Speaking through the body: detention and bodily resistance in Italy

AbstractThis work reflects on the character of the modalities that non-status migrants are deploying in the context of current politics of the camp, with special attention to the Italian context. It will suggest that once the possibilities of dissent through the voice (the political tool par excellence in a liberal democracy, and one associated primarily with rationality and the capacity for reason) are foreclosed, migrants tend to resort to another powerful tool: their own body. Detainees have made their bodies speak by resorting to practices of self-mutilation, hunger strike, suicide attempts, and lips and eyes sewing. Detainees' violent acts of dissent are not dissimilar from the violent modalities used, a few centuries earlier, by some enslaved people who chose liberty through death. The aim is not so much to make comparison between the two figures, but to emphasise the way in which, under conditions of extreme control, subjugation or unfreedom, acts of dissent and resistance – and thus acts of politics, as articulated in Rancière's concept of dissensus – are not necessarily enacted through democratic practices but, on the contrary, through whatever modalities are available to them, including violent (self-harm) modalities.Keywords:: campsacts of citizenshipbodily resistancedissensusItaly AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Raia Prokhovnik for all the efforts she put in organising the 'The Body as a Site for Politics: Practices of Contemporary Slavery' panel at the ECPR conference in Reykjavik in 2011 and for having followed it all the way through. Special thanks go to the two anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments they made on a previous version of this article.Notes1. Given the absence of any assistance, the acronym CPTA was soon replaced by CPTs. These centres have been more recently renamed as CIEs and new centres for assisting migrants have been established, namely CDA, reception centres; CARA, reception centres for asylum seekers; and CPSA, first aid and reception centres.2. All translations from Italian into English are by the author.