Giving voice to silence: A study of state violence in bolzaneto prison during the Genoa G8 summit

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the legal narratives produced during hearings at the trial for violence that took place inside the Bolzaneto prison at the Genoa Group of Eight Summit (G8) of 2001. First we summarize the events of the G8, during which, according to international observers, there occurred the most serious violation of human rights in a Western country since the Second World War. Then comes the empirical research conducted on Bolzaneto prison during the trial, adopting three perspectives of analysis: Courtroom narrative, social delegitimization, and therapeutic jurisprudence. The research on courtroom narrative analyzes the relationship between social structure and power on the one hand and linguistic patterning and use on the other. On the basis of the qualitative analysis of the storytelling, we elaborate our conception of delegitimization, distinguished into definitional, behavioral, and environmental. Finally, we outline the role of the law as a therapeutic agent in reducing the negative consequence of delegitimization, which in the case of Bolzaneto prison turns out to be a practice of state violence as exercised within a sociopolitical context.