Truth,justice,freedom: The trial as an emancipatory narrative framework in the cultural actions of Giuseppe Fava

Abstract

In the late 1950s, after a brief career as a lawyer, Giuseppe Fava (Palazzolo Acreide, 1925) became a journalist. The exploitative activities of Cosa Nostra in the tragic aftermath of the Second World War made clear to him Sicilian society’s urgent need for progress towards greater social justice so that violence could be prevented. Fava developed an ethical conception of journalism and, by extension, of literature and theatre. ‘Where there’s truth’, Fava wrote, ‘justice can be done and freedom can be defended’. This article shows how Giuseppe Fava put his intellectual impegno into practice in order to provide the Sicilian public with a means of interpreting and understanding the mechanisms behind the Sicilian tragedy, and an incentive to take up their collective responsibility. In order to illustrate how Fava translated his journalistic and intellectual impegno into cultural actions (Freire, 1998a) of an emancipatory character, it focuses on his use of the criminal trial as a metaphor for his journalistic investigation into the ills of Sicilian society in his essay Processo alla Sicilia (1967), and as a narrative framework for the closing chapters of his novels Prima che vi uccidano (1976) and Passione di Michele (1980) and for his courtroom dramas La Violenza (1969) and Ultima Violenza (1983). It shows how, by literally co-opting the audience as jurors in the trial – a technique which is in many respects reminiscent of the methodologies for conscientisation developed by Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal – Fava stimulated the Sicilian public to pursue their own freedom and dignity through the creative and continuous transformation of their contextual reality.

Keywords

conscientisation Giuseppe Fava impegno mafia Paulo Freire

Introduction

Si ha ragione a osservare che Giuseppe Fava non è stato solo il quarto giornalista ucciso dalla mafia. È stato qualcosa di più, molto di più. … Giuseppe Fava è stato, di fatto, il primo intellettuale ucciso dalla mafia. Non si è colpito in lui il depositario di segreti, l’autore di inchieste esplosive: in lui si è colpito l’uomo di cultura, il versatile impegno intellettuale profuso nella lotta contro la mafia. (Dalla Chiesa, 1984: 4)

With these memorable words, in January 1984, Nando dalla Chiesa – a Professor of Sociology with a specialisation in organised crime – interpreted Giuseppe Fava’s social role as an intellectual to have helped pave the way for modern anti-mafia culture. Even though, among other things, Giuseppe Fava was a critically acclaimed novelist and playwright, and a mentor in civic engagement for a whole generation of Catanian journalists, his violent murder on the eve of the 12th issue of his anti-mafia monthly I Siciliani has long overshadowed the public memory and appreciation of his cultural versatility as an intellectual. So far, his literary oeuvre has been nearly excluded from the established canons of Sicilian narrative and consequently from academic research.¹

In this article, I aim to show that one of the most important aspects of Fava’s intellectual response to the ills in his society was exactly the symbiotic relation he established between his ethical conception of journalism as a social force capable of preventing and fighting social injustice on the one hand, and fictional narratives on the other. From this point of view, Fava’s fictional narratives could be regarded as products of the same interpretation of intellectual engagement with social issues as the one he expressed in the article Lo spirito di un giornale, which can be considered his manifesto of journalistic impegno. I will, moreover, offer insight into Fava’s dynamic and reader-oriented conception of intellectual impegno, aimed at emancipating his readers. From his journalistic and fictional writings, Fava does not emerge as an intellectual who felt responsible for dictating a certain course of action to his readers so that they could solve specific social issues. Rather, he emerges as an intellectual who encouraged his readers to bring to bear on his works their empirical knowledge of reality, ‘the traces of a set of factors and experiences which [constituted their] subjecthood’ (Burns, 2001: 6). In other words, he recognised his readers’ knowledge as well as their active role in the interpretation of his own works: their capacity for ‘associating and dissociating’, in which, according to Jacques Rancière, consists the emancipation of the spectator (Rancière, 2009: 17). Through his emancipatory cultural actions, Fava encouraged his readers to engage in independent, critical reflection upon and transforming action around their contextual reality and to become aware of their individual relationships with and responsibilities within that reality. This concept of intellectual engagement is very much in line with Pierpaolo Antonello’s dynamic, critical, emancipatory and constructive conception of postmodern impegno and with Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy.

Drawing on the rich terminological framework offered by latter theory, I will examine how the criminal trial helped Fava to translate this conception of intellectual impegno into cultural actions aimed at emancipating his readers and spectators. It offered a source of evidence for his research, a metaphor for his journalistic investigation of reality and a narrative framework for chapters in two of his novels and for two entire courtroom dramas.

In brief, the first part of this article will overview the origins and nature of Fava’s direct journalistic and literary engagement with social issues, as well as its affinity to the intellectual commitment of some of his Italian and foreign contemporaries. The second part presents an analysis of how the framework of the criminal trial offered Fava the possibility of handing over to his readers and spectators the keys to a more active and independent interpretation of reality and of their personal relationship to the oppressive forces at work in their society: ‘la coscienza umana che giudica un suo simile per giudicare se stessa’ (Fondazione Giuseppe Fava, 2015a).

Cultural acts for freedom

Only a few months after the conclusion of the Sicilian Campaign in the summer of 1943, 18-year-old Giuseppe Fava moved to Catania to study law. There, he soon realised what a decisive turning point the Sicilian Campaign had been for the history of his island, how it had marked the end of one war and the beginning of a more atrocious and terrible one and how, literally overnight, ‘un mondo finiva per sempre di esistere e un altro cominciava’ (Fava G, 1993: 9). In the aftermath of the Second World War, Cosa Nostra grew in strength and soon one oppressive system of power was replaced by another. During his studies, he explained in the preface to his play Ultima Violenza, Giuseppe Fava grew increasingly concerned about the dynamics of the society that was so dramatically changing around him. He became aware of the small number of options people had left when they were denied the right to live a dignified existence, of how utterly desperate many of them had to be and how devastated their spirits:

Quando avevo poco più di vent’anni, guardando ogni giorno la piccola società siciliana dentro la quale vivevo, gli uomini che partivano per il Venezuela, il Canada, l’Australia, le miniere del Belgio, la moltitudine di esseri umani che la fame, la disoccupazione, il bisogno, il dolore costringevano a cercare altrove per il mondo una possibilità, anzi una dignità di esistere, pensai come era facile trovare in mezzo a loro uomini disposti, per denaro, ad uccidere altri uomini. Non c’è uomo che per vivere, per vedere vivere i propri figli, alla fine non sia disposto a uccidere. (Fava G, 1988b: 3)

