Anna Camaiti Hostert

Anna Camaiti Hostert (born July 19, 1949, in Florence, Italy) is an Italian American philosopher and a scholar of Visual Studies.

The initial period of Camaiti Hostert’s research focused on the history of political philosophy following the methodological analysis of Nicola Badaloni, under whose tutelage she studied at the University of Pisa.

In this work Camaiti Hostert has traced the relationship between the German Jacobinism, of which Johann Benjamin Erhard is one of the most representative authors, and Kant’s theory of Public Right, Political Will and Civil Liberty.

Because of her intellectual, academic and existential relation with the United States and with the socio-cultural dynamics of this country, Camaiti Hostert first developed themes related to comparative literature (see for instance her afterword to the American edition of the Dacia Maraini’s novel, The Silent Duchess, Feminist Press 1998[2][3]) and then has moved towards the Cultural studies with the analysis of the post-colonial theories, especially by focusing on the subaltern subject and on identity construction.

Through this research, Camaiti Hostert engages a sometimes critical confrontation with many important cultural theorists like Edward Said, Stuart Hall and Homi K. Bhabha and with political thinkers, like Antonio Gramsci.

Dealing with the complex theme of Alterity as it relates to the Italian women’s movement, especially to the works of Carla Lonzi[4] and the theories of sexual difference, the analysis of Passing tackles the feminist studies, particularly the point of convergence between post-colonial and gender studies (Gayatri C. Spivak, bell hooks, Teresa de Lauretis, Rosi Braidotti) and from that point it expands its reflection to the process of formation of any ethnic and sexual identity.

Visual Studies in general and Camaiti Hostert’s work in particular, interpret images not as isolated objects, but as clusters of several practices which change use and meaning of the images themselves: if cinema represents the medium from which Camaiti Hostert’s analysis has begun, her analysis expands to all visual languages, including TV, advertisings, Internet.

Cinematographic Representations of Italian Americans in the United States, Bordighera Press, 2002 [9]), including essays by Ben Lawton, Fred Gardaphé, Alberto Abruzzese among others as well as by Camaiti Hostert and Tamburri.