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Violence Performed and Imagined

Militant Action, the Black Bloc and the Mass Media in Genoa

Arizona State University, USA

The Battle of Genoa has become an iconic sign of wanton destruction, evoking images of tear gas, burning cars, and black clad protestors hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at advancing lines of heavily militarized riot police. In this article, I explore the complex relationship between performative violence and mass-mediated constructions of violence during the anti-G8 protests in Genoa. Performative violence is a specific mode of communication through which activists seek to produce social transformation by staging symbolic rituals of confrontation. Young militants enact performative violence in order to generate radical identities, while producing concrete messages challenging global capitalism and the state. At the same time, dominant media frames reinterpret the resulting images as random acts of senseless violence, undermining activists more generally. I further argue that the prevailing ‘diversity of tactics’ ethic reflects the broader networking logics associated with anti-corporate globalization movements themselves.

Key Words: globalization • mass media • performance • political protest • social movements • violence

Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 25, No. 4, 413-432 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X05058657


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