The 1970s beyond the years of lead: mediating generational identity in “Città sommersa”

Inutilmente, magnanimo Kublai, tenterò di descriverti la città di Zaira dagli alti bastioni. Potrei dirti di quanti gradini sono le vie fatte a scale, di che sesto gli archi dei porticati, di quali lamine di zinco sono ricoperti i tetti; ma so già che sarebbe come non dirti nulla. Non di questo è fatta la città, ma di relazioni tra le misure del suo spazio e gli avvenimenti del suo passato: la distanza dal suolo d’un lampione e i piedi penzolanti d’un usurpatore impiccato; il filo teso dal lampione alla ringhiera di fronte e i festoni che impavesano il percorso del corteo nuziale della regina; l’altezza di quella ringhiera e il salto dell’adultero che la scavalca all’alba; l’inclinazione d’una grondaia e l’incedervi d’un gatto che si infila nella stessa finestra; la linea di tiro della nave cannoniera apparsa all’improvviso dietro il capo e la bomba che distrugge la grondaia; gli strappi delle reti da pesca e i tre vecchi che seduti sul molo a rammendare le reti si raccontano per la centesima volta la storia della cannoniera dell’usurpatore, che si dice fosse un figlio adulterino della regina, abbandonato in fasce lì sul molo. Di quest’onda che rifluisce dai ricordi la città s’imbeve come una spugna e si dilata. Una descrizione di Zaira quale è oggi dovrebbe contenere tutto il passato di Zaira. Ma la città non dice il suo passato, lo contiene come le linee d’una mano, scritto negli spigoli delle vie, nelle griglie delle finestre, negli scorrimano delle scale, nelle antenne dei parafulmini, nelle aste delle bandiere, ogni segmento rigato a sua volta di graffi, seghettature, intagli, svirgole^[1].

Salivano dal sud, dalle estese sacche della disoccupazione meridionale – il 37% dalle Puglie, il 23% dalla Sicilia, il 13% dalla Calabria, il 10% dalla Campania – consumando, nel lungo viaggio, una lacerazione delle radici contadine maturata da tempo. Tutti in una sola direzione: dalle campagne alla città. Tutti in qualche modo impegnati in un faticoso percorso geografico, ma anche sociale e politico: dalla periferia al centro, dalla marginalità al protagonismo, dalla subalternità al potere. […] [Q]uell’esercito di pionieri senza frontiera cercava appunto, disordinatamente, questo: non solo un salario, un lavoro, una sistemazione, ma “un centro”. Un punto cardinale su cui innestare l’elaborazione di una nuova cittadinanza^[2].

Introduction

Every place has a history, but for its memory to survive it must be told. Italo Calvino reminds us of this in his Città invisibili (Invisible Cities), when the character of Marco Polo, speaking about Zaira, says that the essence of a city is given by the «relazioni tra le misure del suo spazio e gli avvenimenti del suo passato» («relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past»^[3]). The city is, then, configured as a landscape of individual and collective memories, where places are not only «“inside” us» but «we are entirely outside ourselves, in the spaces and the places we inhabit»^[4].

These reflections offer a possible interpretation of Marta Barone’s Città sommersa^[5]. Echoing Calvino’s work, the author reconstructs the biography of her father Leonardo and rewrites the history of her hometown Turin, offering a different memory of the 1970s from the now widespread «plurimedial constellation»^[6] of memories of the so-called “anni di piombo” (“years of lead”)^[7]. It all began with the discovery of a legal defence concerning the author’s father, who had been imprisoned – although later acquitted – for belonging to the terrorist organization Prima Linea^[8]. Her investigation soon expands, as Marta, the novel’s protagonist and Marta Barone’s alter ego, finds herself exploring an entire period of social struggle that is represented in the collective imagery as an «open wound»^[9] and identified with its most radical outcome: terrorism. In the novel, however, Leonardo’s story – mediated by his daughter’s participatory and critical gaze – resists the imagery of the years of lead, even though the narrative accurately reconstructs the escalation of political violence that sowed terror in Turin^[10].

Following the biography of the Apulian Leonardo, the novel rewrites the history of emigration from the South to Turin, the immigrants’ activism inside and outside the factories, and the complex interrelations between urban development, industrial policy and protest movements. The novel thus seems to convey what Ann Rigney calls the «memory of the outrage»^[11], as it recalls the anger and indignation at the injustices that led many to participate in collective struggles. Leonardo Barone – L.B. in the novel, «il Barone»^[12] of the court papers and the nameless boy to whom the text is dedicated – leaves the South, seen as a place with no future, in search of a possible redemption that will take him first to Rome and then to the city of FIAT, the factory par excellence in the novel. Literary space is thus configured as a «“palimpsest” in which different traces are superimposed and “spatialise history”»^[13]. After all, as David Harvey reminds us, «time is always memorialized not as flow, but as memories of experienced places and spaces»^[14]. Following the literary suggestions with which this essay opened, one could argue that the urban imagery of Città sommersa, like Calvino’s Zaira, «non dice il suo passato, [ma] lo contiene come le linee d’una mano» («does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand»)^[15].

