This article explores the racialisation of women’s sexuality in contemporary Italy at the intersection between the national imagination and transnational cultural and commodity flows. Starting from the experience of a young Italian woman whose work centres on the commodification of her sexual desirability and who is recurrently classified as ‘foreign’, it discusses the roots as well as effects of the racialised male gaze under which she negotiates her agency. In so doing, it examines the meanings of her failure to be recognised as an Italian citizen as she navigates between contempt and desire, stigma and praise, alienation and pleasure. On the one hand, the article traces the thread between her experience and the othering processes underpinning the construction of Italy as a nation state and an empire, and whose legacies persist in the country’s postcolonial present. On the other hand, the article explores women’s racialisation as a process which can magnify the social and economic value of their desirability in a context increasingly characterised by the sexualisation of culture and trade. Based on ethnographic research undertaken in 2012–2013, this article contributes to the emerging body of postcolonial scholarship and intersectional studies on women’s sexuality in contemporary Italy.

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在诅咒和资源之间：当代意大利女性种族化性行为的意义

本文探讨了当代意大利在民族想象与跨国文化和商品流动的交叉点上女性性欲的种族化。从一位年轻的意大利女性的经历开始，她的工作集中在她的性欲商品化并且经常被归类为“外国人”，它讨论了她谈判自己的代理权时种族化男性凝视的根源和影响。在这样做的过程中，它审视了她在蔑视和欲望、耻辱和赞美、疏远和快乐之间导航时未能被承认为意大利公民的意义。一方面，文章追溯了她的经历与支撑意大利建设为民族国家和帝国的其他过程之间的线索，并且他们的遗产在该国的后殖民时代仍然存在。另一方面，本文探讨了女性的种族化过程，该过程可以在文化和贸易的性别化特征日益突出的背景下放大她们的愿望的社会和经济价值。基于 2012 年至 2013 年进行的民族志研究，本文有助于新兴的后殖民学术和当代意大利女性性行为的交叉研究。