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Performing Reconciliation: Milan and the Memory of Piazza Fontana

  • Elena Caoduro
Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Open access

Sustainable Development Goals

  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
    SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Abstract

Elena Caoduro’s essay explores the relations between a history of political violence and the function of art with reference to the 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre in Milan. This terrorist attack inaugurated the most violent decade in the history of the Italian republic: the anni di piombo (‘years of lead’), in which Italy experienced waves of social conflict and unprecedented acts of violence carried out by both right- and left-wing paramilitary groups. Caoduro analyses how the city of Milan monumentalises the victims of this massacre and searches for reconciliation between conflicting truths, since the last trial proved inclusive and provided no closure. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s seminal Memory, History, and Forgetting (2004), Caoduro attempts to discern when it is right to remember and when it is better to forget, or indeed how much we should remember. Although arguing that cathartic narration can assist national reconciliation, she cautions against political amnesty being accompanied by amnesia.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 77-94

Publication milestones

  • Published - 29/07/2016

Publication status

Published - 29/07/2016

Place of publication

London

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., United States, United Kingdom

Publication series

  • Publication series name: Contemporary Performance InterActions

ISBN (Print)

9781137439543

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/622335

Host publication title

Post-Conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory

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