The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama

On March 16, 1978, the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, and what followed—the fifty-five days of captivity that resulted in Moro's murder—constitutes one of the most striking social dramas of the twentieth century. In this compelling study of terrorism, Robin Wagner-Pacifici employs methods from sociology, symbolic anthropology, and literary criticism to decode the many social "texts" that shaped the event: political speeches, newspaper reports, television and radio news, editorials, photographs, Moro's letters, Red Brigade communiques, and appeals by various international figures. The analysis of these "texts" calls into question the function of politics, social drama, spectacle, and theater. Wagner-Pacifici provides a dramaturgic analysis of the Moro affair as a method for discussing the culture of politics in Italy.