Drawing on theories of the nexus between cultural memory and activism^[16] and the concepts of «postmemory» and «generationality»^[17], this essay aims to show that Città sommersa – through Leonardo’s biography – mediates an alternative memory of the 1970s, rejecting the total identification of protest movements with political dogmatism and armed struggle that still dominates cultural production about the decade. This novel can therefore be considered as a powerful «carrier of memory»^[18], since it is Barone’s writing that makes non-violent commitment memorable and restores it to the collective memory.

Furthermore, since Leonardo’s story is told by his daughter, the essay examines the extent to which the generational dimension affects the memory mediated by the novel. In this regard, it is argued that the text reactivates the memory of Leonardo’s indignation and activism in the 1970s, «giving them a prospective meaning by continuing the struggle for rights»^[19]. The narrative of anti-dogmatic and non-violent impegno would thus represent a «memory of hope»^[20] for the next generation, which is refractory to ideologies or collective utopias but nevertheless in search of the meaning of life. In this sense, the essay ultimately asks whether the Turin of the protest movements embodied by Leonardo’s generation can be described – in Calvino’s words – as one of those cities that «continuano attraverso gli anni e le mutazioni a dare la loro forma ai desideri» or as one of those «in cui i desideri o riescono a cancellare la città o ne sono cancellati» («through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, […] in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it»)^[21].

Leonardo Barone, a life on the front line (but never as part of Prima Linea)

The city in Marta Barone’s novel is polysemic, like an image in a hall of mirrors. The underwater city to which the title refers, in a key page that seems to be taken from Invisible Cities, is the «favolosa»^[22] («fabled») Kitež that sank into Lake Svetlojar to prevent the Tatars from conquering it. However, it is also the metaphor with which Barone identifies the mysterious figure of the protagonist’s father and, by proxy, the city of Turin itself, which will appear differently to the narrator’s gaze as soon as she begins her investigation^[23]. The identification is evoked right from the cover, which superimposes an image of the porticos of Via Roma on a photo of Leonardo as a child^[24], and which takes shape in the story through the protagonist’s experience of urban space.

In fact, the chance discovery of a legal defence among her father’s papers provokes an «impercettibile ma decisivo» («imperceptible but decisive») change in Marta that makes the places of her hometown seem different to her, as in the case of Piazza Vittorio, «la piazza chiara, dura e geometrica» («the clear, hard and geometric square»), which suddenly appears «lunare e remota, come il segno di un mistero» («lunar and remote, like the sign of a mystery»)^[25]. This feeling stems from the «idea of a disturbing proximity» («idea di una prossimità sconvolgente»)^[26], both spatial and temporal, between Marta’s life and the Turin of the Red Brigades^[27]. The protagonist will feel this sensation every time she makes new discoveries about Leonardo’s life. Her investigation evolves into a rewriting of the collective history of Turin, and the novel’s horizon soon expands to include the geography of the whole country; the story of the adult Leonardo begins, as for so many of his generation, with the journey of hope to the North^[28].

After moving to Rome to study medicine^[29], Leonardo completed his first degree – later to be followed by those in law and psychology – with some delay because he became involved in social movements. In fact, as early as 1964, he joined a Christian organisation that provided after-school care for children in the Roman suburbs («borgate»)^[30]. He was also among the wounded in the “battle of Villa Giulia”^[31], and in the early 1970s, he was in Turin on behalf of the Pcim-l, the Marxist-Leninist party Servire il Popolo. He then settled down with his first wife, Agata, in a «freddo e inospitale appartamento di Villar Perosa» (a «cold and inhospitable flat in Villar Perosa»), on the outskirts of the city^[32].

The novel gives a vivid account of those years, restoring the distance between the dogmatism of Servire il Popolo and Leonardo’s pragmatism, as clearly emerges from the description of the activists leafleting at the gates of FIAT; on those occasions, Leonardo and his party companion Druina rewrote the leaflets because the official ones were «imbarazzanti compitini di propaganda slegati dalla realtà» («embarrassing propaganda tasks unrelated to reality»)^[33]. Leonardo continued to be involved in politics, becoming a well-known face in far left and autonomous groups inside and outside the factories^[34], but he never joined organizations that «practised violence»^[35], preferring forms of activism that focused on people’s everyday needs^[36]. This attitude will make him the object of widespread ostracism, frowned upon by both the state institutions and the movements for being so undisciplined as to be «perennemente su un libro nero mai scritto» («eternally in a black book that has never been written»)^[37].

