology have ceased to treat one another as insults - as a synonym of one for the other generic, approximation, sentimentality. Milano, Korea is a literary book "because it makes room for subjectivity: the knowledge is so in statistical tables and documents but also, perhaps above all, in the folds of the language, the integration effort and desire we perceive them more in the language an immigrant from southern Italy that uses a term typically Milanese ("I was back to sleep") that many objective data.
There is much more, of course, Milan, Korea, for example, sharp insights on the transformation policy, the gap that is formed within a few left in which enlightened administrator can see immigration as an opportunity for growth, in which workers and the unemployed immigrant party members experience it as exploitation, and where trade unionists are caught in the middle. C 'is for readers today, the inevitable parallel with immigration today, with the barrier paper residence permits after the metal of rejections, and the shantytowns and makeshift shelters that still gathers around the city. But the difference is that, despite the quantity and quality of much research, a work of scope and depth Milan, Korea Immigration Today we are still waiting.
encomiabile e con un risultato splendido. Rimane appunto solamente da sistemare il movimento franoso che per la mole dell'intervento could not be done by volunteers. I would also like to thank Dr. Zanchetta, including the requirement that the area affected by the landslide was active in the resolution of the problem. To achieve even more brilliant now it would require cutting some trees near the road. We are confident in the availability of individuals for what would be 'the icing on the cake'. System is widely used as a historical walk from citizens and tourists that will allow completion of the work to connect safely to the town center area of \u200b\u200bMoline. " (To read the article in the Gazzettino today, click on the image that will appear larger) 
encomiabile e con un risultato splendido. Rimane appunto solamente da sistemare il movimento franoso che per la mole dell'intervento could not be done by volunteers. I would also like to thank Dr. Zanchetta, including the requirement that the area affected by the landslide was active in the resolution of the problem. To achieve even more brilliant now it would require cutting some trees near the road. We are confident in the availability of individuals for what would be 'the icing on the cake'. System is widely used as a historical walk from citizens and tourists that will allow completion of the work to connect safely to the town center area of \u200b\u200bMoline. " (To read the article in the Gazzettino today, click on the image that will appear larger) 
