Emotional Logics in Militancy: An Ethnography of Subjectivation Processes in Italian Radical Movements

This article examines contemporary anti-globalisation activism in Italy and argues that contemporary radical-left activists feel politics differently from the 1970s militants, who simultaneously constitute a living memory and a strong reference point for them. Contemporary activists feel differently from the old ones, and reclaim their difference. They try to emancipate themselves from the leftist tradition, which involves decision-related practices, leadership and selfexpressing rhetoric. They do so by using an emotionalised rhetoric, which, since the 70s, has emanated from the feminist wing of the movement, as well as by using political indefinability linked to queer theory. This process is deeply tied to the activists' subjectivation processes. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article suggests that when contemporary activists talk about their experience, they use an emotional semantic register which favours sentimental reasons over ideological ones, understood in the political sense. Their narratives thus integrate emotion into the work of political resistance. These personally focused narratives – which could be read as a sign of the decline of grand narratives – extend the domain of militancy to more subjective aspects of everyday life, signalling a diffusion of ‘political’ awareness into a much wider realm of daily intimacy. To develop this argument, the article examines interviews, life histories, artistic expressions, theoretical essays, and debates. It also introduces a strong epistemological counter-circuit between the anthropologist's sources and her interpretive tools.