I’ve lurked on Libcom for ages (a lot more now that I have an office job) but haven’t really posted properly before. Anyway, my little sister is doing Italian at uni and with some advice from me and a few Libcom articles has decided to write about this period of Italian history. Can anyone tell me whether my advice is right? And any comments on the structure she proposes? And more broadly point to any books/articles that haven’t been posted before that might be useful for her. She’s sympathetic to all this stuff but is approaching it in this detail for the first time.
In this plan I think she’s equating the Movement of 77 exclusively with this article, which is problematic:
http://libcom.org/history/laughter-will-bury-you-all-irony-protest-language-struggle-italian-1977-movement-1
Her plan:
"PART ONE
I will place the Movement of '77 within the context of the emergence of the "new social
movements".I will try to explain the socio-political context of Italy at the time, then
present these new social movements and the means of action typical of them. I will
attempt to distinguish between movements relating to class struggle (up to 1968, say)
from those that develop later, such as those that call into question the system of party
and trade union movements in politics, and the movements relating to "everyday" struggles
such as gender equality (feminism), different sectors of society (student movement) or
social recognition (gay movement).
PART TWO:
I will then focus on the Movement of '77 itself and the creative means of action it
implements, such as magazines (Re Nudo, Rosso, La Salamandra , Il Male etc), songs, and
the radio (Radio Alice).
PART THREE:
Finally, I will examine the legacy it has left, specifically how the
images/phrases/messages of the movement have been re-used, for example on the internet,
and in advertising."
My rushed response before I went for lunch at work:
“I think that’s a really good essay plan.
I would call into question the idea that class struggle was the focus up until 1968 and was in decline afterwards though. The period between 68 and 77 saw an intensification of class struggle.
Parties and trade unions lost a lot of legitimacy between 68 and 77 which coincided with/maybe reflected an increase in class struggle. And the rise of the ideas of ‘autonomism’ and ‘operaismo’ (see Antonio Negri) whereby workers didn’t seek to use mediators (parties/trade unions) to articulate demands and control class struggle.
Going for lunch and will then have a think about it a bit more and maybe post it on Libcom forums and ask for people’s advice.”
So, any advice?
Can comment on articles and discussions
Er... to be honest I tempted to say my advice would be to choose a more manageably-sized topic. What was going on in that period was so huge that, even now, over 3 decades later and with a sizeable number of people who's lives were touched by this, going on to be writers and academics, no-one has yet managed to write a definitive history of this "social explosion".
Most of the important documents are completely out of print and only available through various archives. In english the Red Notes books are out of print, "Dear Comrade", the selected letters from Lotta Continua are out of print, etc, etc, etc. Even with good Italian (which presumably your sister has if she's doing it at uni) available sources, other than the archival, are inadequate. I haven't read it myself, but by all accounts DeriveApprodi's "Futuro anteriore : dai Quaderni rossi ai movimenti globali. Ricchezze e limiti dell'operaismo italiano", based on interviews of movement participants, is possibly the best starting point. But still...
To the best of my knowledge, you are correct. The student movement saw itself as very much part of the class struggle. The whole point of the idea of the "socialised worker" as tendential figure, replacing the "mass worker", was the inclusion of the youth movement of students, unemployed, feminists, queers, etc. as part of the new configuration of the class war against the state and capital. That's not to say there weren't a hundred different tendencies and the conflicts between them weren't part of the whole process - the feminist critique of the continual patriarchy within the movement was a contributing factor to the auto-dissolution of Lotta Continua, for e.g. (the letters page of Lotta Continua effectively served as one of the main sounding boards for the whole movement).
But my main fear would be that if your sister got sucked into looking into this all in any depth, she might never finish her degree. Not very helpfull, but there you go...