“…were it not for our perseverance, for the fact that we turned our anger into the courage to say ‘We will not accept being denied the truth’ – were it not for this, then the stories [of our loss] would just end, they would have ended on that day. And we realize that, as we go on, we are the only power that we have.”

This is how Ilaria Cucchi – the sister of 31-year-old Stefano Cucchi, who died under mysterious circumstances in an Italian prison in 2009 – described the situation of her family and, by extension, of other families of victims of police repression in Italy, in her appearance on a television documentary about her late brother. Remembering requires a memory agent who will “actualize” or “activate” the memory in question, if it is to remain vivid. The Cucchi case demonstrates that in Italy the role of such memory communities has proven essential, considering the low commitment or unwillingness of the State to bring justice to the victims of police repression.

I have studied one such case – the violent death of Francesco Lorusso, on 11 March 1977. Lorusso, a medical student and sympathizer of a left-wing extra-parliamentary group, got involved in a conflict between left-wing and Catholic students which resulted in severe police repression during which Lorusso was shot in the back. The incident provoked an urban upheaval in which Lorusso’s friends and fellow students vented their anger in the city center, resulting in more public order measures. Lorusso’s death thus marked the final stage in the conflict between a newly arisen student movement and the local Communist authorities. The chapter on 1977 was, however, all but closed off, as the police officer who shot Lorusso was absolved on the basis of a disputed public order law, while the numerous requests by Lorusso’s family to open a new investigation remained unanswered.

In my forthcoming book on the public memory of the 1977 incidents, I interpret the family’s role in the process of getting justice in terms of “affective labor.” Post-Marxist philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri define affective labor . . .

Read more: Police Repression in Italy and the Affective Ecology of Victims’ Families