Anello on The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola

Giancarlo Anello, University of Parma, has published The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola: Legal Categories, Cognitive Interests, Religious Habits, and Their Interaction into the Life of an Italian Colonialist. Here is the abstract.

Italian colonialism was brief, notably transient and disorganized, especially when compared to its European counterparts, but it was characterized by an amazing experimental inspiration from the legal field. Italian legal professionals working in the colonies were compelled to develop their own-often original and creative-legal approaches in managing the complex relationships between legal authorities and colonial subjectivities. This paper analyzes the extraordinary efforts of one such colonial jurist, Arnaldo Bertola. Bertola was a judge in Libya and Rhodes, a Professor of colonial law at the University of Turin 1930’s, and a legal expert in Mogadishu, Somalia, after the war. Bertola’s case is noteworthy because of his innovative thinking, his remarkable personality, his unusual cultural eclecticism, and his steady inner faith in the value of religious freedom. The essay explores his writings not only for his legal achievements, but also for his very human curiosities and uncertainties in confronting the stranger, the colonized, and the foreigner: in a word, the other.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.