This article addresses the narrative, political, and epistemological potential of theorising Europe from its South. It does so by focusing on the Italian context and by exploring how literary forms, political practices, and academic scholarship can articulate alternative visions of Europe beyond hegemonic paradigms of progress and security. Through a discussion of Italy’s political histories—its supposedly minor colonialism, its racial anxieties, and its project of colonial modernity—this article further argues that theorising from the South offers a powerful framework for addressing the evaporation of race in the imagination of European identity, as well as for articulating epistemic perspectives that build upon, rather than repressing, the fissures and contradictions of the European project.