Against the background of FIAT’s economic policy, the novel effectively interweaves the memories of “new” Turin citizens, such as Leonardo, the protest movements and urban development. As is well known, migratory flows were indispensable to meet the labour demand in industry, and it was indeed FIAT that stimulated and controlled urban development to its own advantage, acting – as Marco Revelli recalls – as a «stato nello stato» (a «state within a state»)^[38], in a way «assai simile a quello che si potrebbe definire un “potere sovrano”» («very similar to what one might call a “sovereign power”»)^[39]. It was the exploited southerners who launched the strikes of the “Hot Autumn” protests, which later spread to issues such as housing and living conditions. It is no coincidence that the novel, which reconstructs the main stages of the protests, begins with the demonstration organised in Battipaglia on 9 April 1969, when the police fired on the demonstrators, injuring dozens and killing two. After these events, strikes broke out in Turin and then the unrest continued in Reggio Calabria with a protest of 50.000 people, in the sign of a «Nord e Sud uniti nella lotta» («North and South united in struggle»)^[40].

Perhaps the tension behind the novel can be described with a pun: Leonardo never belonged to Prima Linea but lived his whole life on the front line, fighting against injustice and remaining true to his values. His vocation, even as a child, was to be a «paladino degli oppressi» («champion of the oppressed»)^[41], out of a «perentorio, irrevocabile senso dell’ingiustizia» («compelling, irrevocable sense of injustice»)^[42], as when – like the Good Samaritan – he gave his sweater to a person dressed in rags^[43]. Through the vicissitudes of her father, Marta Barone seems to shift the focus of the narrative from the dogmatic and violent face of the protests to the outrage and activism of her protagonist and, by extension, of the many southerners who, like Leonardo, resisted injustice but whose commitment has been obscured by the narrative of the years of lead.

Shaping the city of the “Factory”

Studies have shown that FIAT played a crucial role in Turin’s economic and demographic growth, so much so that it has been called the «Italian Detroit»^[44]. According to Revelli, FIAT also had control over the cultural sector and the formation of public opinion^[45] and managed to achieve – in Alberto Vanolo’s words – «a “total embedding” where the spatial, institutional and cultural developments of the city and the firm were highly interconnected»^[46].

Michel Foucault’s concept of «heterotopia»^[47] helps to explain the oppressive nature of the «così inverosimilmente immensa» («so unrealistically immense»)^[48] factory. The novel evokes the obsession with discipline in industrial plants, depicting this biopolitical universe as a prison, where assembly-line timekeepers appear «spettrali» («spectral»)^[49] and alienating work corrodes the bodies of workers who suffer from nervous tics caused by the endless repetition of the same gestures^[50], while «un’efficientissima e gigantesca rete di spionaggio interna» (a «highly efficient and gigantic network of internal espionage»)^[51] aims to have total control over the workforce.

Città sommersa thus reconstructs the strategies of control over the working-class masses to implement FIAT’s industrial policy inside and outside the factories^[52], but also the forms of resistance of the largely immigrant population; the narrative spatialises the historical events, projects the power dynamics onto the urban map of Turin and, above all, brings to the surface the physical needs – such as housing – that drove so many to participate in the protest movements. Indeed, Turin is described as «grande, sprezzante, cattiva» («big, contemptuous, bad»)^[53] towards the newcomers as the only places in which the southerners could find a home were derelict, overcrowded buildings in the city centre or in the suburbs, where blocks of flats were hastily built^[54].

The text explores the vicissitudes of settlements created ex novo to absorb migratory flows, as in the case of the Strada delle Cacce complex, «un luogo di rara bruttezza» («a place of rare ugliness»)^[55] left to its own devices, with no services and no functioning sewers, where even doctors refused to go for check-ups. Yet, the future inhabitants had occupied the houses before they were even finished to protest against the drawing of lots for flats and to demand the right to housing for all^[56]. Turin’s city centre, with its elegant buildings and its nineteenth-century streets, seems to be the antithesis of that

nuova città fantasma di abitanti non-abitanti, che l’altra città, quella superficiale, quella reale, la metropoli delle fabbriche, aveva incamerato per decenni come una bocca insaziabile senza mai chiedersi, se non troppo tardi, dove avrebbe potuto metterli, dove avrebbero potuto condurre un’esistenza che non fosse già una sepoltura in vita. Una casa vera, una casa per essere umani. Anche se fuori restavano l’acquitrino, la solitudine e la distanza inestinguibile dagli “altri”^[57].

Barone thus gives visibility to the spontaneous attempts to organise dissent and the price paid by individuals such as Tonino Miccichè, a Sicilian Lotta Continua militant dismissed from FIAT for political reasons and active in the Falchera housing committee^[58], who was killed by a security guard while trying to settle a dispute over the use of a car park^[59]. The book recalls grassroots activism born of necessity, with workers – often immigrants – and their families as protagonists, such as the Barabba Circle, the workers’ coordination of Via Plava in Mirafiori Sud, which was also attended by Leonardo^[60].

Among the many sites of protest and resistance against institutionalised violence that are evoked in the novel, the most striking example is probably Villa Azzurra, described as the asylum where children were interned and «la città dei reietti, la città nascosta, imbarazzante e ferita che non suscitava nessun clamore e nessuna geometrica potenza» («the city of outcasts, the hidden, embarrassing and wounded city that did not raise a cry and had no geometric power»)^[61]. The terrorist attack in December 1977 on the former head doctor Giorgio Coda, responsible for the cruel methods used on his patients, was a vindictive gesture of spectacular violence. However, the decision to turn this site into a home for disadvantaged young people, by a cooperative in which Leonardo himself had worked for the last fifteen years, had a completely different effect^[62].

