PENELOPE'S RUSE. A GENDER AND TRANSNATIONAL LOOK AT THE ITALIAN MIGRATION OF THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY THROUGH FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY

We approach family photography at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century as a complex scenario where transnational identities are redefined and negotiated within the framework of the Italian migration of that era. We focus especially on the role of women in regulating these symbolic flows. Through a multi-sited ethnographic perspective, we delve into the strategies and tricks with which women distributed symbolic capital, which was reflected in photography. We find that, despite the context of morality in which they were stuck, they managed to exert a very sophisticated symbolic power. We conclude that this power slipped into the systems of metaphorization that regulated social relations and that, unlike that exercised by man, was not defined in opposition to any system; on the contrary, their influence does not need legitimization: they are both private and public, subjective and intersubjective acts; that is, they have a multiset character.