This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Tota, A. L. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Ethnographying Public Memory:The Commemorative Genre for the victims of Terrorism in Italy

University of Rome III, Italy

This article addresses one concern that is central to much of the sociology of memory currently ongoing: how can we remember terror and how can we forget it? And moreover, is there any cultural shape of remembering terror, which is more suitable than others? By addressing the issue of the social representation of a very controversial past - the massacre at the Bologna railway station in 1980 - the focus is here on the relation between the collective knowledge of public events, such as a terror attack, and the process of their fixing and shaping into social practices (commemorative ceremonies) and cultural objects (public symbols of the slaughter). It will be shown how, in the Bologna case, this process reflects tensions and articulates contradictions in the public inscription of the legitimate version of this past, between state and civil society. It will be argued that, due to a specific group of agents of memory - composed primarily by the association of the victims’ relatives and the committees of solidarity founded in the city during the last two decades - the structure of the commemorative ceremony has led to the public fixing of a specific genre of memorization in Italy for the victims of terrorism. This genre, that defines the number of its degrees of freedom (the range of possible variation within itself), becomes a crucial key to understanding the public making of cultural memories. The methodological considerations that arise from this research are related to the possible ways to analyse controversial versions of the past. It will be shown how ethnographying public enactment of personal experience and interviewing the victims and their relatives represent a very specific type of research experience, where many usual assumptions used by qualitative interviews are violated.

Key Words: commemoration • ethnography of memory • ethnography of public enactments of personal experience • genre of memorization • public discourse • public representation of very controversial pasts • terrorism

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				K. Borell Terrorism and Everyday Life in Beirut 2005: Mental Reconstructions, Precautions and Normalization Acta Sociologica, March 1, 2008; 51(1): 55 - 70. [Abstract] [PDF]

				A. L. Tota Terrorism and Collective Memories: Comparing Bologna, Naples and Madrid 11 March International Journal of Comparative Sociology, April 1, 2005; 46(1-2): 55 - 78. [Abstract] [PDF]