How to transform a ‘place of violence’ into a ‘space of collective remembering’: Italy and its traumatic past

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyse cultural trauma theories and their consequences as well as their potential applicability to cases of collective trauma where access to the legal arena in the rehabilitation process is not possible. When ‘state terror’ occurs, such as in Latin America, or, more arguably Italy, access to the legal arena is systematically denied through a variety of criminal strategies. In these cases, the cultural working through of trauma takes place on the aesthetic level. What are the consequences of this process both for the inscription of the crucial event in public discourse and for its relationship with justice? Moreover, how do aesthetic codes affect the public definition of justice and a collective understanding of what happened?