Speaking Out and Silencing

Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s

A. Bull

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351548076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Commonly referred to collectively as the anni di piombo -- years of lead -- the 1970s have been seen as a parenthesis in Italian history, which was dominated by political violence and terrorism. The seventeen essays in this wide-ranging collection adopt different scholarly perspectives to challenge this monolithic view and uncover the complexity of the decade, exploring its many facets and re-assessing political conflict. The volume brings to the fore the ruptures of the period through an examination of literature, film, gender relations, party politics and political participation, social structures and identities. This more balanced assessment of the period allows the vibrancy and dynamism of new social and cultural movements to emerge. The long-lasting effects of this period on Italian culture and society and its crucial legacy to the present are lucidly revealed, dispelling the widely-held belief that the 1970s were largely a regressive decade. With the contributions: Anna Cento Bull, Adalgisa Giorgio -- The 1970s through the Looking GlassPiero Ignazi -- Italy in the 1970s between Self-Expression and OrganicismPaola Di Cori -- Listening and Silencing. Italian Feminists in the 1970s: Between autocoscienza and TerrorismAmalia Signorelli -- Women in Italy in the 1970sLesley Caldwell -- Is the Political Personal? Fathers and Sons in Bertolucci's Tragedia di un uomo ridicolo and Amelio's Colpire al cuoreJennifer Burns -- A Leaden Silence? Writers' Responses to the anni di piomboAdalgisa Giorgio -- From Little Girls to Bad Girls: Women's Writing and Experimentalism in the 1970s and 1990sEnrico Palandri -- The Difficulty of a Historical Perspective on the 1970sMark Donovan -- The Radicals: An Ambiguous Contribution to Political InnovationCarl Levy -- Intellectual Unemployment and Political Radicalism in Italy, 1968-1982Roberto Bartali -- The Red Brigades and the Moro Kidnapping: Secrets and LiesTom Behan -- Allende, Berlinguer, Pinochet... and Dario FoPhilip Cooke -- 'A riconquistare la rossa primavera' The Neo-Resistance of the 1970sClaudia Bernardi -- Collective Memory and Childhood Narratives: Rewriting the 1970s in the 1990sValeria Pizzini Gambetta -- Becoming Visible: Did the Emancipation of Women Reach the Sicilian Mafia?Davide PerO -- The Left and the Construction of Immigrants in 1970s ItalyAnna Cento Bull -- From the Centrality of the Working Class to its Demise: The Case of Bagnoli, Naples

CHAPTER 1
The 1970s through the Looking Glass

Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio

It has become almost a cliché to say that in Italy the 1970s were a decade of great instability and contradictions, whose hallmarks were political and ideological conflict and violence. Less frequently remembered is the fact that it was also the period when previously marginal social groups raised their voices and demanded greater representation, in the face of a society with politics which were fundamentally authoritarian and hierarchical. Moreover, the decade cast a long shadow which led to a collective repression of the memory of the period, as well as to a suppression of debate and conscious manipulation of facts and events. This neglect has been recognized by some scholars but has not been addressed yet. It is our belief that in literature, film, gender relations, party politics, social structures and institutions, the 1970s were a crucial period for Italy, initiating changes and trends which have manifested themselves and, in some cases, entered the mainstream only in recent years. The aim of this book is precisely to shift the focus from the phenomenon of organized terrorism and political violence which has until now dominated analyses of the period, to other, equally important, aspects. This will highlight the complexity of the period and open new avenues of interpretation.

The intricate psychological, social and political make-up of the decade and the breaking down of barriers between the personal and the political, the private and the public, and high and low culture, dictated this volume's interdisciplinary approach. Indeed, most of the contributors have had to look outside their own research specialties and examine their subject from a number of different perspectives. The analysis of specific aspects and issues in this volume has been enriched, in our view, by such an approach, and has brought to light two major motifs running through the decade and spanning the social, political and cultural spheres: generation and gender. Generational and gender conflicts were of truly historical proportions, as the chapters by Bartali, Caldwell, Ignazi and Palandri bear out, and appear to be at the root of the country's ruptures in that period.

