Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T10:43:41.829Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Francesco è vivo, e lotta insieme a noi! Rebuilding local identities in the aftermath of the 1977 student protests in Bologna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Andrea Hajek
Andrea Hajek*
Affiliation:
Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, UK
*
∗Email: andreahajek@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The decade spanning from 1968 to 1980, known also as the anni di piombo, is among the most difficult and traumatic periods in Italian post-war history. One of the most memorable years of this decade was 1977, when a new student movement stood up against the established order. The so-called Movement of ‘77 manifested itself among others in Bologna, where it had a predominantly creative and joyful character. Nevertheless, the protests were violently struck down when left-wing student Francesco Lorusso was killed by police forces during clashes, resulting in an urban guerriglia. This incident worsened the relationship between the historical left and younger generations of (more radical) left-wing activists, and marked the beginning of the end of the Movement of ‘77. The chapter on 1977 was, however, never really closed, and a ‘counter-memory’ has continued to divide the local community ever since. In this article, we shall see how different memory communities in Bologna have dealt with this ‘collective trauma’, focusing on the former Movement of ‘77 and the way it has used public commemorative rituals to rebuild a collective identity for itself in subsequent years.

Keywords

collective traumapublic commemorationsmemory communitiesnegotiation1977student protests
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , August 2012 , pp. 289 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Alexander, J.C. 2004. Toward a theory of cultural trauma. In Cultural trauma and collective identity, ed. Alexander, J.C., Eyerman, R., Giesen, B., Smelser, N.J. and Sztompka, P., 1–30. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Antonello, P., and O'Leary, A. 2009. Introduction. In Imagining terrorism: The rhetoric and representation of political violence in Italy 1969–2009, ed. Antonello, P. and O'Leary, A., 1–15. London: Legenda.Google Scholar
Assmann, J. 1992. Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Associazione Pier Francesco Lorusso. 1979. Statuto. Google Scholar
Baldoni, A., and Provvisionato, S., eds. 2009. Anni di piombo. Milan: Sterling & Kupfler.Google Scholar
Bellassai, S. 2009. Un trauma che si chiama desiderio. Per una storia del Settantasette a Bologna. In Gli anni Settanta. Tra crisi mondiale e movimenti collettivi, ed. De Bernardi, A., Romitelli, V. and Cretella, C., 213–34. Bologna: Archetipolibri.Google Scholar
Bernocchi, P. 1997. Dal '77 in poi. Rome: Erre Emme.Google Scholar
Bianchi, S., and Caminiti, L. 2007. Gli autonomi. Le storie, le lotte, le teorie. Vol. 1. Rome: DeriveApprodi.Google Scholar
Bifo, and Gomma, , eds. 2002. Alice è il diavolo. Storia di una radio sovversiva. Milan: ShaKe Edizioni.Google Scholar
Bodnar, J. 1992. Remaking America: Public memory, commemoration, and patriotism in the twentieth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Booth, W.J. 1999. Communities of memory: On identity, memory, and debt. American Political Science Review 93, no. 2:249–61.Google Scholar
Bryson, S. 1987. France through the looking-glass: The November–December (1986) French student movement. The French Review 61, no. 2:247–60.Google Scholar
Cappellini, S. 2007. Rose e pistole. 1977. Cronache di un anno vissuto con rabbia. Milan: Sterling & Kupfer.Google Scholar
Cento Bull, A. 2007. Italian neofascism: The strategy of tension and the politics of nonreconciliation. New York–Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Centro di Documentazione ‘GABBIA/NO’. 1987. Piccola città… (bound photocopies).Google Scholar
Clark, M. 2008. Modern Italy: 1871 to the present. Harlow: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar
Connerton, P. 2008. Seven types of forgetting. Memory Studies 1, no. 1:59–71.Google Scholar
Cooke, P. 2006. ‘A riconquistare la rossa primavera’: The neo-resistance of the 1970s. In Speaking out and silencing: Culture, society and politics in Italy in the 1970s, ed. Cento Bull, A. and Giorgio, A., 172–84. Leeds: Modern Humanities Research Association.Google Scholar
Foot, J. 2003. Modern Italy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foot, J. 2009. Italy's divided memory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1980. Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Galfré, M. 2008. L'insostenibile leggerezza del '77. Il trentennale tra nostalgia e demonizzazioni. Passato e presente 75:117–33.Google Scholar
