Ricerc@Sapienza

When victims are weak and isolated, social denial of crimes committed against them is a banal and often long-lasting phenomenon. Nevertheless, reactions to the breaking of denial on past wrongdoings is a scarcely studied issue. This experimental study explores reactions of forty-two Italian university students, when exposed to historical information on colonial crimes committed by the Italian Army against Ethiopians. Before the experimental task, participants proved to be ignorant of these historical facts, up until now literaly denied in the Italian social discourse.

Abstract: This contribution discusses the pragmatic effects of different rhetoric strategies conveying evidence of past ingroup violence after a long lasting social denial (Cohen, 2001). In particular, a case study is presented on the making of a civic discourse on controversial historical past: war crimes committed by the Italian Army during the colonial invasion of Ethiopia (1935-36). Although very well proved (Del Boca, 2005), these facts were only recently inserted in Italian history textbooks (Leone & Mastrovito, 2010; Cajani, 2013).

The aim of this chapter was to highlight the importance and the con- sequentiality of a specific kind of history education that happens when teachers decide to openly narrate to their students the crimes commit- ted by previous generations of their own group—crimes so far kept silenced and literally denied in the general social discourse. By applying to this teaching the discussion of Foucault (1983) on truth and social discourse, we propose to single it out from other kinds of teaching designed for learning about controversial issues (Leone 2012; Leone and Sarrica 2014).

The paper's aims are threefold. First, it aims to disentangle social denial of in-group responsibilities for intergroup violence from other types of silence about intergroup violence. Secondly, it argues that intergenerational narratives which omit information about in-group responsibilities for violence that occurred before the birth of younger generations are highly risky to the descendants of perpetrators. Finally, the paper emphasizes the importance of exploring in greater depth the understudied moment when a literal social denial about past in-group war crimes is exposed.

This chapter has three aims. First, it aims to disentangle social denial of in-group responsibilities for intergroup violence from other types of silence about intergroup violence. Secondly, it argues that intergenerational narratives which omit information about in-group responsibilities for violence that occurred before the birth of younger generations are highly risky to the descendants of perpetrators. Finally, it emphasises the importance of exploring in greater depth the understudied moment when a literal social denial about past in-group war crimes is exposed.