In politics, the new generation rebelled against the traditional parties — the DC (Christian Democrats) and the PCI (Communist Party) — and their vision of a united and harmonious society regulated from above, in which conflict had no place (see Ignazi's chapter). This rebellion was expressed through new forms of political action, ranging from legal and democratic initiatives to illegal and violent acts and culminating in terrorism perpetrated by both the left and the right. While it is undoubtedly true that the decade was marked by the rejection of the culture of the older generations, in the specific context of politics young people pointed the finger at the 'father parties' for having betrayed their own ideals. The DC and PCI came under attack, the former for having lost sight of its redemptive mission, the latter for having forsaken its revolutionary ideals. As the chapters by Caldwell and Cooke demonstrate, the very foundation of the Italian Republic — the Resistance — became a controversial issue, with some groups reclaiming it as an inspirational revolutionary movement and others rejecting it altogether as a symbol of stale officialdom and empty rhetoric. Not only did young people challenge the rhetoric of the establishment, they also became increasingly aware of, and refused to tolerate, the secrecy, arrogance, hypocrisy and the cynical manipulations of a political class which was fundamentally corrupt. This disillusionment became deeper during the decade, as the extent of the connivance between state agencies, hidden networks of power and subversive forces of the right was slowly unveiled. These political ruptures, which seemed to undermine representative democracy, had two main effects. First, they led to a strengthening of agreements between parties outside parliament, and second, they gave rise to new forms of direct democracy, as discussed in the chapters by Donovan and Ignazi.

The generational clash was accompanied by a gender conflict. Daughters rebelled not just against their fathers, but also against patriarchal oppression. Their aim was not to take the place of the father, but to demolish the system which was based on his authority. In this sense, conflict was intra- as well as inter-generational. As Signorelli points out, the impact of feminism upon the lives of ordinary women in the 1970s and beyond cannot be overstated. Italian feminists, she argues, 'found the words to objectify' the malaise of all women and to draw them into the big struggles of the period. Feminism filtered all the way to the popular press and women's magazines. Even though women's magazines diluted the subversive thrust of feminist ideology, they nevertheless had the merit of recording the voices of ordinary women and making them aware that they were not alone in their oppression. This circulation of different viewpoints and shared experiences among women was explosive, reaching and indeed rocking the culture of those regions of Italy which were more rigidly and more visibly patriarchal, such as Sicily (see Pizzini Gambetta's chapter). The effects of the women's movement on Italian institutions, legislation and lifestyles were as profound and long lasting as the transformations brought about by male politics, as practised both by mainstream parties and alternative groups.

Within the private domain, paternal authority was also challenged for the first time. The generational conflict which had begun in the second half of the 1960s persisted and deepened in the 1970s, breaking down the barriers between the private and public spheres. Family relations came to the fore. Women started to reflect on family dynamics, moving from an examination of gender relations to a preoccupation with the mother. In the 1970s, they appeared to reject the mother, who was put under scrutiny both as a victim of patriarchal norms and an active enforcer of these same norms upon the daughters. This rejection is reflected in the absence of the maternal figure in women's literary production of the decade. Conversely, sisterhood was exalted as a source of solidarity and strength and a focus for political struggle. It was only in the 1980s that a reappraisal of the mother as a positive source of female authority emerged. On the other hand, while the conflictual relations between fathers and sons were not subjected to theoretical scrutiny, they were at the core of the political and cultural practices of the period. Caldwell's analysis of some crucial films of the decade brings to light an interesting correspondence between the anthropological and psychological foundations of family relationships in Italy and the oppositional politics of the period, including terrorism. Filmmaking itself became an act of rebellion of the directors, notably Bertolucci and Amelio, against their fathers, real and cultural.

The general sense of a loss of authority brought about by the generational clash which characterized the decade was deeply felt among writers. Writers of different generations sought to reconcile the need for a renewed commitment to social and political reality with the commitment to formal and linguistic experimentation which they had inherited from the 1960s neo-avant-garde. The realization of these seemingly contradictory aspirations was further complicated by the writers' own loss of faith in themselves as speaking/writing subjects. Among the older generation, this disorientation manifested itself in the suspension of the novel form in favour of public interventions in the media. The voices of some of them rose to express disquiet in the face of impenetrable and disturbing political and social events and to denounce the indifference of the cultural and intellectual establishment to these events, almost taking on the role of'conscience of the nation' (see chapters by Behan and Burns), Among other writers, especially of the younger generation, the loss of authority resulted in a search for new forms of expression. Traditionally marginalized groups, who were now able to access the written and printed words through both new and old channels of communication, forced a revision of the boundaries of literature, blurring the traditional demarcations between the literary and non-literary, at the level of both form and content. Women, in particular, experimented with traditional genres, preferring those which were suitable to convey direct and personal experience, such as confession, testimony, autobiography and document. In her chapter, Giorgio reconstructs a strong line of women's narratives, with its roots in the 1960s, which used formal experimentation to expose women's invisibility in culture and society, In order to represent and communicate with a wide audience, women writers also rejected the high codes of Italian literary language and adopted styles of expression close to orality.

