Trajectoires vers l’illégalité politique

Abstract

Between 1960 and 1980 Italy experienced several waves of terrorism (extreme right, extreme left, state terror). In order to understand the passage toward illegal political militancy and armed action, we conducted a qualitative sociological inquiry involving 33 militants from extra-parliamentary organizations characterized as extreme left. There we exhibited forms of “identity-related work” that led certain people from legal political action into clandestine operations, thus allowing us to propose a critical look at the work thus far accomplished on the Red Brigades. We have also placed in evidence the prevalence of phenomena of “identity-related amplification” in relation those of “appropriation of identity”, “transformation of identity”, or even “search for identity”.

Keywords

• Italy
• terrorism
• violence
• identity work
• Red Brigades