Gillis, J.R. 1994. Commemorations: The politics of national identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, P. 2003. Italy and its discontents. 1980–2001. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, P. 2006. Storia d'Italia del dopoguerra a oggi, trans. Flores, M. and Perini, S. Turin: Giulio Einaudi.Google Scholar
Glynn, R. 2006. Trauma on the line: Terrorism and testimony in the anni di piombo. In The value of literature in and after the seventies: The case of Italy and Portugal, ed. Jansen, M. and Jordão, P., 317–35. Utrecht: University of Utrecht Igitur.Google Scholar
Grispigni, M. 2007. 1977. Rome: Manifestolibri.Google Scholar
Hajek, A. 2010. Tracce urbane di un conflitto permanente: La memoria pubblica dei fatti di marzo '77. Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 3:329–48.Google Scholar
Hajek, A. 2011. Bologna and the trauma of March (1977): The intellettuali contro and their ‘resistance’ to the local Communist Party. Carte Italiane 7:81–100.Google Scholar
Hajek, A. 2012. Progressive nostalgia: Appropriating memories of protest and contention in contemporary Italy. School of Advanced Study SAS-Space (e-repository). http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3305/.Google Scholar
Kansteiner, W. 2004. Genealogy of a category mistake: A critical intellectual history of the cultural trauma metaphor. Rethinking History 8, no. 2:193–221.Google Scholar
Keightley, E., and Pickering, M. 2010. The indefensible rhetoric of collective trauma. Paper presented at the concluding symposium of the project Conflicts of memory: Mediating and commemorating the 2005 London bombings, University of Nottingham.Google Scholar
King, A. 2001. Remembering and forgetting in the public memorials of the Great War. In The art of forgetting, ed. Forty, A. and Küchler, S., 147–69. Oxford–New York: Berg.Google Scholar
Menneas, F. 2003. Omicidio Francesco Lo Russo: storia di un processo mancato. , .Google Scholar
Misztal, B. 2004. The sacralization of memory. European Journal of Social Theory 7, no. 1:67–84.Google Scholar
Morisi, L. 1993. L'immagine del 1977 a Bologna nella stampa quotidiana. , .Google Scholar
Mussi, F. 1978. Renato Zangheri. Bologna '77. Intervista di Fabio Mussi. Rome: Editori Riuniti.Google Scholar
Mussi, N.a. 1987. Editoriale; La catena non si è mai spezzata. Mongolfiera 53:3–5.Google Scholar
Neal, A.G. 2005. National trauma and collective memory: Extraordinary events in the American experience. New York–London: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Nora, P. 1989. Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Memoire. Representations 26:7–25.Google Scholar
O'Leary, A. 2007. Tragedia all'italiana. Cinema e terrorismo tra Moro e Memoria. Tissi: Angelica.Google Scholar
Olick, J. 2007. The politics of regret: On collective memory and historical responsibility. New York–London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olick, J., and Robbins, J. 1998. Social memory studies: From ‘collective memory’ to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology 24:105–40.Google Scholar
Pullega, P. 2007. Il cerchio di gesso. In Atlante dei movimenti culturali dell'Emilia-Romagna 1968–2007, III: Arti, Comunicazione, Controculture, ed. Pieri, P. and Cretella, C., 17–22. Bologna: CLUEB.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, M. 2004. Introduzione. In Rituali civili. Storie nazionali e memorie pubbliche nell'Europa contemporanea, ed. Ridolfi, M., 9–13. Rome: Gangemi Editore.Google Scholar
Rigney, A. 2005. Plenitude, scarcity and the circulation of cultural memory. Journal of European Studies 35, no. 1:209–26.Google Scholar
Rigney, A. 2008. The dynamics of remembrance: Texts between monumentality and morphing. In Cultural memory studies: An international and interdisciplinary handbook, ed. Erll, A. and Nünning, A., 345–53. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.Google Scholar
Tarrow, S. 1998. Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Topographic Commission. February 15, 1978. Protocol 216.Google Scholar
Tota, A.L. 2003. La città ferita: memoria e comunicazione pubblica della strage di Bologna, 2 agosto 1980. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Vitali, W. 2009. In Non disperdetevi, ed. Rubini, O. and Tinti, A., 215–21. Milan: ShaKe Edizioni.Google Scholar
Weilnböck, H. 2008. ‘The trauma must remain inaccessible to memory’: Trauma melancholia and other (ab)uses of trauma concepts in literary theory. http://www://eurozine.com/articles/2008-03-19-weilnbock-en.html.Google Scholar

Television broadcasts

RAI TG2 national news edition, March 13, 1977.Google Scholar
RAI, Primo Piano, ‘Appuntamento a Bologna’, October 19, 1977.Google Scholar
RAI national news edition, March 8 and 11, 1997.Google Scholar