As a consequence of these ruptures, the decade was marked, as most chapters in this volume bear out, by a constant tension between speaking out and silencing among both established and new social participants. Some of the latter had already emerged in the second half of the 1960s, leading various commentators to state that the 1970s actually began in 1967-68.¹ Many new voices were now being heard, also thanks to the advent of new technologies that were changing the modalities of communication. Groups such as adolescents, students and workers refused to be at the receiving end of top-down information flows and questioned the validity and truth of what was fed to them in the family, at school and in the public sphere. They wanted to produce information themselves and realized that they needed their own channels of communication. New cheap and simple-to-use technologies, notably the videotape, which reached Europe from Japan in the early 1970s, suddenly made it possible for people with limited means and without specific skills, to set up independent radio and TV channels. These became focal points for the production and spreading of alternative culture, as well as for aggregating support and organizing collective action. Communication became a two-way process, with the audience taking an active part in the production of information. These important changes broke the monopoly of RAI ('Radio Audizione Italiana') and, between 1974 and 1976, forced the legislation which led to the liberalization of the Italian media.²

However, during the course of the decade, communication was progressively reduced to shouting across the divides. Sometimes it was replaced by silence, either self-willed or imposed from the outside through intimidation and violence. Across the generations, there was mainly shouting on the part of the young, but their shouting was met with little listening and often with bewilderment on the part of the adults. The older generation by and large continued to communicate among themselves, shutting the young out through silence and condemnation. They failed to see the radical nature of the youth protest, or they read it in a reductive way, identifying its causes, as Levy's chapter demonstrates for the student movement, in socioeconomic factors, such as a loss of status and fear of unemployment. In revisiting the interpretations put forward by sociologists and other scholars at the time, Levy finds that today they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Intra-generationally, communication was just as problematic: within the young generation as well as among the new political and social actors, certain groups and individuals actively silenced others. The only exception was related to gender. Feminism appears to be the only 1970s movement which emphasized 'listening', through the development of autocoscienza (see Di Cori's chapter). In the small separatist groups where it was practised, women elaborated a methodology to approach and give meaning to the world 'starting from oneself', in what became, as Signorelli argues, the founding principle of Italian feminists' 'discovery of subjectivity'. This breakthrough must be acknowledged, even though there was a significant change in feminist practice towards the end of the 1970s. The waning of autocoscienza coincided with the emergence within the groups of mother figures who did not seem to listen to the daughters or indeed inhibited the other women, who felt unable to speak. It also coincided, as Di Cori indicates in her chapter, with the peak of the 'leaden years' (anni di piombo). This was the beginning of a process of retrenchment of feminism into theoretical elaborations which in the following decades, though never detached from practices of relationships between women (for example, affidamento), nevertheless appeared as abstruse and no longer found a wider resonance among 'ordinary' women, especially the younger generations.

Apart from the exceptional case of feminism, during the 1970s silencing was more prominent than listening. Young people often enforced silence upon members of their own generation, in an attempt to suppress other voices and to impose their own vision of a future society. Silencing was associated with a widespread intolerance of non-conformist views, even within the new groups which opposed the main political parties. The logic of the group prevailed and was often invoked in the name of internal cohesion and solidarity. These were of course crucial for achieving the collective mobilization of previously marginal groups necessary to bring about a redressing of social injustices. The downside was a neglect of individualism and a disapproval of aspirations to self-realization, as noted in Ignazi's chapter. These aspects also emerge from two case studies. Cento Bull's chapter on the Bagnoli steelworks discusses the centrality of the working class for all the left-wing movements, and looks at the crucial role played by the large factories in providing a strong positive source of workers' identity and common action in the 1970s. However, in the retrospective memory of many protagonists, the factory is also recalled as a place where divergent views could not be expressed and sameness and uniformity were imposed. Similarly, Pero's chapter shows how the successful social integration and political emancipation of Southern immigrants in Bologna hinged upon their acceptance of, and assimilation to, the dominant left-wing subculture, not least through the acquisition of the jargon associated with it.