Città sommersa thus urges the reader to compare different forms of protest and promotes the continuity of social commitment, as opposed to the idea of retreating into the private sphere and individualism as a reaction to the traumatic experience of terrorism in the early 1980s^[63]. Leonardo’s biography exemplifies this process, culminating in his experience as a psychologist at Villa Azzurra: an activity carried out between the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, which, as we shall see, is the last stage of a life of activism.

Città sommersa: an underwater city, a buried memory

In its polysemy, the city of the novel’s title is also a metaphor for a memory of peaceful impegno that has been silenced, obscured by the violence of the years of lead. This removal is evoked in elliptical form from the very first pages of the novel, when Marta – at the funeral of her father, who died of cancer in 2011 – describes herself as incapable of seeing and understanding^[64].

According to Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O’Leary, the reasons for the persistence of a violent memory of the 1970s must be sought in the need to process a national trauma^[65]. However, this memory was mostly mediated by the perpetrators of the violence themselves, and it is only since 2007 that a new strand of narratives has emerged, defined as «postmemorial»^[66], which gives a voice to the families of the victims of terrorism. In these texts, their trauma is at the core of the narrative, and even if the perspective changes, the identification with the radical and dogmatic face of the decade is thus confirmed.

A similar limit can also be found in historiography. In 2005, Barbara Armani pointed out that in studies covering the period 1968-82, the focus was on mass movements and radical groups, while there was a «lack, or even absence» of the socio-cultural, subjective and generational context and dynamics^[67]. In this regard, the scholar spoke of a «failed history of the seventies» because the protagonists of the armed struggle had appropriated the narrative of those years, and this «possessive» use of memory resulted in a re-elaboration of the facts that was, at the same time, a «self-representation»^[68].

The distance that separates Città sommersa from the narratives that centre on political violence is first and foremost literary. This is the result not only of the poetic language but also of the structure, which emphasises the narrator’s inner journey through different temporal spaces with respect to the chronological progression, and thus succeeds in expressing the idea – to borrow an image from Calvino – of the wave-like motion of memories^[69]. Equally important is the integration into the writing of the voices of witnesses who have been erased from history/historiography; the text thus restores to the reader the plurality of ideas and visions that characterized that period of collective struggle.

The criticism of the way the 1970s are remembered emerges both from the events narrated and from the metatextual reflection on the mechanisms for constructing the past that unfolds in the novel. A clear example is the legal defense that Leonardo’s lawyer presented to the Court of Cassation before the start of the third trial, which proves how the trial has distorted the facts instead of bringing the truth to the surface^[70]. Moreover, from the very beginning of the investigation, it is the mother who warns Marta of the risks of manipulating the past when she reminds her that «[i] fatti. Non saranno mai i fatti, lo sai, vero?» («[t]he facts. They will never be the facts, you know that, don’t you?»)^[71]. The words of Agata, Leonardo’s first wife, are also illuminating. She questions the memories of the period because, in her opinion, only the violent ones are remembered, while the idealism and profound commitment experienced by many are lost: a period in which, in her opinion, it was possible to be happy^[72]. It is no coincidence that it is precisely the memory of the happiness of those years, even if lived amidst many material difficulties, that lives on in the testimonies collected by Marta^[73].

Although the father’s biography elicits the possibility of an alternative narrative of those years, it remains to be clarified why such memory was removed from the collective imagination. Reflecting on the nexus between memory and activism, Rigney speaks of «differential memorability» to explain the different memorial potential of events and points out the difficulty for peaceful protests to achieve the same resonance as violent ones^[74]. Drawing on Aleida Assmann’s discussion of the concepts of «canon» and «archive» to explain the dynamics between «working memory»^[75] and passive remembering, Rigney argues that while non-violent forms of protest tend to be archived, they have the potential to enter the active canon of cultural memory when violence comes into play, as violent death represents a powerful memorial device^[76]. However, the scholar maintains that by placing the emphasis on the concept of «outrage»^[77] and thus on the active role of those claiming rights, and not on the trauma of helpless victims, it is possible to frame the memory of violence against activism within a dynamic of action and reaction, or anger and hope^[78]. In this way, the memory of peaceful protests can have a performative potential and «becomes itself a renewed act of resistance»^[79].