In other words, Fava understood that Cosa Nostra benefited from perpetuating the abject poverty and underdevelopment that plagued the island. Misery, he wrote 40 years later, was one of the three fundamental social and human components of the mafia phenomenon (Fava G, 1984: 21). Out of misery and ignorance – and in exchange for a job, a raccomandazione,² a salary or greater social dignity – men not only accepted the arrogance and dishonesty of those in power and resigned themselves to injustice, some of them were moreover also prepared to kill other human beings (Fava G, 1984: 21). Secondly, an overwhelming fear and consequent inertia dramatically deformed Sicilian society: ‘la paura chiude gli occhi ai testimoni’, he wrote, ‘paralizza le lingue, l’unica reazione è quella di fuggire o nascondersi, lasciando gli altri esseri umani al loro destino’ (Fava G, 1984: 21–22). And finally, the remoteness and absence of the State, its inability to protect and guarantee the Sicilians’ most fundamental rights – ‘giustizia … il lavoro, la scuola, l’ospedale, l’opera pubblica, il servizio civile’ – convinced many Sicilians that they were all responsible for their individual health, knowledge, dignity and safety (Fava G, 1984: 22). It is noteworthy that Fava did not ascribe the mafia problem to socio-economic and external political factors alone. He understood one of the major obstacles to Sicilian society’s liberation from mafia supremacy to be the submission with which many Sicilians reacted to the conditioning and provisioning practices of the mafia (Schneider and Schneider, 2003: 118). During a speech before an audience of secondary school students, Fava once described how this led to an almost complicit assimilation of Sicilian citizens into the dominating mafioso system of power:

Ecco che il siciliano, nella sua tragica solitudine di popolo e individuo, è diventato, ha coltivato dentro quest’anima mafiosa. … Quindi, partiamo da questo presupposto, per poter intanto serenamente giudicare noi stessi perché sennò, se non conosciamo la bestia che ci alleviamo dentro, non saremo mai in condizione di lottarla. … la mafia è la bestia, il male, terribile contro la quale dovete combattere per il resto della vostra vita. Una bestia alla quale potete condizionare il destino vostro e dei vostri figli. … Perché domani, … per avere un posto, una raccomandazione, per avere qualsiasi cosa alla quale magari avete diritto e che però non vi concedono, voi voterete per un politico mafioso. E diventerete anche voi, non soltanto schiavo ma complice della mafia. Noi viviamo dentro un sistema mafioso del quale tutti siamo complici. (Coordinamento Fava and Circuito Nomadica, 2013)

In order for Sicilians to take responsibility, it was absolutely necessary that they first concretely identified and disabled the mechanisms – of fatalism, indifference, fear and cowardice – inside their own minds, the mentality and patterns of behaviour that allowed the mafia as a criminal organisation to control them. Leonardo Sciascia – one of Fava’s most famous contemporaries, who was moreover internationally renowned for his literary anti-mafia commitment – also recognised these mechanisms and described them as a sentire mafioso that gave rise to an inner conflict within Sicilians who wished to oppose the mafia:

Quando denuncio la mafia, nello stesso tempo soffro poiché in me, come in qualsiasi siciliano, continuano a essere presenti e vitali i residui del sentire mafioso. Così, lottando contro la mafia io lotto anche contro me stesso, è come una scissione, una lacerazione. (Sciascia and Padovani, 1979: 74)

As will become clear further on in this article, Fava’s use of the term anima mafiosa should not be mistaken for what Jane and Peter Schneider would term an essentialist approach to Sicilian culture or to Sicilian mentality, ‘a [mould] of the past, implying that change must always come from outside’ (Schneider and Schneider, 2003: 112). Fava’s concept of Sicilian history was, on the contrary, fundamentally a dynamic one, as he believed its development to depend, in large part, on the individual choices and collective initiatives of Sicilian civil society. Already in the early 1950s, Fava understood that, in order to help raise Sicilians’ critical consciousness and help them overcome the violent mafia regime, he would have to fight for justice to be enhanced outside the courtrooms, within society. Only then would they be able to transform reality so as to emancipate themselves from the mafia and live a free and dignified existence (Coordinamento Fava and Circuito Nomadica, 2013). After a short experience as a lawyer, Fava decided to no longer pursue a career in the law and became a professional journalist. In Lo spirito di un giornale, the last editorial he wrote as the editor-in-chief of Catanian newspaper Giornale del Sud, Fava explained what role journalism and journalists could play in this process of liberation:

Io ho un concetto etico del giornalismo. Ritengo infatti che in una società democratica e libera quale dovrebbe essere quella italiana, il giornalismo rappresenti la forza essenziale della società. … Un giornalista incapace – per vigliaccheria o calcolo – della verità si porta sulla coscienza tutti i dolori umani che avrebbe potuto evitare, e le sofferenze, le sopraffazioni, le corruzioni, le violenze che non ̀ stato capace di combattere. Il suo stesso fallimento! Ecco lo spirito politico del Giornale del Sud ̀ questo! La verità! Dove c’̀ verità, si può realizzare giustizia e difendere la libertà! (Fava G, 1981)

Giuseppe Fava wrote the editorial after repeated attempts by the newspaper’s proprietors to dissuade him and his editorial team from making any direct references to Catanian mafia boss Benedetto Santapaola and from focusing too strongly on crime news or on any other news that could be detrimental to their political and entrepreneurial interests.³

It was a eulogy to investigative journalism and to the journalist’s capacity for self-determination and creativity in unveiling the uncensored truth and for retaining their freedom and independence from outside forces. The journalistic ethics and freedom Fava argued for were in stark contrast to the reticent, reserved and at times even collusive journalistic attitude to the mafia of other Sicilian media. In a period when Catania seemed immune to the mafia conspiracies and atrocities the whole world associated with Palermo, in 1980 the journalists of Giornale del Sud began to unveil the criminal nature of their city’s power system and its collusive relationship with Cosa Nostra. They were the first ones to attribute the numerous killings that were being committed in Catania to mafia violence and to mention the names of the various clans, while the city’s best-selling newspaper La Sicilia described the same killings as ‘delinquenza comune’ and ‘imprecisati regolamenti di conti’ (Fava C, 1991: 101). As economic, political and judiciary agreements accelerated the ascent and transformation of Cosa Nostra, society’s collective understanding of these mechanisms became one of the greatest potential threats to mafia supremacy. To avoid certain information from entering the Sicilians’ individual awareness and from becoming part of the public discourse, the mafia successfully intimidated and conditioned most of the Sicilian media. To be on the safe side, many editors and journalists prudently chose to avoid foregrounding mafia matters; others actively contributed to distract attention from the truth. During the three decades in which Fava was active as a journalist, those who succeeded in resisting these external pressures and who risked their lives by practising their profession with an ‘attitude of commitment, of rebellion, of individuality, of creativity, and of freedom’ that was similar to Fava’s more ‘existential’ journalistic orientation (Merrill, 1996: 8) were dangerously isolated and in the minority.⁴ Fava’s decision, in 1982, to found his own newspaper – the first issue of I Siciliani, the only outspokenly anti-mafia investigative monthly magazine in Italy, was published in January 1983 – was a direct consequence of the severe limitations on the freedom of information in Sicily.