This rigidity, almost inflexibility, of the logic of the group cannot, however, be justified as a means to collective social or political emancipation, when used for anti-democratic, illegal and even criminal ends. The Mafia and P2 are two obvious examples. The Mafia, as Pizzini Gambetta demonstrates, became more powerful and more visible in the 1970s, thanks precisely to the elaboration of a rigid code of conduct and the refinement of an exclusive and distinctive group identity. The P2 operated in the shadows throughout the decade, allegedly pulling the strings of power and playing a major role in the Moro affair. The most extreme manifestation of group cohesion to the detriment of free democratic interaction was terrorism, which aimed to silence the voices of the liberal and libertarian movements while also, as Di Cori emphasizes, continuing to marginalize women inside the groups. It could be said that terrorism represented the last stage in the loss of faith in democracy. As such it highlights the conflicting aspirations of the decade: on the one hand, the search for greater participation and freedom of expression, and on the other, the appropriation of authority by self-appointed champions of the common good or by secret organizations bent on self-aggrandizement. Paradoxically, terrorism can also be seen as a voice, but one which, as David Moss pointed out in his 1989 study of leftwing violence, spoke in 'an extremely crude language', the syntax of which was very limited and unintelligible outside a restricted circle of people. Thus, acts of terrorist violence required acts of 'translation' by different interpreters — not only politicians, journalists, lawyers and judges, but also the protagonists themselves — to become intelligible.³

The many different facets of the decade — its conflicts and contradictions, its political and cultural issues, its new forms of expression — converged in the Moro kidnapping. The Moro affair is emblematic of the complexity of the 1970s, since a political event which should have been explained in rational and factual terms became something deeply ambiguous, subject to conflicting interpretations, an event which could not be understood without leaps of the imagination. Even attempts to read it through linguistic analysis revealed its inconsistencies and lack of substance. An event of such importance and consequences was reduced almost to a theatrical performance and, even worse, to an operetta or a TV serial.⁴ Both Bartali and Burns, in different ways, note the ostensibly staged nature of the event, something which at the time was grasped and exposed by Sciascia (and later by Baudrillard). The killing of Moro provided a way of sealing off the decade, seemingly allowing Italians to put behind them all its upheavals, notably terrorism, the historic compromise and the women's movement, together with the troubling challenges posed by intellectual engagement and political participation. Even the founding experience of the Resistance was put aside, only to be revisited in the 1990s in an overtly revisionist manner, as discussed in Cooke's chapter. Finally, Moro's tragic end seemed to open the way to the legitimate pursuit of individual pleasure in the 1980s, albeit one built on the negation of the previous decade. In literature, too, we saw the demise of engagement: novelists rediscovered the pleasure of storytelling, relinquishing their previous preoccupation with social issues.

Many of the chapters in the volume create bridges between the 1970s and the present, by means of revisiting that decade in the light of the events of the 1990s and identifying its legacy to the present. This legacy is manifold.

To begin with, the displacement and marginalization of the fathers have left a huge void, which has not yet been successfully filled with alternative sources of authority and identification, at least at the political level. On the left, the disappearance of the 'father party' has led to a multitude of political voices and to fragmentation. The many voices and strands on the left, however, have not been able to agree on a common strategy and common policies, and the division between a radical left and a moderate left has not been overcome. As for women, they have not been able to make substantial inroads into political institutions leading to positions of power, or they have lacked the necessary motivation to do so. Arguably, this can also be seen as a legacy of the 1970s, when Italian feminism focused on alternative political practices which were fundamentally separatist. On the right, new surrogate paternal figures have emerged, notably Berlusconi, who, however, is a despot rather than a father. On the one hand, he offers reassuring platitudes to the new generations, while, on the other, he has amassed a unique concentration of power in his hands, attempting to curtail the freedom of expression which the opening up of the media in the 1970s had brought about and which, ironically, had been instrumental in his own rise to economic, and later political, power (his Canale 5 was launched in 1980). As for the party which in the 1970s was the epitome of transgression and innovation, the Radicals, its legacy is ambiguous, since its strong support and struggle for a majoritarian system may, however unwittingly, have led to the current 'media-electoral despotism', as Donovan argues in his chapter. Its flamboyant political style may also have inspired new political actors, such as the Northern League, who have adapted it to a populist and ultimately anti-democratic agenda.

Finally, a legacy arguably bequeathed by the 1970s, or at least a trend...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on the Contributors
• 1 The 1970s through the Looking Glass
• PART I. ISSUES AND OVERVIEWS
• PART II. CASE STUDIES
• Index