Città sommersa exemplifies Rigney’s theory by memorializing the biography of a peaceful activist whose life, despite being marked by violence, is mainly a story of non-violent resistance to social injustice. From the very first page, in fact, Leonardo is presented as someone who escaped death but was persecuted, or at least ostracised, by both the Italian justice system and his fellow activists, first because he did not follow the iron line of Servire il Popolo, then because he was considered a traitor when he was released from prison and “therefore” – according to some of his former comrades – «must have betrayed» them in order to regain his freedom^[80]. Nevertheless, the memory of his non-violent activism resonates in the novel and, thanks to the narrative, retains its urgency. Following Rigney’s terminology, the memory of Leonardo’s activism mediated by Città sommersa («memory of activism») might be considered a «memory in activism», that is, as a memory of earlier protests that is capable of shaping new movements in the present^[81]. Barone’s literary mediation of Leonardo’s impegno would, then, stand as an example of a cultural memory with performative potential; for this to happen, however, the legacy of this experience – like a relay race – must be taken up by those who come after^[82].

The 1970s through the lens of postmemory and generational identity

In Città sommersa, the narrative of the 1970s is told by Marta Barone, that is, from the perspective of the children of those who were the protagonists of the protest movements. The concept of generation, as Astrid Erll points out, is a cultural construct that defines the identity of a group («generational identity/generationality»), but it always implies a diachronic reference to genealogy^[83]. In fact, the exploration of the past is not limited to bringing Leonardo’s experience to the surface; it accompanies Marta’s inner search in the confrontation with her father. The story reveals the difficulty of establishing a stable and peaceful relationship with a man who lived his social engagement in an all-encompassing way, «always doubling the bet after losing the previous shot», as the definition of the martingale system in the novel’s epigraph suggests^[84]. By recounting Leonardo’s involvement in the protest movements of the 1970s, which has never been told before, Barone also shows how her father’s choices and his unjust conviction for terrorism have affected her life. In so doing, she seems to be positioning herself in what Marianne Hirsch has defined as the «generation of postmemory»^[85].

However, Marta is warned by a former member of Servire il Popolo not to judge her father too harshly^[86], while another witness points out the danger of interpreting Leonardo’s biography as the «storia di una caduta» (the «story of a fall»)^[87], that is, a failure because – despite everything – her father was consistent to the end in his struggle for justice.

The turning point was the discovery of some unsigned typewritten pages whose style reminded Marta of her father’s «political mind»^[88]. According to her, this text, probably written before Leonardo’s arrest at the beginning of the 1980s, is a kind of “testament” in which we can see traces of her father’s self-criticism of his militancy in Servire il Popolo and his decision to distance himself from the «“Grande Progetto, di un’unica chiave di decifrazione della realtà per cercare invece chiavi diverse, progetti diversi, una trasmissione di linguaggi e di conoscenze molteplici” con cui mettere in atto un impegno “più stimolante e più vivo”» («“Great Project, from a single key to decipher reality, in order to look instead for other keys, other projects, a transmission of different languages and knowledge” with which to pursue a “more stimulating and lively” commitment»)^[89]. In fact, Leonardo continued his social engagement until he started working as a psychologist at Villa Azzurra. His activism thus evolved, revealing a man who had learned his lesson from his experience in Servire il Popolo and confirmed his rejection of armed struggle in the pursuit of social justice. His choice is in line with Barbara Armani’s intuition that

una parte della militanza formata dai giovanissimi dei tardi anni settanta abbia cercato nuove forme di impegno politico e sociale che sono in parte rintracciabili nella crescita esponenziale delle associazioni culturali e di volontariato nel decennio successivo, nelle associazioni ambientaliste, nella proliferazione dei centri sociali come fabbriche creative, nella rinascita di culture antagoniste legate ai movimenti altermondialisti degli anni novanta^[90].

It is this discovery that offers Marta a chance to re-establish a genealogical link with her father, to recognise his legacy, while being aware of the differences between the two generations. In fact, she has to accept – as a colleague tells her – that the model of commitment of the 1970s «no longer works»^[91] because the present, in Marta’s words, «[e]ra, ed è ancora un’epoca povera, in cui qualsiasi slancio emotivo e intellettuale poteva avvenire soltanto con un’altra monade, al tavolino di un bar o al telefono» («was, and still is, a poor era, in which any emotional and intellectual outburst could only take place with another monad, at a bar table or on the phone»)^[92]. This is the conclusion that she reaches after fantasizing about being part of a community, not «gruppi chiusi uniti da un’ideologia artistica, dei quali non [si] interessava affatto, ma quelle composite, fluttuanti riunioni fra soggetti diversi che mantenevano fermamente la propria individualità eppure leggevano agli altri le loro poesie o i passi dei loro romanzi man mano che procedevano» («closed groups united by an artistic ideology, in which they [were] not interested at all, but those composite, fluctuating gatherings of different subjects who firmly maintained their individuality and yet read their poems or passages from their novels to others as they went along»)^[93].

Conclusion

In an evocative style that does not spare the reader from the horrors of terrorism, Città sommersa conveys a memory of the 1970s that goes beyond the imagery of political violence. In fact, it focuses on the story of southerners like Leonardo to remember their indignation and non-violent activism as a positive legacy of the protest movements. The micro-stories told thus show us that these were also “happy years” because great ideals were lived out through daily personal commitment: a moral attitude that coincides with what Marco Polo says at the end of Invisible Cities, and which seems to be shared by the novel’s author:

L’inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n’è uno, è quello che è già qua, l’inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti; accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui; cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all’inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio^[94].