In the 20 years preceding the editorial, Fava carried out journalistic investigations across his native island and diligently gathered information on the themes that characterised his epoch and that were at the root of the mafia tragedy. He visited wretchedly poor villages like Palma di Montechiaro and Licata that – due to the local authorities’ inability to decide how to spend public funds for the stimulation of economic growth and social development – were still confronted with widespread illiteracy, mass emigration, serious public health issues and consequently with the highest child mortality rates in Europe. He followed sulphur miners into the depths of the labyrinthine Cozzo Disi mine near Casteltermini and accompanied emigrants during the first hours of their endless train journey between Catania and Germany. By attesting to the dehumanising circumstances in which many Sicilians were forced to raise their children, Fava challenged his readers to acknowledge highly uncomfortable truths they could no longer afford to ignore. These in-depth investigations not only provided the basis for Fava’s essays and articles; they moreover inspired him to paint and to write novels, short stories, theatre plays, radio dramas, television documentaries and screenplays. In his search for the most appropriate medium through which to give a truthful and authentic representation and documentation of each of the themes that constituted the tragic and violent Sicilian reality, Fava often crossed the boundaries between literary genres and between fact and fiction. In so doing, he showed how the intellectual’s literary representation of the mafia phenomenon could be indissolubly connected with an empirical knowledge of Sicilian reality and with an empathic insight into the minds of the poorest Sicilians, whose voices were rarely heard. He was convinced that knowledge of their despair and unhappiness was indispensable to a thorough understanding of the remote, invisible, distant and tragic causes of the mafia (Fava G, 1984: 75). The fact that Giuseppe Fava established a symbiotic relationship between journalism and fictional storytelling suggests that his ethical conception of journalism was, by extension, also an ethical conception of culture aimed at fighting and preventing social injustice. The same determination Fava expressed in Lo spirito di un giornale (Fava G, 1981), to discover ‘tutti gli infiniti fatti e personaggi che animano la vita della società siciliana, e quasi sempre restano nel buio, intanati, nascosti, interrati’ with patience and diligence, to hand over to his readers the keys to an objective interpretation of their reality and to encourage them to transform it actively and conscientiously, can also be found in his novels and theatre plays. As Vincenzo Consolo suggested in an article he wrote shortly after Fava’s murder, the consequent hybridity and immediacy of his oeuvre may nevertheless have caused some of their contemporaries to fail to regard Fava as a literary author or as an intellectual of full status. While Fava put himself on a direct collision course with the violent mafia regime of silence and oppression, Consolo wrote, many of his contemporaries sought shelter from the violent Sicilian reality and fled into the ivory tower of literature, where they focused on the refinement of their language and on the embellishment of their style, dug into the past and desperately searched for poetry (Consolo, 1984: 42–43). In May 1983, in the fifth issue of I Siciliani, Fava himself had published a highly critical article about what he believed to be the overly sceptical, alienated and alienating cultural response the Sicilian intelligentsia offered to their epoch and to the modern anti-mafia movement that was taking form at the time. He did so in the form of a sharp, poignant and ironic portrait of Leonardo Sciascia, one of the most famous representatives of this intellectual elite: Alien Sciascia. Ritratto di un mito siciliano vivente. Nando dalla Chiesa later interpreted Fava’s different conception of intellectual impegno as follows: ‘Fava fu il primo organico rappresentante della nuova cultura che avrebbe trovato uno sbocco nella primavera palermitana e nel risveglio della società civile siciliana. Non poteva dunque, tra coloro che dominavano allora sul piano culturale, trovare consensi entusiasti’ (Cannavò, 1990: 14).

The social rather than political and the emancipatory rather than prescriptive intellectual impegno that animated Fava’s multifaceted oeuvre seems to forerun the ‘postmodern’ anti-mafia initiatives of Sicilian civil society and of the renewed movimento antimafia in the 1980s and 1990s.⁵ In retrospect – along with, though independently of, a handful of other innovative figures in 1960s and 1970s Sicily, like Danilo Dolci and Giuseppe Impastato – Giuseppe Fava can indeed be regarded as one of the intellectual bridge figures who showed a certain narrative of Sicilian reality to be possible and whose initiatives continue to elicit a variety of works and spontaneous anti-mafia initiatives ‘dal basso’ in response, promoted by the younger generations (Antonello, 2012: 18).

As the ‘thematic universe’ – the ‘complex of interacting themes’ which characterised their epoch, such as poverty, widespread illiteracy, oppression, corruption, organised crime, self-censorship, silence, fear and fatalism – shared more historical similarities with certain societies in the Third World than with the rest of Italy, these intellectuals’ impegno often corresponded more closely with that of some Latin American thinkers than with that of their Italian contemporaries.⁶ While Fava and Dolci observed how the most vulnerable Sicilians – such as the 1968 Belice earthquake victims, for example – were continuously thwarted in their yearning for a humane and dignified existence, Brazilian educator and intellectual Paulo Freire came to similar conclusions about the underdeveloped region around his native town Recife. There, too, an oppressive elite acted to maintain an unjust socio-economic situation that negated and curbed an oppressed majority (Freire, 1970: 93). Freire – who, like Fava, enrolled in law school in 1943 but practised law only for a very short period – developed what he called a ‘critical pedagogy’ to help the oppressed ‘surmount the situation of oppression’ by stimulating them to ‘critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they [could] create a new situation, one which [made] possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity’ (Freire, 1970: 31–32). The theoretical framework Freire presented in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as well as some of the concepts developed by theatre director Augusto Boal, who based his Theatre of the Oppressed on Freire’s theory about cultural action⁷ for freedom and conscientização,⁸ offer very useful terminology through which to describe and interpret some of Fava’s works. It is worth noting that, during their travels through Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, both Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal came to Sicily, where they disseminated and put into practice their methods and techniques.⁹ As I aim to illustrate in the second part of this article, even though Fava never met or got to know either of them, the cultural actions they all formulated in response to the silence and oppression that dominated their respective societies showed some striking resemblances.

Especially those works in which Fava most openly, effectively and comprehensively put his emancipatory outlook on journalism and culture into practice invite comparison with the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed. A common thread that runs throughout these works is the criminal trial, which offered Fava the ideal framework within which to bring together his literary imagination, his technical knowledge as a lawyer and his meticulousness as a journalist. Its inherent structure, themes and roles moreover created the opportunity for Fava to present the factual as well as the existential truths behind the Sicilian tragedy and to plead on behalf of the victims and of future generations.

