Stating Otherness Through Socio-Cultural Biases

Nowadays a well-defined idea of barbarians as the cause of the decline of an advanced civilization is widespread. This paper aims firstly to analyze the different meanings that the term barbarian has assumed in media outlets context in recent years, with emphasis on Italian political dimension. Secondly, it aims to examine if (and how much) it could be argued that, in these cases of manipulation, the sources of the late antique world have a crucial role in this kind of cultural biases. The comparative analysis of these two categories seems to reveal the reiteration of a stratified archive that, formed in ancient times and consolidated over time, maintains its main purpose: opposing the dominant social group (ingroup) and heterogeneous minorities (outgroups). So, what is the cultural operations that stay behind this approach? Is it possible to affirm that certain ideological identity archives are replicated over time applied to phenomena perceived as similar to each other, or would it be more correct to look at them as autonomous narratives?

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