As the events of the 1970s are not narrated by those who directly experienced them, but by the next generation that has to deal with that past, Città sommersa could also be considered a form of postmemory. Marta Barone critically engages with Leonardo’s legacy; at the end of her search, she finally accepts her father’s choices and, despite their differences and aware of the need to continue opposing injustice, seems to see in his activism a fuel for new practices of resistance.

In this sense, beyond the reconstruction of the protest movements, Barone’s novel can be read as a metatextual reflection on writing as a powerful «carrier of memory». In the end, it is the narration itself that shapes the remembrance of the 1970s, turning it into a «memory of the outrage» and, in so doing, transforming Leonardo’s indignation and lifelong activism into a mobilizing force for the present. A hybrid work that is actually many books in one, Città sommersa assigns literature the task of rescuing from oblivion the past struggle against injustice, but also of imagining new horizons on which to project the desire for a fairer world^[95].

 

1. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili [1972], Milano, Mondadori, 1993, pp. 10-11. For the English version of Calvino’s work, see Invisible cities [1974], translated by William Weaver, London, Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, 1996. The quotation is on pp. 7-8: «In vain, great-hearted Kublai, shall I attempt to describe Zaira, city of high bastions. I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades’ curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper’s swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen’s nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat’s progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some way was the queen’s illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock. […] As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls». ↑

2. M. Revelli, Lavorare in Fiat da Valletta ad Agnelli e Romiti. Operai Sindacati Robot, Milano, Garzanti, 1989, p. 29: «They came from the south, from the vast areas of unemployment in the south – 37% from Apulia, 23% from Sicily, 13% from Calabria, 10% from Campania – and, during their long journey, they consumed a long-standing laceration of peasant roots. All in one direction: from the countryside to the city. All somehow involved in an arduous geographical but also social and political journey: from the periphery to the centre, from marginality to prominence, from subalternity to power. […] [T]his army of boundless pioneers sought, in a disorderly way, just this: not only a salary, a job, a place to live, but “a centre”. A cardinal point on which to graft the elaboration of a new citizenship». ↑

3. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili, cited, the quotation is on p. 10: «Di quest’onda che rifluisce dai ricordi la città s’imbeve come una spugna e si dilata». Id., Invisible cities, cited, p. 7: «As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands». ↑

4. A. Cancellieri, Non so(no) dove sono. Spazi in-formazione e mappe performative, in «Lo Squaderno. Exploration in Space and Society», March 2010, 15, pp. 27-30, the quotation is on p. 27: «Come ha sottolineato la fenomenologia e, in modo particolarmente efficace Merleau-Ponty, il mondo, gli spazi e i luoghi, sono incorporati ‘dentro’ di noi e, allo stesso tempo, noi siamo interamente fuori da noi stessi, negli spazi e luoghi nei quali abitiamo». ↑

5. M. Barone, Città sommersa, Milano, Bompiani, 2020. ↑

6. On the concept of “plurimedial constellation” see Plurimediale Konstellationen: Film und kulturelle Erinnerung, edited by A. Erll, S. Wodianka, Berlin, de Gruyter, 2008. ↑

7. On the cultural memories of terrorism see: Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969-2009, edited by P. Antonello, A. O’Leary, Oxford, Legenda, 2009; Terrorism, Italian Style: Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema, edited by R. Glynn, G. Lombardi, A. O’Leary, London, IGRS Books, 2012.

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8. This is the defence in law that Leonardo Barone’s lawyer submitted to the Court of Cassation before the third trial: M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 36. The charge was participation in an armed gang for providing medical assistance to a Prima Linea terrorist: ivi, p. 38. On this terrorist organisation, see: A. Tanturli, Prima Linea. L’altra lotta armata (1974-1981), Roma, Deriveapprodi, 2018. On leftist terrorism, see: M. Galfrè, La guerra è finita. L’Italia e l’uscita dal terrorismo 1980-1987, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2014 and Ead., Left-wing armed struggle and political violence in 1970s Italy, in «Twentieth Century Communism», 2010, 2, pp. 114-40. ↑

9. L. Cecchini, Ethics of Conviction vs Ethics of Responsibility in Cinematic Representations of Italian Left-Wing Terrorism of the 1970s, in Terrorism, Italian Style… cited, pp. 195-213, the quotation is on p. 195. ↑

10. On the expression “Years of lead” see P. Antonello, A. O’Leary, Introduction, in Imagining Terrorism…, cited, pp. 1-15: 11, n. 1. ↑

11. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage: How Violence Against Protestors is Remembered, in «Social Research: An International Quarterly», LXXXVII, 2020, 3, pp. 707-33, the quotation is on p. 725. ↑

12. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 38 (italics in the original). ↑

13. F. Tomasi, Spazio (urbano) e narrativa: qualche considerazione, in La geografia del racconto. Sguardi interdisciplinari sul paesaggio urbano nella narrativa italiana contemporanea, edited by D. Papotti, F. Tomasi, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2014, pp. 13-24, the quotation is on p. 20: «“palinsesto” nel quale tracce diverse si sovrappongono “spazializzando la storia”». ↑

