Carte Italiane

In 1977, a new Italian student movement arose which turned itself explicitly against traditional left-wing parties and unions. This reaction can be placed in what Jennifer Burns (2001) has identified as a general ‘withdrawal of [literary-political] commitment to macro-political, left/right-wing ideologies, in favour of micro-political, community-based initiatives’ (1), in the 1970s. This is also reflected in the support the students in 1977 received from left-wing intellectuals who engaged more directly with social problems, especially in Bologna, where a student and sympathiser of a former left-wing, extra-parliamentary group - Francesco Lorusso - had been shot dead by a police officer during clashes, on 11 March 1977. A number of local intellectuals turned against the PCI and the way it had handled and interpreted the incidents of March 1977, and in this article I shall discuss the controversial relationship between these intellectuals and the hegemonic powers in Bologna after the incidents of March 1977.