Coping with in-group colonial crimes. An explorative study on reactions to narratives and images on Italian war crimes during colonial invasions

In this contribution we intend to introduce and discuss, both theoretically and referring to applicative, the importance of the construct of Parrhesia, as proposed by Foucault (1983/2001), and more specifically the powerful role that media play by silencing or speaking the truth about past violence to new generations, born after the end of conflict settlement (Kelman, 2008). In particular we suggest that, in post-conflict communities, truthful narration of in-group wrongdoings is a social action that empowers descendants of both victims and perpetrators: the memories of victims are not silenced, and descendants of perpetrators are enabled to frankly come to terms with their history (Nadler & Shnabel, 2008). In this frame, we will present a line of research we are developing, exploring consequences on young Italians of different typologies of narration about war crimes that were committed during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935-36). Previous investigations (Leone & Sarrica, 2012; Leone & Sarrica, in press), showed that participants who read detailed texts on Italian war crimes felt more struck, surprised and negatively aroused than those who received evasive descriptions. However, as expected, these negative emotions play a positive role: those who received parrhesiastic texts showed more restorative intentions towards descendants of former victims. This contribution extends previous research by exploring the role not only of texts, but also of images used to narrate to young generations the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Results show promising insights for studies at the intersection between reconciliation, shared memories and popularization of history.