Over the last two years, the metaphor of war has often been used in Italy when discussing the fight against the pandemic, to describe the restrictions that have been introduced as a result, from lockdown to the Green Pass. Paradoxically, once the state of emergency ended, just as we were on the cusp of the long-awaited return to normality (to ‘peace’ in a sense), Russia's sudden invasion of Ukraine meant that war truly became part of Italians’ lives through the media. In this context, I have analysed the positions taken by the major Italian periodicals (Avvenire, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Foglio, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Mattino di Napoli, Il Messaggero and Il Tempo di Roma) between 20 February and 5 March. What becomes clear through examination of the main articles is that the themes that would characterise the subsequent Italian debate – from a strategic, humanitarian, political, and economic point of view – were already present in the two weeks from the end of February to the beginning of March 2022.

This article explores Gabriele Basilico’s photographs of the contemporary Italian environment and argues for their status as both iconic – that is to say, distinctive, highly visible, and memorable – and anti-iconic symbols or images. The discussion first explores the anti-iconic impulse in Basilico’s work. It marks out his standing as one of the most prominent proponents of the trend in contemporary Italian photography which sought to counter the mythic view of the country’s landscape and highlights his involvement in the trend’s seminal exhibition, Viaggio in Italia (1984). The article then makes a case for the simultaneous iconic nature of Basilico’s photographs by looking at the 2007/08 exhibition Milano si mostra. 1 Km con Gabriele Basilico, examining the ways in which Basilico’s images were made into icons of Milan’s urban identity.

In this paper, the author proposes an analysis of the apparently contradictory attitudes towards transactional sexual exchanges, as they have emerged in public debate and informed legislation and policies in Italy over the past few years. The ambiguity towards commercial sex is linked to a specific dynamic of power, which denies sexual labour the status of work and makes it the object of repressive and criminalising policies, whilst at the same time habitually demanding sexual services in exchange for money, gifts or favours. The article shows how criminalisation functions as a prominent form for the control of subjects, related to the workings of sovereignty. In particular, the author considers the ways in which the criminalisation of prostitution and of undocumented migration, which compound in the figure of the migrant prostitute, represents a means for the exertion of sovereignty and relates to the centrality of desire, transgression and their disciplining in the contemporary context. However, closer examination of the subjective experiences of those who are supposedly excluded and criminalised, such as undocumented migrant sex workers in detention centres, reveals the incompleteness of disciplinary mechanisms.