The trial in Fava’s oeuvre

Before opting for the courtroom as the setting for the final chapters of two of his novels and for two entire theatre plays, Giuseppe Fava had already made reference to the judicial process in the title of his very first volume, Processo alla Sicilia, which was published in 1967. This was a compilation of 35 investigations he had carried out for La Sicilia. With this ‘documento dell’anima meridionale: i suoi tormenti e la sua ansia di ascesa civile’, Giuseppe Fava (2008: 7) gave an eyewitness account of the misery, the ignorance, the violence and the injustice that provided the foundation for the Sicilian power system. The most remarkable aspect of this processo was that Fava presented his reports and interviews as pieces of evidence and as testimonies, not only against mafiosi and the corrupt politicians who did everything to maintain the unjust socio-economic equilibrium, but also against Sicilian citizens who, due to their cowardice, egoism and indifference silently refrained from trying to change it (Fava G, 2008: 357). As he guided them into the most forgotten and forsaken corners of the island, Fava invited his readers to be moved and scandalised by the human tragedies behind the cronaca of their epoch and to judge their own and their political representatives’ guilt in the matter. Processo alla Sicilia marked a major turning point in Fava’s journalistic and literary career. First of all because it introduced the public to places and themes that Fava would revisit and follow up in his later articles, essays and documentaries. Secondly because many of its protagonists and the mistakes, fraud, deceit, cowardice, crimes, fears and dreams that formed their ‘obscure and tragic Southern soul’ would reappear and be – literally and figuratively – put on trial throughout Fava’s novels and theatre plays (Fava G, 2008: 7). In his essay I Siciliani – which was published in 1980 and was intended as a reworking of Processo alla Sicilia – Fava included three scenes from his courtroom drama La Violenza, clearly marking the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. The scenes represented the oral questionings of three very different characters: the mother of a victim of the mafia, the main defendant and the killer. Apart from mirroring the goal of Fava’s investigation – namely to put Sicily on trial – and echoing the feelings and thoughts that he extracted from the interviewees, who were the key witnesses in this metaphorical trial, the passages taken from the script emphasised the drama and tragedy behind the reality he documented.

The novels Prima che vi uccidano (1976) and Passione di Michele (1980) both conclude with a courtroom scene revolving around a killing that has been committed by the protagonist of the novel. The bleakness and swiftness with which the cases are concluded are in stark contrast with the elaborate detail in which the backstories of the two young Sicilian protagonists – Michele Passanisi and Michele Calafiore respectively – have until then been portrayed. The chapters preceding the courtroom scenes have introduced the readers to the embittering social inequality in their poverty-stricken villages, to how unemployment drove them and many others away from their families. The fictional protagonists of these novels embody specific periods in Sicilian history. Michele Passanisi is one of the many Sicilian youngsters who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, were caught up in gangs of bandits. Michele Calafiore’s story symbolises that of hundreds of thousands of southern Italians who emigrated to Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder of the late 1950s and 1960s. The novels gradually build up to the moment in which the protagonists’ utter despair irreversibly results in murder. In neither case does the public prosecutor show any concern about these circumstances and, symbolically, neither Michele is heard in court. The person who stands trial in the scene concluding Prima che vi uccidano is not Michele Passanisi but his wife. Michele has been killed by the carabinieri earlier on in the story and now his pregnant wife is charged with aiding and abetting him and with receiving some stolen money he has given her to keep her alive. The defence counsel nevertheless tries to give Michele a voice and to create a bridge between his backstory and his criminal deeds:¹⁰

Signori miei, la legge, la legge … quando un individuo offende la legge bisogna sapere se egli aveva un’altra alternativa. … voi uomini civili che ora dovete giudicarla, cosa facevate? Direte che non lo sapevate? Ebbene, io allora vi do una possibilità, io vi do dieci indirizzi di dieci persone che in questo momento sono affamate e che perciò saranno probabilmente indotte a delinquere. (Fava G, 1976: 379–380)

In Passione di Michele, Giovanna – a Sicilian waitress Michele has met in a German bar –assumes a similar role, as Michele himself appears to be in a state of shock and mutely undergoes his trial. Like most women in Fava’s works, she is a strong, rebellious and passionate female character who symbolises Sicily’s desperate and furious cry for justice. As she is not taken seriously in court because she used to be a prostitute,¹¹ Giovanna starts to tell her own background story in an act of rebellion:

‘Questo ragazzo siciliano, voi forse non potete capire. … Io abitavo in un paese vicino venti chilometri a quello di Michele e non so quale fosse più povero, voi davvero non potete capire, non c’è niente, né lavoro per gli esseri umani, né acqua nelle case, né fogne … Voi non potete immaginare quanti bambini ci sono nel mio paese. Molti di loro però non sopravvivono perché muoiono di tifo, meningite, tubercolosi, altri restano storpi o ciechi, oppure deficienti’. Rimase per un attimo col fiato sospeso per la risata del procuratore alle sue spalle. ‘Tutto questo è poesia, tutto questo è lamento sociale, non c’entra’. Ma l’urlo di Giovanna fu come quello di una bestia: ‘Mio figlio è morto così, in due ore! L’ospedale più vicino era a cento chilometri!’. (Fava G, 2009: 223)

She asks the jury and judges to take into account also Michele’s past before judging him, to at least try to imagine what mental suffering preceded his act of violence, and to understand how desperate he must have been to commit murder.

Through these courtroom scenes, Fava provided his first and last novel with an intense climax that challenged the reader to consider the complexity and depth as well as the origins of the problems of violence their society was confronted with. By focusing especially on the background stories of the protagonists, Fava illustrated how violence could sometimes be rooted in social suffering and individual sorrow, and that the feeling of not being able to change one’s destiny in any other way can breed despair (Fava G, 1983: 89). This was not intended as an excuse for anyone to commit moral or physical acts of violence. It was an invitation for Sicilian citizens to assess their situation and to contemplate what measures could be taken to transform the dehumanising and unjust social order in their society. It was an exhortation to his readers to intervene before the situation resulted in the definitive loss of morals and escalated into the bloody revolution of its most desperate victims, hence the origin of the title Prima che vi uccidano (see Fava G, 1976: 289; Fava G, 2009: 244–245).

Through the arguments of the defence counsels and the passionate testimonies of some of the witnesses, Fava brought out the inherently dramatic character of the criminal trial. Passione di Michele was actually based on the script he wrote for Werner Schroeter’s film Palermo oder Wolfsburg. The film was awarded the Golden Bear for best screenplay at the 1980 Berlinale.

