Italianerie: Transculturality, Co-creation and Transforming Identities between Italy and Asia

This is the introduction of a special issue with the captioned title, which offers, for the first time, the innovative and original perspective of Italianerie in the quest for transculturality and co-creation. It addresses the discourses and the processual dynamics of the historical, cultural and political-economic encounter between Italy and/in Asia. We argue that transculturality is an essential ingredient of Italianerie. Drawing on the increasingly and multi-layered encounters between Italy and Asia in the modern and contemporary eras, we have explored how the 'fascination for Italy' and its specific cultural materiality go both ways, from Italy to Asia and vice versa. Economic, political, and socio-cultural intervention to and from Italy Asia instigate fascination with and offer distinctive stimuli for the re-imagination of the two regions.