La Violenza Illustrata: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy from 1968 to the Present Day

Description

Supported by
The British Academy
CRASSH
Dept of Italian (University of Cambridge)
Trinity College

The aim of this conference is to offer an interdisciplinary overview of representations of political violence and of the terrorisms of right and left in Italy from 1968 to the present day. It will consider literature, cinema, historiography, juridical discourse, and new media, as well as begin to offer a comparative analysis of the Italian experience in a wider European context.

The date of 1968 has been chosen as a starting point because the political and cultural upheavals of that year in Italy were, as John Foot writes, “quite easily the most radical, interesting, and, in the end, violent of Europe's 68s”. The historical and political aspects of the period since 1968 have been intensively discussed elsewhere but this conference will consider specifically the representational production of post-1968 Italy in the context of the violence of the period and the attempts to deal with its legacies.

The conference will open with an outline of the social and historical context, and a discussion of questions of definition and the validity of political violence, before moving on to offer a range of thematic papers and case studies. These studies and surveys are intended to build a picture of how the various forms of official and unofficial rhetoric and representation have been shaped by political violence but have also in turn informed understanding of political violence in Italy since 1968. Contributions will be in English and Italian.
Conveners:

Pierpaolo Antonello (Dept of Italian, University of Cambridge)
Ed Emery (Red Notes)
Alan O'Leary (Dept of Italian, University of Cambridge)