In Prima che la notte, a book he wrote in collaboration with Fava’s son Claudio, Michele Gambino describes how, throughout his career, Giuseppe Fava always treated the facts and characters which constituted Sicilian reality as though they were script material: his essays, journalistic reports, novels and short stories were simply different media through which to stage the same play and through which to denounce and fight the misery and injustice in his society (Fava and Gambino, 2014: 24–25). Therefore, it should not be surprising that Fava was even more productive as a playwright than he was as a novelist and that in theatre he found the perfect medium in which to expand the criminal trial into a fully fledged narrative framework.

Processi in teatro

Giuseppe Fava’s two courtroom dramas resulted from his in-depth analysis of pre-existing documentary material, of ‘migliaia di pagine di decine di processi, verbali, interrogatori’ and from his journalistic investigations (Fondazione Giuseppe Fava, 2015b). Fava used these documents as a basic structure upon which he then built a predominantly fictional dramaturgy. Despite their degree of fictionality, Fava nevertheless intended these dramas as documents of two specific periods in Sicilian history, in which mafia violence assumed quite different proportions (Fava G, 1988b: 3).

La Violenza (1969) documented and investigated the 1950s and 1960s, the period in which the so-called ‘second mafia’ took possession of Sicily. Cosa Nostra was no longer an ancient and fierce rural organisation but had become a modernised, obscure and immense force that was slowly and fatally spreading its tentacles deep inside all levels of society (Fava G, 1988b: 3–4). The set of La Violenza represented a courtroom, in which a large cage held 35 defendants charged with 16 mafia killings. Some of these must have reminded the audience of killings that had recently caused a stir in Sicily. Eight of the victims were killed in a car bomb attack that corresponded closely to the 1963 Ciaculli massacre, the culmination of the first mafia war. Through two other victims, Fava made a clear reference to Placido Rizzotto and Salvatore Carnevale, two of Sicily’s most influential socialist trade union leaders who were assassinated by the mafia for having encouraged the peasants’ struggle for land reform. Like Rizzotto, who was murdered in 1948 by the Corleonesi, a victim named Murabito had mysteriously disappeared years before his skeletal remains were retrieved at the Rocca Busambra near Corleone (Fava G, 1988a: 140). Rosalia Alicata publically accuses three of the defendants of having killed her son, syndicalist Venero Alicata. Her passion and courage are reminiscent of anti-mafia icon Francesca Serio, who, in 1955, succeeded in bringing the local mafiosi of Sciara on trial for the murder of her son Salvatore Carnevale (Santino, 2009: 218). The story of Salvatore Carnevale’s murder and of his mother’s call for justice had already become known to the greater public thanks to Carlo Levi’s Le parole sono pietre (1955) and Ignazio Buttitta’s poem Lamentu pi la morti di Turiddu Carnivale (1956).

Ultima Violenza (1983) is set in the 1970s, a period of mafia and terrorist outrages. In this processo in teatro there are only seven defendants: a killer, two terrorists, a business contractor, a politician, a financier and a mafioso. They all stand trial for one single murder, which forms the connection between several other crimes that have been committed in various Italian cities. Each crime carries a different signature: the mafia, terrorism, the Camorra, great financial trusts, the illicit drug market, the secret services. It is the document of a much vaster event than La Violenza was: behind the scenes, and thus outside the courtroom doors, the sound of an onrushing crowd can be heard, apocalyptically heralding either ‘la tragica rivoluzione delle vittime, disposte a sacrificare la libertà pur di non patire ancora dolore e sofferenza, o la definitiva conquista dello Stato da parte della violenza. O tutte e due le cose ferocemente insieme’ (Fava G, 1988b: 4).

Even though his courtroom dramas were rooted in the pressing problems of Sicilian reality and strictly followed the rules of the criminal procedure, Fava emphasised that these plays were not exactly aimed at putting the mafia on trial. As he wrote in the programme of La Violenza, they were aimed at narrating the universal tragedy of the human beings of his epoch, which took on many different forms: abuse of power, hatred, ignorance, fear, sorrow and corruption (Cannavò, 1990: 113). Fava chose an inherently ‘spectacular’ and dramatic setting within which to present these themes and through which to pass on what he called an ‘emozione d’arte’ that could urge his audience to consider responsible action upon the reality outside the theatre walls.¹² In her article ‘Justice in the literary tradition’, Canadian novelist and literary critic Margaret Atwood observes that:

What … makes … courtroom dramas at all interesting for non-specialists such as myself … [is] that the form itself is inherently dramatic, and engages our own fears about trial and judgment … In fact, any trial – not only the kind in books – is, formally considered, a play, a morality play with set allegorical figures. The law, seen from one angle, is itself a literary form, for what is the giving of evidence but controlled story-telling, what is precedent but a batch of stories that have previously been told? (Atwood, 1985: 515)

This reasoning aptly applies to Fava’s continuous exploration of the boundary between fact and fiction in his thematic investigation and truthful narration of the present and between the spectators’ individual and collective experiences inside and outside the theatre. In what follows, I will discuss how the courtroom setting and the inherent procedural structure of the criminal trial offered Fava a useful narrative framework within which to engage and challenge his audience in the process of judgment against the ills of their society and how well it coincided with his ethical conception of journalism and culture aimed at emancipating his readers: ‘Dove c’̀ verità, si può realizzare giustizia e difendere la libertà!’ (Fava G, 1981).

Truth: Triers of fact

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire (1970: 74) stated that the most important first step for oppressed citizens to make in the process of emancipation and liberation is to ‘overcome their false perception’ and acquire a critical understanding of their contextual reality. He was convinced that withdrawing from the situation in which they were submerged could help the oppressed consider their oppressor clearly enough to objectivise them, locate them outside rather than inside themselves and consequently to deepen their awareness of their own submersion (Freire, 1970: 30). Only then, he wrote, would they ‘acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled’ and truly commit themselves to transforming it (Freire, 1970: 100).

Fava set the tone for his first courtroom drama by clearly indicating in the script that the stage should represent ‘un’aula di Assise come viene vista dai giudici della Corte’ (Fava G, 1988a: 13). Through this spatial organisation of stage and auditorium, Fava immediately attributed to the audience a quite specific part in the play that implied very specific tasks be carried out. As members of the jury – triers of fact – the spectators were invited to stand back and examine the case that was being staged before them, so that they could formulate within themselves an impartial verdict by the end of the play.

