The South as destiny and contradiction in Vito Teti's "Cursed Race"

There are books that don't simply describe a place , but embody it. This book about the South is one of them: not a simple geographical or sociological account, but a journey into memory, nostalgia, and the contradictions that inhabit those born and raised among prickly pears and poppies, processions and funerals, hospitality and mistrust. Here's a review of a book that explores the soul of the South.

The South as a plural identity

The book offers no clear-cut definitions. Instead, it shows the South as a collection of images and contrasts: curse and blessing , a cloak of thorns and a sea of ​​scents. Home and the fear of losing it , a place loved and hated, a place from which one flees and to which one returns. Landscape and body , because those born in the South remain forever rooted in the land, in the faces of their parents, in the scents and colors that shaped them.

The South thus becomes an identity that never ends, a "non-place" that lives within those who carry it with them, even far away.

The People of the South: Between Memory and Contradiction

The book captures the anthropological and cultural complexity of the people of the South : closed and suspicious, but also welcoming and hospitable . Capable of resentment and forgiveness. Connected to the dead who never die, to the dreams they dream, and to the escapes they imagine. Accustomed to putting things off until tomorrow, but also to doing the most difficult things immediately.

This constant oscillation between opposites becomes the hallmark of a people who live on memory and relationships, rituals and sudden rebellions.

The South as a universal metaphor

The text is not just about a geographical territory. The South becomes a universal metaphor: it is place and non-place , real and imagined. It is imprisonment and freedom , roots and escape. It is a world at risk of disappearing , but also the promise of a future that cannot be defined.

In this book, the South is a destiny that cannot be abandoned, a legacy that shapes faces and characters, an inner landscape that accompanies anyone who has a connection with the land.

Why read it?

This book doesn't just tell a story: it questions. Every page invites us to ask ourselves who we are, where we come from, and to whom we belong. It's a text about roots and nostalgia, but also about transformation and loss. The world doesn't end, the author writes, but a world can end: the one we know, the one that shaped us.

Another South.

The South is stories, images from the past and their contradictions, curse and blessing, a cloak of thorns and a swathe of fragrant plants, procession and funeral. It is home and the fear of losing it, the country you love and hate, the one you long to escape and don't understand why you fled. Nowhere like in the South do people stand up and ask themselves: What am I doing here? Why didn't I leave forever?

If you were born in the South, you will always be prickly pear and fig, wheat and corn, zibibbo grapes and strawberry grapes, broom and poppies, low clouds and high clouds, clouds of every color and shape. You will always be landscape, scent, pain, color. If you were born in the South, you will forever be both son and mother, you will love and hate the people who belong to you, you will resemble some of your own, and in time you will take on the faces and character of your father. If you live elsewhere, you'll only be able to see him in the mirror, and you'll feel nostalgic, because only there, in the South where you were born, can they tell you who you belong to, where you come from, whether you resemble your father or your mother more, or whether it's impossible to tell from whom you inherited the traits of your life.

We, the people of the South, are sometimes closed, gloomy, and distrustful, sometimes open, welcoming, and hospitable. We are our deceased who never die, we are the dreams we dream, we are the escapes we imagine, we are those who know how to wait and those who, impatient, rebel. We always put off until tomorrow; we do the most tiring things immediately and quickly. We honor our commitments and our word, and then we realize that others will forgive our failures. We are the ones who hold grudges and the ones who, most easily, are capable of forgiving. We are the ones who say to others, "You will never eat with me again," and then, with the same words, organize endless banquets. We who always arrive and we who never arrive. We from the South, from my South, walk through the night to accompany our friend home and then return home in his company. We, with our goodbyes that last an eternity because we never want to leave each other, and we who leave each other forever without being able to say goodbye. We are the blood, the veins, the furrows, the ravines, the waters, the stones, the plants, the animals, the shadows, the brightness, the emptiness, the fullness, the fire, the wind, the clouds. We are like all those who still have a connection to the earth.

I don't really know what the South is, and at the same time I know everything about the South, because the South is me, we are us. We, different as we are, are all the South and all the World. I love the South, but I can't explain why. Sometimes in the South I feel like a prisoner, but I don't understand if I'm trapped alone or if others, life, have done it. We from the South are the first and the last, the misunderstood and the most sought after. The South is both a place and a non-place; the South never fully reveals itself, and that's why everyone has their own South. That's why Souths never end.

But it's this South—real and invented, perceived and imagined, dense and mobile—that today risks disappearing along with the world of yesterday, while we remain unaware of the contours of the emerging future. The world doesn't end, of course, but a world can end.