14. D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1990, p. 218. ↑

15. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili, cited, p. 10. Id., Invisible cities, cited, p. 7. ↑

16. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, art. cited, pp. 707-33; Ead., Afterword: The Multiple Entanglements of Memory and Activism, in Remembering Social Movements: Memory and Activism, edited by S. Berger, S. Scalmer, C. Wicke, London, Routledge, 2021, pp. 299-304. ↑

17. See M. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, New York, Columbia University Press, 2012, and A. Erll, Generation in Literary History: Three Constellations of Generationality, Genealogy, and Memory, in «New Literary History», XLV, 2014, 3, pp. 385-409. Following Erll, “generationality” is here intended as «generational identity»: ivi, p. 285. ↑

18. A. Rigney, Remaking the memory and the agency of the aesthetic, in «Memory Studies», XIV, 2021, 1, pp. 10-23. ↑

19. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, p. 725. (italics in the original). ↑

20. A. Rigney, Remembering Hope: Transnational activism beyond the traumatic, in «Memory Studies», XI, 2018, 3, pp. 368-80.

    ↑

21. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili, cited, pp. 34-35. Id., Invisible cities, cited, p. 30. ↑

22. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 104. ↑

23. Ivi, p. 104, p. 56; cfr. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 77. ↑

24. The same photo is described on p. 176: «era la foto per un documento di un bambino molto bello e molto serio, i capelli ondulati pettinati con la riga da una parte, vestito per l’occasione con una giacca elegante» («It was the photo for a document of a very handsome and very serious child, with wavy hair combed and parted on one side, dressed for the occasion in a smart jacket»). ↑

25. Ivi, p. 47. ↑

26. Ibidem. ↑

27. Cfr. A. Chetta, Lo stradario della Torino di piombo: sangue e rivolta politica negli anni 70 (17-02-2020), in «Corriere della Sera», https://torino.corriere.it/cultura/20_febbraio_17/stradario-torino-piombo-sangue-rivolta-politica-anni-70-aa21f9e4-516d-11ea-b3f1-eafceba2b87d.shtml (last accessed: 30/03/2024). ↑

28. On Leonardo’s arrival in Turin, see: M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 127. ↑

29. Ivi, p. 24. ↑

30. Ivi, p. 71. ↑

31. Ivi, p. 82. ↑

32. Ivi, p. 184 and p. 75. ↑

33. Ivi, p. 142. ↑

34. Ivi, p. 45 and pp. 80-81. ↑

35. Ivi, p. 45. ↑

36. Ivi, p. 142. ↑

37. Ivi, p. 141. ↑

38. M. Revelli, Il ’68 a Torino. Gli esordi: la comunità studentesca di Palazzo Campana, in «Rivista di Storia Contemporanea», April 1, 1989; 18, 2, pp. 139-88, the quotation is on p. 5. ↑

39. Ibidem. ↑

40. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, pp. 121-23 and p. 151. ↑

41. Ivi, p. 212. ↑

42. Ivi, p. 214. ↑

43. Ivi, p. 212. ↑

44. A. Vanolo, The Fordist city and the creative city: Evolution and resilience in Turin, Italy, in «City, Culture and Society», 2015, 6, pp. 69-74, cited on p. 70. On the symbiotic relation between the city and FIAT, see: N. Pizzolato, Challenging global capitalism. Labor migration, radical struggle, and urban change in Detroit and Turin, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 59-117. ↑

45. M. Revelli, Il ’68 a Torino. Gli esordi…, cited, p. 6. ↑

46. A. Vanolo, The Fordist…, cited, p. 70. ↑

47. M. Foucault, Of Other Spaces, in «Diacritics», XVI, 1986, 1, pp. 22-27, cited on p. 24: heterotopias are «something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted». ↑

48. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 139. ↑

49. Ivi, p. 122. ↑

50. Ivi, pp. 122-23. ↑

51. Ivi, p. 125. ↑

52. See M. Revelli, Lavorare in Fiat, cited. ↑

53. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 123. ↑

54. The comic strip starring Gasparazzo, invented by Roberto Zamarin and published in 1972 in «Lotta Continua», recounts the vicissitudes and struggles of immigrants: N. Pizzolato, Revolution in a Comic Strip: Gasparazzo and the Identity of Southern Migrants in Turin, 1969-1975, in «International Review of Social History», LII, 2007, pp. 59-75. ↑

55. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 186. ↑

56. Ivi, p. 190. ↑

57. Ivi, p. 187 («new ghost town of non-inhabitants, which the other town, the superficial one, the real one, the metropolis of factories, had been hoarding for decades like an insatiable mouth without ever asking itself, until it was too late, where it could put them, where they could lead an existence that was not already a living burial ground. A real home, a home for human beings. Even if outside, the bog, the loneliness and the unsurmountable distance from “others” remained»). ↑