By almost literally seating the audience in the jury box, Fava created an opportunity for the characters to appeal directly to the individual spectators’ reason, conscience and sense of justice. At the beginning of both hearings, the Attorney General directly addresses the audience to emphasise the universal character of the moral and physical violence that is about to be documented and that, as a consequence, it is a matter of great personal concern to each of the jurors that they make a carefully considered decision:

Signori della Corte, gli avvenimenti sui quali darete un giudizio costituiscono una tragedia nella quale, giorno per giorno, anche voi siete coinvolti. Noi qui vi possiamo chiedere un atto di giustizia solo per gli uomini che sono stati uccisi, ma la tragedia è più vasta e terribile, essa non riguarda solo la vita di taluni cittadini, ma ogni rapporto fra uomo e uomo, cioè la libertà stessa dell’essere umano … (Fava G, 1988a: 136)

In other words, he explains that the case is representative of the violence in their own society and consequently that the spectators will not be discharged from their duties as jurors when they leave the courtroom. As Sicilian citizens, they retain the responsibility of considering evidence of injustices and of judging who is responsible for the ills in their society. Or, to use Augusto Boal’s words, the ‘microcosm’ of the case ‘fits into the macrocosm of the whole of the society under examination’ (2002: 267).

In Ultima Violenza, too, the spectators are treated as members of the jury: the Attorney General emphasises the exceptional circumstances in which the hearing takes place and the absoluteness and irreversibility of the jury’s final verdict. In recompense for this great responsibility, he assures the jurors of their complete anonymity. This allows them to make their decisions independently and in respect of their individual consciences, rather than as a group:

Signori della Corte, io non so chi voi siate e non lo saprò mai, né lo saprà alcun altro cittadino di questa nazione. L’elenco dei nomi è stato infatti distrutto a garanzia della vostra vita e affinché possiate emettere un verdetto, liberi dalla paura di qualsiasi rappresaglia … (sembra voglia scrutare nel buio gli occhi della folla) Signori della Corte, voi avete dinnanzi agli occhi l’incalzare di avvenimenti terribili che stanno sconvolgendo la nazione … Questo tribunale, istituito da una legge speciale che prevede la sospensione delle garanzie costituzionali, ha poteri eccezionali di salute pubblica e può procedere alla incriminazione e al processo contro chicchessia, senza alcuna preventiva istruttoria. Contro la sua sentenza non è prevista alcuna possibilità di appello … (Fava G, 1988b: 14)

This safe distance and anonymity free the individual jurors from their potential fear of reprisal and from peer pressure, and allow them to survey the trial before them with a certain detachment, as ‘an objective-problematic situation’ (Freire, 1970: 100). At the same time, it is an invitation to the audience to be what Martha Nussbaum (1995: 73) calls ‘judicious spectators’: unbiased spectators who are not personally involved in the events on stage but who may nevertheless relate the staged trial to their experience of life and to their personal values.

After this introduction, evidence is submitted to the audience through the depositions of a variety of testimonies, each of which clearly personifies a fragment of the mosaic of Sicilian society and of the anima del Sud that Fava investigated for his journalistic reports (Fava G, 2008: 7). Poor miners and peasants who emigrated to sustain their families, mafia bosses who took advantage of their misery and paid men like them to kill someone on their behalf, corrupted politicians and entrepreneurs and family members of their victims. As he did in his novels and reports, here, too, Fava approached the big themes and contradictions of his epoch through the ‘microcosmic’ (Boal, 2002: 267) stories of the various people who were directly affected by the same cronaca, so that his audience could gain a deeper understanding of the society in which these particular cases – and all similar cases – took place.

Justice: Judge and be judged

As soon as the hearing has begun, the spectators are made aware of their functions and duties within the play, namely to take on the critical attitude of objective observers of the violent reality that is being staged and documented before them. That reality is moreover strikingly similar to the reality outside the theatre doors. The fact that the conceptual barrier between characters and spectators is broken becomes even more unsettling when the audience is confronted with the element that binds them to the violent oppressors who are being put on trial (Freire, 1970: 176). In both plays, it is a mourning female character who, despite being devastated by the loss of a loved one, finds the courage to identify some of the defendants in public, to accuse them of murder and to make a proud and defiant appeal to the jurors’ compassion and sense of duty. They represent those Sicilian women like the above-mentioned Francesca Serio who, in the past 60 years, have rebelled against the customs and conventions of the culture of silence that have dominated a considerable part of their society and whose dolorous though hopeful cries for justice have been of great importance to Sicily’s difficult civil progress (Dalla Chiesa, 2013: 9–11). In La Violenza, the mother of murdered trade unionist Venero Alicata addresses the members of the jury as follows:

Signori giudici, ma non avete pietà …? Ora siete tutti lì con i vostri abiti migliori a rappresentare la giustizia … sembrate dei padreterni … ma fuori di qui cosa siete …? Intanati nelle vostre case come topi, la gente viene perseguitata e muore sulla faccia della terra e voi cosa fate …? … Mio figlio lo uccisero perché si era ribellato … lottava anche per voi ma era solo … Ma allora quanto vale la vita di un uomo in questo paese …? (improvvisamente rovescia il capo e rompe in un grido tragico e inarticolato. Un lungo, ininterrotto grido di dolore e di disperazione …) (Fava G, 1988a: 267)

Rosalia Alicata’s poignant opening phrases address the people who are seated in the jury box as members of society rather than as members of the jury. It is entirely up to the spectators whether to feel personally implicated by them or not and thus whether to interpret ‘fuori di qui’ as outside the four walls of the theatre hall or as outside the walls of the imaginary courtroom. Her appeal becomes even more challenging when she starts questioning their active ‘participation in the pursuit of liberation’ (Freire, 1970: 169) and fiercely attacks civil society for having abandoned men like her son who would give their lives to regain the freedom others have surrendered out of cowardice (Fava G, 1981).

In Ultima Violenza, Alessandra Badiani, the widow of murdered deputy chief constable Francesco Badiani, delivers a comparable discourse to her audience:

Mio marito lottava invece per difendere i cittadini di questa nazione contro il dolore e la morte. Se voi non capite questo … quello che era mio marito, quello che faceva per voi … e appunto per questo lo hanno ucciso … (Fava G, 1988b: 28)

The accusatory tone of these scenes suggests a duality and complexity in the role attributed to the audience, who now appear to be charged as accessories to the violence they have been sworn to judge. As the plays progress, the focus shifts significantly in the direction of the auditorium and the audience’s role as accused becomes almost as important as their role as jurors. The spectators are actually questioned by some of the characters on stage and challenged to engage in conscious and critical reflection on the interacting themes of their epoch and on their personal relation to them (Freire, 1970: 95). In La Violenza, the most provocative questions are raised through murdered Venero Alicata’s offstage voice:

E voi, in questo paese, credete di essere uomini liberi …? Di che? Voi avete solo l’impressione di vivere come vi piace, altri vi tengono sul palmo della mano. Sono i vostri padroni; hanno tutto nel pugno … Non c’è una casa che essi non governino, comandano tutto, anche la vostra dignità! Essi hanno nel pugno anche la politica, cioè le vostre coscienze! … com’è possibile che gli uomini non vedano il dolore degli altri esseri umani? … È difficile … tu li vedi attorno a te con occhi pieni di collera … per un momento sembra che essi siano disposti con te a capovolgere il mondo. Ma improvvisamente si disperdono … si nascondono … Ma se non si è disposti a lottare, a che serve essere vivi? (Fava G, 2014: 627–629)

Alicata’s lengthy tirade compelled the audience to consider how easy it was for the mafia to manipulate Sicilians and instil mechanisms of oppression inside their minds. Their consequent internalisation of the mafia oppressor had not only impaired what Freire would have termed their ‘perception of themselves as oppressed’; it had allowed the mafia to enslave and control their minds, their consciences and their dignity (Freire, 1970: 30). Through this monologue, Fava makes clear to the spectators that they can free themselves from their anima mafiosa only by actively investigating the mafia system and its alternatives, by judging their own role within that system and by creatively transforming their oppressive situation. The task he assumes here is quite similar to the one Paulo Freire attributed to the ‘truly humanist educator and the authentic revolutionary,’ namely to help people become aware of their objective situation and ‘of the fact that as dual beings, “housing” the oppressors within themselves, they cannot be truly human’ (Freire, 1970: 83–84). Augusto Boal further developed the metaphorical concept of the inner oppressor in his Theatre of the Oppressed sessions and termed it ‘cop in the head’, suggesting ‘that the restrictive forces inhibiting freedom of action can sometimes be inside our own heads rather than deriving [directly] from external oppressors’ (Babbage, 2004: 141). Through introspective techniques, he stimulated his so-called ‘spect-actors’¹³ to ‘locate the cops and their headquarters’ in the external reality and ‘search for ways to dislodge them’ (Boal and Epstein, 1990: 35; Babbage, 2004: 141). This was exactly what Fava’s character Venero Alicata asked the Sicilian citizens to do: acknowledge that, to a large extent, oppression and liberation were mental states that depended on their ability to eject the mafioso hosted in their heads and to ‘replace it with autonomy and responsibility’ (Freire, 1970: 31). Taking responsibility implied facing up to reality and calling into question the mafia system they were all living in and that they had so far accepted and thus contributed to. Consequently, the anima mafiosa, the mafia mentality or – to use Sciascia’s terms – the sentire mafioso could be interpreted both as a ‘cop in the head’ to be disarmed and as a Sicilian mens rea to be judged. Mens rea is a legal term that refers to a defendant’s ‘intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime’ (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2017): in this case, the consent and political support of thousands of Sicilians that offer the mafia a logical basis for its criminal activity. The members of the jury will not be able to judge mafia violence without having judged their own complicit minds first. The inner conflict the spectator experienced here reflected the seemingly unbridgeable gap between institutional and social justice, between on the one hand a justice system that in many instances defended those in power and enforced the status quo and on the other hand the society it claimed to serve (Atwood, 1985: 516).

The vital question ‘what good is it to be alive if one is not prepared to fight?’ serves as a sharp rebuke to the Sicilians’ devastating fatalism, to their acceptance of the oppressive reality as a ‘fated and unalterable’ situation rather than as a ‘limiting – and therefore challenging’ – one which they can and are morally obliged to transform (Freire, 1970: 73).

Freedom: Subjects of transformation

In both plays, tension rises as the moment approaches in which the jurors would normally retire and consider their verdict. It is raised and intensified to its highest level as Emanuele Crupi, the main defendant in La Violenza, and Luigi Bellocampo, the defence counsel assigned to the accused in Ultima Violenza, pronounce their closing lines:

Il processo è finito e voi ora siete chiamati ad emettere la sentenza. Forse condannerete questi uomini accusati di assassinio, ma ogni cosa resterà al punto di prima poiché, dietro di loro, ci sono nel mondo infiniti altri uomini miserabili, e se voi uscite da quest’aula ne trovate centinaia disposti ad uccidere per un milione, ed altri che per dieci o ventimila voti sono disposti a sfruttare la bestialità e l’ignoranza dei miserabili … un’infinità di altri uomini vigliacchi …

- Anche voi avete paura, ogni giorno sopportate cose terribili che accadono accanto a voi … la corruzione e la povertà, gli esseri umani abbandonati alla violenza … per cosa siete disposti a sacrificarvi …? Vi dovrebbero uccidere i figli dinnanzi agli occhi …

- Ma il giorno in cui toccherà a voi non riuscirete più a fuggire … né la vostra voce sarà così alta che qualcuno possa venire a salvarvi … (Fava G, 1988a: 272–273)

The message – or, in his own words, the ‘soluzione di coscienza’ or ‘soluzione spirituale’ (Isgrò, 1970) – Fava tried to convey at the end of La Violenza is quite clear: the conviction of individual culprits will not put an end to the mafia regime of oppression and violence. Institutional justice and social justice must always go hand in hand to prevent violence from occurring in the first place. In order to make this possible, Fava affirmed during a round table discussion of the play, civil society had to take up its collective responsibility: ‘occorre che ognuno di noi abbia il coraggio di rischiare qualcosa, di intervenire nel gioco del potere con fermezza, dire di no, anche con l’arma del voto ai politicanti, ai truffatori’ (Isgrò, 1970). The fact that the ethical conclusion to La Violenza is provided by a criminal makes the finale all the more ambiguous and defamiliarising (Isgrò, 1970). In Fava’s view, Crupi somehow lived his life more passionately than anyone within that mass of oppressed citizens who did not dare to take up the fight against the violent oppression he represented. The general tone of this ending still floats between the overwhelming threat of damnation and the feeble hope that – before it is too late – civil society might still actively and effectively intervene in the historical process.

