Conflict, consensus and moral

compensation: working through

the trauma of state violence

Andrea HajekUniversity of WarwickUniversity of Glasgow

Memory and Restitution University of Westminster, 5-6 July 2013

These are stories which, were it not for the perseverance, for the fact that we turned our anger into the courage to say ‘I will not accept

being denied the truth’ - were it not for this the stories would just end, they would have ended on that day. And we realize that, as we go on,

we are the only power that we have.Ilaria Cucchi, sister of Stefano Cucchi (died after

beaten in police custody in an Italian prison, 2009)

Bologna bomb massacre, 1980

led to the first of a series of victims’ families associations > a form of memory work typical for Italy, in view of the low commitment and unwillingness of the state to bring justice to

victims of political/police violence

Francesco Lorusso

killed by police in Bologna on 11 March 1977

When I went back to work I was told to ‘go back home’. They no longer wanted me around, do you see? I had become the father of a ‘rebel’, of an ‘extremist’. I no longer received assignments. […] They isolated me.

Colleagues who had previously been good friends no longer spoke to me, they would say ‘that one is a

Communist’. And when I tried to have justice there was even one person who whispered in my ears: ‘Don’t set yourself against the cops, he who plays with fire dies’.

Agostino Lorusso, father of Francesco Lorusso

Why perform “affective labour”? Need for official recognition & moral compensation

From the continuous, most certainly unrewarding, labour which we will perform in

neighbourhoods, schools, factories, […], we will draw the strength to fight so as to transform the fear of

death in a commitment for life, the private into the public, desperation into historical consciousness, sterile

resignation into a will to fight.Lydia Franceschi, mother of Roberto Franceschi (killed by police in Milan, 1973), in solidarity with the Lorusso

family

Why perform “affective labour”?To create a “living memorial”, i.e. assemblages of people, things and narratives that are arranged in

complex networks of activities (Brown-Allen, 2011)

Performing affective labour through the construction & negotiation of memory sites

important when the perpetrator is a representative of the state, and consensus on

the victim is low

example: polemics about text on commemorative placque in public garden and poem on marble rock

Police violence in the 2000s: Carlo Giuliani killing at the G8 summit in

Genoa, 2001

importance of photography: polemics about photo taken before the shooting, with a telescopic lens and therefore a distortion of reality

Carlo Giuliani killing at the G8 summit in Genoa, 2001

importance of photography: photo of corpse became a ‘shared frame of reference’ which led to the iconization of Giuliani’s death (Jansen-Lanslots, 2011)

Carlo Giuliani killing at the G8 summit in Genoa, 2001

Federico Aldrovandi, killed by police squad on night patrol, 2005

importance of photography: mother ‘forced’ to exhibit photo of corpse to counter protest by police union against prison sentences for the four police officers found guilty

Federico Aldrovandi, 2005

photo of ‘live’ Federico during counter-demonstration in solidarity with the family

Stefano Cucchi, 2009

sister ‘forced’ to exhibit photo of corpse during presentation on TV of documentary film

female family members of victims of police violence gather strengths during a sit-in in front

of the parliamentary building in 2011, once again exhibiting the photographs of the corpses of

their loved ones

cover image of graphic novel about the Aldrovandi case, Zone of silence – illustrative of

the problem of police violence in Italy: silence on behalf of police forces and authorities, and

the silencing of the victims and their family members

Paper drawn from Chapter 4 of Negotiating Memories of Protest in Western

Europe: The Case of Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2013)

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Contact details:

Andrea HajekAssociate Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of WarwickBritish Academy Fellow at the University of Glasgow (from October 2013)

http://warwick.ac.uk/andreahajek