Detenute politiche nel carcere fascista: drammaturgie di vita

Abstract

The essay examines the experience of two consecutive generations of political detainees at the women prisons of Perugia, at the Special Court Institution (1927), until the outbreak of the Second World War. It highlights completely new subjects in contrast with the testimonies from contemporary men. The conflict between revolutionary orthodoxy and personal problems, between ideology and everyday life, led to real personal tragedy, like Iside Viana’s dead, isolated from her mates as a consequence of her religious ‘sinking’. An unknown universe makes itself present, filled of tensions between base militants and leaders, between political and common prisoners, between detainees and nuns. The political prisoners had to learn to govern these tensions with greater flexibility, not to fall under the weight of the utterly hard material conditions in which they were, and of the double social condemn they suffered: as political rebels and as ‘unnatural’ women.