South Asian Aesthetic in Italy. A Journey

This book aims to shed light on the cultural and aesthetic implications of the relationship between Italy and India, on and off the screens of Italy, following the expansion of Bollywood in Europe during the 90s. Bollywood's propagation abroad affected the identity of the South Asian diaspora, urban spaces and aesthetics which generated what Le Guellec describing the arrival of Indians and Bollywood cinema to Paris named as Bollywood/India mania. The study began with the exploration of the historical meaning of the term aesthetic in order to offer a contextualization on the sense of the aesthetic as a philosophy of art; furthermore, a background for further theoretical debate on South Asian diasporic identity formations within the entertainment industry of Italy has been established. Throughout this book, the emphasis has been placed on the encounters, the journeys and the sharing of cultures, thereby highlighting the possible conditions of belonging contemporaneously to multiplicities of cultures through multiple modalities: mentally, psychologically and experientially.