Reconciliation through Agonistic Engagement? Victims and Former Perpetrators in Dialogue in Italy Several Decades after Terrorism.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s Italy suffered a prolonged period of political violence and ideologically inspired terrorist acts, which caused deep social wounds and led to a sharply divided memory. Numerous memoirs published since the end of the conflict by both former terrorists and victims aggravated the divide, until recently. This paper analyses some of the memoirs written by the victims and relatives of the victims and above all a recent dialogue between former perpetrators and victims through the lenses of different modes of remembering. The paper explores the motivations and stances of the victims and relatives of victims who took part in this dialogue and argues that they partake of both a cosmopolitan and an agonistic approach to memory and reconciliation. The latter requires former enemies to confront each other as 'adversarial citizens" with their divided memories and perspectives in an open-ended manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]