Memory in Action: Mediatised Public Memory and the Symbolic Construction of Conflict in Student Movements Lorenzo Zamponi Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Florence, April, 2015 (submission) European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences Memory in Action: Mediatised Public Memory and the Symbolic Construction of Conflict in Student Movements Lorenzo Zamponi Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Examining Board Professor Donatella Della Porta, EUI and Scuola Normale Superiore (Supervisor) Professor William A. Gamson, Boston College Professor Ron Eyerman, Yale University Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI © Lorenzo Zamponi, 2015 No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author Abstract Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions. In my research I analyse the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movement participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media representation of a contentious past, influence the social construction of identity in the contemporary movements? To answer these questions I focus on the student movements in Italy and Spain, analysing the content and format of media sources in order to draw a map of the different narrative representations of a contentious past, while I use qualitative interviews to investigate their influence on contemporary mobilisations. In particular, I focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the different public fields, identifying the role of terrorism and political transitions in shaping in the present the publicly discussed image of the past. The thesis draws on a qualitative content analysis of media material, tracing the phases of the commemoration, putting it in historical context, and attempting to reconstruct the different mechanisms of contentious remembrance. Furthermore, I refer to interviews conducted with contemporary student activists in order to assess the relationship between the public memory of a contentious past and the strategic choices of contemporary movements. 5 6 Index Part 1 - Introduction, theoretical framework and methods .............................. 13 Chapter 1- Introduction .................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2 - Theoretical framework.................................................................................. 21 1. Conceptual roots .......................................................................................................... 21 2. The contentious field of public memory and the symbolic construction of conflict ... 24 3. The media as the arena of public memory ................................................................... 28 Chapter 3 - Methods, cases, and research design ............................................................ 33 1. Media content analysis ................................................................................................. 33 2. Interviews with contemporary activists ....................................................................... 35 2.1 Memory in located memory texts .............................................................................. 36 3. Case studies .................................................................................................................. 39 3.1 Contentious past ......................................................................................................... 40 3.2 Present ........................................................................................................................ 41 4. An experience of engaged research .............................................................................. 43 Part 2 - Memory in discourse: representations of the 1960s and 1970s in the media forum ........................................................................................................................ 47 Chapter 4 - Conflictual memories of the Italian student movement: the ‘long '68’ in the field of public memory ................................................................................................ 49 1 The student movement, '68, '77 .................................................................................... 49 2. Historiography ............................................................................................................. 49 3. Public memory ............................................................................................................. 51 4. Tracing the paths of two events in 40 years of public memory ................................... 59 5. The ‘battle of Valle Giulia’ .......................................................................................... 69 6. The ‘Chase of Lama’ ................................................................................................... 83 7. Concluding remarks ..................................................................................................... 93 7.1 Possessive memory and contentious politics ............................................................. 93 7.2 The decreasing malleability of mnemonic material ................................................... 94 7.3 The two '68s: ‘68-counterculture versus the '68-struggle .......................................... 95 7.4 Valle Giulia as the canon of social conflict (the role of cultural artefacts) ................ 96 7.5 Repositories of memory ............................................................................................. 97 Chapter 5 - Conflictual memories of the Spanish student movement: representations of the Spanish '68 in the public memory of the transition ............................................. 99 1. The Spanish '68 between student mobilisation and anti-Francoism ............................ 99 7 2. The debate on memory and the Spanish transition .................................................... 100 3. Sources: the Spanish press and the transition to democracy...................................... 101 4. La capuchinada: 1968 before 1968 ........................................................................... 102 5. ‘En extrañas circustancias’: the memory and oblivion of Enrique Ruano's death ..... 126 6. Concluding remarks ................................................................................................... 147 6.1 Political context, social mobilisation and different narratives ................................. 147 6.2 Actors: appropriation and possessive memory ........................................................ 148 6.3 Democratisation, controversial victims and the sixty-eight-isation of Spanish memory .......................................................................................................................... 148 Part 3 - Memory in action: mnemonic practices, collective identities and strategic choices in contemporary student movements ..................................... 153 Chapter 6 - Syntax: the forms of memory ..................................................................... 155 1. Memories, legacies, continuities and rituals. Keeping together macro, meso and micro levels. ............................................................................................................................. 155 2. Syntax: the forms of memory .................................................................................... 157 2.1 Origin stories and foundation myths ........................................................................ 157 2.2 Organisational or material structures remaining from the past ................................ 160 2.3 Protest traditions and political connotations of the local field of action .................. 165 2.4 Comparisons between waves of mobilisation .......................................................... 168 2.5 ‘Classical’ repertoires and the textbook of student mobilisation ............................. 170 3. The forms of memory ................................................................................................ 172 Chapter 7 - Semantics: the competing narratives of student movement memories .. 175 1.1 Competing memories ............................................................................................... 178 1.2 Resisting memories .................................................................................................. 180 2. What past do activist refer to? ................................................................................... 182 3. Discussion .................................................................................................................. 196 4. ‘We start from scratch every time’: the eternal turnover of the student movement ... 199 5. ‘What came before us, we lived it, as an organisation’: movement areas as mnemonic communities ..................................................................................................................