58. Ivi, p. 194. ↑

59. Ivi, pp. 194-95. ↑

60. Ivi, pp. 228-29. ↑

61. Ivi, p. 240 and p. 245. ↑

62. Ivi, p. 25 and p. 243. On the trial of Giorgio Coda see Alberto Papuzzi, Piera Patti, Portami su quello che canta. Processo a uno psichiatra, Torino, Einaudi, 1977 and, more recently, also the homonymous film (2018) by Marino Bronzino and Claudio Zucchellini (BroZuc Production). ↑

63. Cfr. P. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy 1943-1980, London, Penguin Books, 1990, p. 383. ↑

64. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 23. ↑

65. P. Antonello, A. O’Leary, Introduction, in Imagining Terrorism…, cited, p. 1. ↑

66. This concept is discussed in Era Mio Padre: Italian Terrorism of the Anni Di Piombo in the Postmemorials of Victims Relatives, edited by S. Gastaldi, D. Ward, Oxford, Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 2018. ↑

67. B. Armani, Italia anni Settanta. Movimenti, violenza politica e lotta armata tra memoria e rappresentazione storiografica, in «Storica», XI, 2005, 32, pp. 41-82. ↑

68. Ivi, p. 42 and p. 43. ↑

69. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili, cited, p. 10. Id., Invisible cities, cited, p. 7. ↑

70. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, pp. 35-46. ↑

71. Ivi, p. 49 (italics in the original). ↑

72. Ivi, p. 50: «Non sai, non sai che tempi erano quelli. Ci hanno cancellati. Sono rimasti solo gli assassini. Tu non sai come si poteva essere felici. E noi eravamo felici» («You don’t know, you don’t know what those times were like. They erased us. Only the murderers are left. You have no idea how one could be happy. And we were happy»). ↑

73. Ivi, pp. 140-41 and p. 156. ↑

74. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, p. 716. ↑

75. A. Assmann, Erinnerungsraume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedachtnisses, München, C. H. Beck, 1999, pp. 130-45, quoted in A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, p. 709. ↑

76. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, p. 709. On the definition of «canon» and «archive» see: A. Assmann, The Religious Roots of Cultural Memory, in «Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift», CIX, 2008, 4, pp. 270-92, in particular p. 276: «Like forgetting, remembering also has an active and a passive side. These two modes of cultural memory may be illustrated by different rooms of a museum which presents its prestigious objects to the viewers in carefully staged shows but stows away other paintings and objects in inaccessible cellars or attics. In the following, I will refer to the show rooms of cultural memory as the canon and the attics or cellars as the archive». ↑

77. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, pp. 712-13: «The word “outrage” evokes the egregious violation of a norm or law combined with a moral judgement on the part of an aggrieved party». ↑

78. Ivi, p. 713. ↑

79. Ivi, p. 725. ↑

80. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, pp. 282-83. ↑

81. A. Rigney, Mediations of Outrage…, cited, p. 708. ↑

82. Ibidem. ↑

83. A. Erll, Generation in Literary History…, cited, p. 387. ↑

84. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 9: «Martingala (s.f.): jouer à la -, giocare raddoppiando sempre la posta perduta nel colpo precedente». ↑

85. M. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, cited. ↑

86. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 116: «Tu sei di un altro mondo. […] Abbi pietà di queste persone. Credevano in quello che facevano e la maggior parte di loro non ha mai fatto del male a nessuno, se non a sé stessi. Sono stati divorati dalla Storia. Non deriderli troppo; non fare troppo sarcasmo» («They are from another world. […] Have mercy on these people. They believed in what they were doing and most of them never harmed anyone but themselves. They have been swallowed up by History. Don’t mock them too much; don’t be too sarcastic»). ↑

87. Ivi, p. 244. ↑

88. Ivi, p. 232. See also p. 274 and p. 278. ↑

89. Ivi, p. 231. ↑

90. B. Armani, Italia anni Settanta…, cited, p. 298: «part of the militancy formed by the very young in the late 1970s sought new forms of political and social engagement, some of which left traces in the exponential growth of cultural and voluntary associations in the following decade, in environmentalist associations, in the proliferation of social centres as creative factories, [and] in the rebirth of antagonist cultures linked to the anti-world movements of the 1990s». ↑

91. M. Barone, Città sommersa, cited, p. 180. ↑

92. Ivi, p. 181. ↑

93. Ivi, p. 180. ↑

94. I. Calvino, Le città invisibili, cited, p. 164. Id., Invisible cities, cited, p. 151: «The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space». ↑

95. This article is an expanded version of «Noi eravamo felici!»: gli anni Settanta fra memoria dell’attivismo e identità generazionale in Città sommersa, which has been published in Anni Settanta: la grande narrazione, edited by Silvia Contarini, Claudio Milanesi, Firenze, Franco Cesati, 2024, pp. 29-39. All quotations from primary sources in the text – with the exception of those from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino – have been translated from Italian by the author. ↑

(fasc. 52, 31 luglio 2024)