The Commemoration of Traumatic Events: Expiation, Elevation and Reconciliation in the Remaking of the Italian Resistance

The process by means of which past, dead collectivities become socially recognized as victims and, as such, worth of remembrance, seems to be a very specific one, where repertoires and frames of interpretation are utilized. In this paper, I focus on the relation between the commemorating agents and the image they portray of the commemorated collectivity. The paper stresses the importance of the analysis of the specific cultural devices by means of which this link is created and shaped. By focusing on three important events for Italian Republican history, I sketch three basic and idealtypic frames that deal with the relation between past and present collectivities: each of them stresses in a different way the overall distribution of symbolic power, the relevance of relations in the past and in the present, and the recognition of the social diachronic trajectory of the interpretation of the victims. The paper deals with the frames of elevation, expiation and reconciliation as important devices for the social construction of such relation.