“La creazione di un giardino”. Apologie di (in)evitabili estinzioni nel lungo Ottocento

In Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1832), we find a consideration of the inevitable extinction to which the ‘less fitting species’ were destined, including those non-European civilizations that suffered the violence of European imperialism during the nineteenth century. This statement represents one of the earliest moments of the discourse conducted in the nineteenth-century scientific community on the characteristics of extinction phenomena and on the natural character – assumed as inevitable – of non-Europeans’ disappearance. Considering the importance of Lyell’s gradualist approach to the development of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, it seems reasonable to say that the concepts of selection and extinction go far beyond the boundaries of scientific questions, nurturing the rhetoric of colonialist discourse. From these premises, the essay focuses on late nineteenth-century scientific dissemination, analyzing the contributions of dominant postDarwinian Italian naturalists, and finally examines the success that the theme of the struggle for existence and extinction had in the adventure novels written by Emilio Salgari. The case of the American frontier, despite its easily recognizable singularity, is taken, together with some recurring rhetorical formulas, as a litmus paper of this cultural phenomenon. The choice of a focus at first sight distant from that of European imperialism allows us to interpret the accounts of colonialism in the western plains as a discursive experiment useful for developing racial and apologetic rhetoric. This last point opens up perspectives on future studies regarding the twentieth-century developments of rhetorical formulas and the biological fatalism encountered in these pages.