The characters and spectators of Ultima Violenza, on the other hand, are past redemption and will most definitely fall victim to their own resignation and cowardice:

Tutto quello che accade in questa aula di giustizia non ha più importanza … né sapere chi sono costoro che arrivano, e per uccidere chi … Avevamo la forza e il tempo per fermarli, e per la nostra cupidigia e vigliaccheria non siamo stati capaci …

Abbiamo sopportato cose terribili, la povertà e la corruzione, gli esseri umani abbandonati a tutte le violenze, nella speranza vile che a noi non potesse mai accadere … Ora la verità è fuori … anche la giustizia …! (Fava G, 1988b: 134–135)

Either the revolution of the victims, or the final triumph of the assassins over the State or both – events which had until then appeared in Fava’s works as fearful apprehensions about the future – are now close at hand (Fava G, 1988b: 4). Halfway through his final speech, Bellocampo’s voice is drowned out by the frightening sound of the large wall at the back of the stage cracking with a rumble and by the fierce cry of a fast-approaching invisible crowd that comes running from all directions. Finally, the wall collapses with an even deeper rumble, uncovering a blinding shaft of light and letting in a blast of wind. The characters on stage suddenly curl up, screaming with terror, all except defence counsel Bellocampo – who slowly advances towards the light, towards the truth – and defendant Angelo Crimi – who remains upright in his seat, awaiting the event (Fava G, 1988b: 134–135). A stage effect which concluded the first performances of Ultima Violenza in the autumn of 1983 highlighted the dramatist’s intention to hold up a mirror to society. While the notes of the Dies Irae reverberated through the theatre, the metallic stage floor slowly rose to an upright position and became an immense mirror reflecting the image of the applauding spectators (I Siciliani, 1983: 1). As Fava wrote in his last editorial for I Siciliani, the audience was made up of representatives of the local power system, the good and the bad, the just and the immoral, the honourable and the malicious. Their theatrical equivalents had been parading the stage for three hours (I Siciliani, 1983: 1). This apocalyptic ending emphasises the revelatory character of Ultima Violenza as a document of the catastrophic consequences the moral climate of Sicilian society was bound to have. The unmoving and unmoved Angelo Crimi emerges as the allegorical personification of the Sicilian power system:

… il potere si è isolato da tutto, si è collocato in una dimensione nella quale tutto quello che accade fuori, nella nazione reale, non lo tocca più e nemmeno lo offende, né accuse, né denunce, dolori, disperazioni, rivolte. Egli sta là, giornali, spettacoli, cinema, requisitorie passano senza far male: politici, cavalieri, imprenditori, giudici applaudono. I giusti e gli iniqui. Tutto sommato questi ultimi sono probabilmente convinti di essere oramai invulnerabili. (I Siciliani, 1983: 1)

On 5 January 1984, by murdering Giuseppe Fava in front of the theatre where, less than two months earlier, Ultima Violenza had been premiered, Cosa Nostra unintentionally proved that their invulnerability and indifference to newspapers, plays, cinema and closing speeches were nevertheless starting to show some cracks.¹⁴

La Violenza and Ultima Violenza ended before the accused jurors could either return a verdict or be sentenced. Giuseppe Fava was very well aware that there was no direct cause-effect relationship between his plays and his spectators’ active engagement in the liberation of Sicilian society. Therefore, in these dramas – and in his works in general – he never dictated a course of action to be adopted in order to solve the conflicts and problems of his epoch: the outcome depended entirely on the spectators’ and citizens’ final verdict.¹⁵

Fava did, however, create an occasion for his righteous spectators to reflect upon the causes of these problems and to consider how they would have changed the course of the reality on stage and, consequently, what actions should be taken in their society to overcome the mafia oppression. The ending to the story depended entirely on the spectators’ and Sicilian citizens’ final verdict. This was Fava’s only hope: that righteous Sicilians would eventually be able to join forces, enter the historical process as a free and emancipated community and put an end to the Sicilian tragedy (Fava G, 2008: 360). Following Jacques Rancière’s definition, through this constant ‘blurring of the boundary between those who act and those who look; between individuals and members of a collective body’ (Rancière, 2009: 19), Fava had already catalysed a process of emancipation in his spectators.

Conclusions

Following the three pillars of his ethical conception of journalism – truth, justice and freedom – I have aimed to show how the judicial process offered Fava an exceptionally useful framework within which to translate his intellectual impegno into cultural actions aimed at emancipating and liberating his readers and spectators. In his journalistic essays, in the conclusive chapters to his novels Prima che vi uccidano and Passione di Michele, as well as in his courtroom dramas La Violenza and Ultima Violenza, it allowed Fava to involve his readers and spectators in the active examination of their society and to guide them through a process of conscientisation and emancipation. The role of giudici popolari he attributed to his audience corresponded to the role he hoped they would assume as citizens in their daily lives.

As jurors, triers of fact, the spectators were sworn to interpret the evidence – the dramatic documents of their epoch – submitted to them objectively and from highly diverging viewpoints. The testimonies of symbolic – almost allegorical – though recognisable characters moreover raised their awareness of the personal tragedies behind the fatti di cronaca of those days. By having some of the protagonists challenge the members of the jury to consider their own role within the mafioso system of power, Fava subtly turned the tables on the audience, confronting them with the mechanisms – of fatalism, indifference, fear and cowardice – inside many Sicilians’ minds, the mentality and patterns of behaviour through which they personally contributed to maintain an unjust social equilibrium. As a consequence, in order to reach their final verdict, the jurors first had to examine and judge their own level of complicity in furthering the cycle of silence and violence. Throughout the plays, the audience was continuously reminded of how the development of the mafia tragedy depended on their conscientious verdicts. This was a clear invitation for Sicilian civil society to find the inner strength to act on their freedom of conscience to intervene responsibly in the historical process and take possession of their future.

When looking at present-day expressions of anti-mafia culture in Sicily and Italy, we can confidently state that Giuseppe Fava did succeed in convincing at least a part of Sicilian civil society of their capability of making history. Immediately after Fava’s murder, tens of high school students appeared at the editorial office of I Siciliani and offered to support the young editorial team in continuing Fava’s work. Some founded a cultural and educative anti-mafia association, G.a.p.a., which Paul Ginsborg (1998: 236–237) quotes as an example of the spontaneous ‘associazionismo meridionale’ which characterised the modern anti-mafia movement of the 1980s. Others founded I Siciliani giovani, which was directed by one of Fava’s colleagues, Riccardo Orioles, who relaunched it as an online anti-mafia monthly in 2011. Its motto ‘a che serve essere vivi se non c’è il coraggio di lottare?’ is a quote from Fava’s theatre play La Violenza. Thanks to the new media, I Siciliani giovani has been able to create a comprehensive national network of local anti-mafia newspapers and television stations.

Most importantly, Fava’s emancipatory discourse, his journalistic ethics and cultural commitment to the transformation of reality have proven that a critical reading and an emancipatory narrative of Sicilian reality are possible. Along with the initiatives of people like Danilo Dolci, who can retrospectively be considered his kindred spirit, Giuseppe Fava has contributed to bridging a gap between the intellectuals of his own generation – whose at times rather sceptical attitude towards the possibility of defeating the mafia left little hope for redemption and renewal of Sicilian civil society – and the generation of the protagonists of the renewed anti-mafia movement. His ideas have been creatively developed in the social and cultural actions of a new generation of students, playwrights, novelists and (graphic) journalists who, in turn, continue to inspire the younger generations.

Footnotes

Notes

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