Vito Teti

I share with deep respect and affection Vito Teti's new work , La razza maledetta (The Cursed Race ), which returns to bookstores in an updated and expanded version. A book that is not simply " about the South ," but opposes the cultural and political framework that—for centuries—has constructed the South as otherness, as a place to be colonized symbolically before materially. Vito is one of those rare thinkers who know how to do what is needed today more than ever: decolonizing the imagination, dismantling toxic narratives, and revealing genealogies of power that still shape our territories. His work reminds us that anti-Southern racism is not a folkloristic parenthesis from the past, but a structural mechanism that returns today in new forms: from differentiated autonomy to the shortsighted management of the PNRR, to the depopulation of villages and the flight of young people. As scholars, territorial activists, and meridians by vocation, we have a duty to address all this not with identity-based whining, but with critical thinking that can transform the alleged "curse" into a new cultural paradigm, capable of connecting our South to all the Souths of the world . The South is not a backward place to be reclaimed: it is a lens through which to interpret the distortions of the global present. It is an often unrecognized laboratory of resistance, conviviality, mutualism, care for territories, and grassroots innovation. This is why Vito's book is necessary. Because it talks about the South, yes, but above all it talks to us about ourselves, about the way we have been viewed and the way we can—and must—return to viewing ourselves. I invite my followers to read it. It is not just a cultural act: it is a political act, in the noblest sense of the term." ( Alex Giordano )

Vito Teti is one of the most important contemporary Italian anthropologists, known for his studies on the South, emigration, nostalgia, and the relationship between memory and place.

Biography and career

Born in San Nicola da Crissa (Calabria) in 1950 , Teti taught cultural anthropology at the University of Calabria (Unical). He founded the Center for Anthropology and Mediterranean Literature , a research laboratory that intertwines social sciences and storytelling. He served as a scientific consultant for RAI , contributing to programs and documentaries on popular festivals and abandoned villages.

Central themes of his research

Restanza : A key concept developed by Teti, which refers to the choice to remain in one's hometown despite depopulation, transforming permanence into a creative and political act. Melancholy and Nostalgia : Explores how these feelings shape communities and identities, especially in the context of emigration. Food Anthropology : She has studied food as memory and identity, becoming the Italian representative for the European Association of Food Anthropology. Abandoned Villages and Depopulation : Reflects on the fate of the inland areas of Southern Italy and the possibility of regenerating them through new forms of community.

Main works

Among his most significant books:

• The Sense of Place (2004) – on the relationship between memory and abandoned villages. First published in 2004 and immediately reprinted, The Sense of Place has become a cult book, transcending the confines of ethnology and anthropology and winning over thousands of passionate readers who have used it as a key to rediscovering the dimensions of memory.

• The Cursed Race (2011) – analysis of anti-Southern prejudices.

• Damned South (2013) – a reflection on the contradictions of the South.

• Bread Stones. An Anthropology of Remaining (2014) – A Manifesto of "Remaining."

• What Remains. Italy of Villages (2017) – on the future of Italian villages.
  Italy of Villages , between abandonments and returns Paperback – 1 Jun. 2017 «As I write these lines, the bell tower of Amatrice is collapsing under the force of the third earthquake to have struck the towns of central Italy in less than six months. The image of the bell tower is obsessively replayed. It is a sequence that is distressing, yet demands to be looked at again and again. The images of ruins, the visions of emptiness, of absences, of places from which life has been stolen are disturbing images that we need». Thus writes Vito Teti, in the incipit of this book that picks up the thread of a reflection that began fifteen years ago with The Sense of Places, an essay that gave rise to a true trend that straddles anthropology, reportage, literature, and photography. In the image of Amatrice's bell tower, Teti glimpses a much larger world, one that is also inexorably crumbling. While large urban agglomerations prepare to house the bulk of the world's population, entire territories are depopulating. And depopulation is a hallmark of the inland areas of many regions of Italy and Europe. Faced with this scenario, the anthropologist sees abandonment as the cultural form of depopulation and asks: what to do with the signs of the past, the fragments of an exploded universe? In Teti's view, the past can and must be redeemed as a world submerged in potential, susceptible to future realization. Lurking, of course, is the risk that rhetoric and nostalgia for restoration will bury what little remains of the country. Conversely, positive, constructive nostalgia can support innovation, inclusion, and change. If nostalgia becomes a strategy for reinventing the country, then much remains. The anthropology of abandonment and return, whose essential features Teti defines in these pages, is an attempt to interpret places starting from what remains, which must be listened to and cared for. As Claudio Magris writes in the preface: "In this book of science and poetry, there is a profound sympathy for the nomadic and wandering destiny not only of the emigrants who left with their meager belongings, but of everyone, of civilizations themselves, of their birth and passing, though perhaps never definitive."

• The Remainder (2021) – an in-depth look at the right and duty to remain.

Current events and impact

Today, Teti is an authoritative voice in the debate on the regeneration of inland areas and the future of Italian villages. In his public speeches, he emphasizes that staying put isn't about immobility, but rather a way to reinvent towns and give meaning to places.