Imagining Terrorism

Pierpaolo Antonello

This is a thought-provoking collection that requires the reader to engage with representations and form as critical sites of historical understanding. -- Modern Language Review Modern Language Review For many, the murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 by the BR and the various neofascist bombings have become myths or legendary occurrences ones fraught with profound meaning for the human condition. Even some of the former militants and terrorists - the perpetrators, in other words - have participated in these productions (Moro's killers, for example). In fact, one cannot help be left with the impression that the artists and the ex-militants are really talking to each other. -- Journal of Modern History Journal of Modern History This broad-ranging collection of fourteen essays is innovative in offering an extremely rich and multi-faceted portrait of this complex topic... makes a real contribution to show how terrorist brutality was expressed, encoded and schematized by the people involved in these dramatic events even before the violent actions became the object of rhetorical analysis. -- Forum for Modern Language Studies Forum for Modern Language Studies

• Introduction Part I: Narrative Models of Political Violence 1. Killing the Father: Politics and Intellectuals, Utopia and Disillusion 2. Narratives of Sacrifice: Pasolini and Moro 3. Moro, Brescia, Conspiracy: The Paranoid Style in Italian Cinema 4. Through the Lens of Trauma: The Figure of the Female Terrorist in Il prigioniero and Buongiorno, notte Part II: Genres of Terror 5. Television and Terrorism in Italy: Sergio Zavoli’s La notte della repubblica 6. Screening Terror: Political Terrorism in Italian Cinema 7. Lo stupro by Franca Rame: Political Violence and Political Theatre Part III: The Rhetoric of Violence 8. The Rule of Which Law? The Use of Legal Language in the Rhetoric of the anni di piombo 9. A (Conceptual) History of Violence: The Case of the Italian Extreme Left in the 1970s 10. Narrative Models of Political Violence: Vicarious Experience and ‘Violentization’ in 1970s Italy 11. Contested Memories: Milan and Piazza Fontana 12. Memorialization without Memory: The Case of Aldo Moro 13. Political Violence, stragismo and ‘Civil War’: An Analysis of the Self-Narratives of Three Neofascist Protagonists 14. Self-Narratives of the anni di piombo: Testimonies of the Political Exiles in France