Performing Stragismo and Counterspectacularisation

This book offers a new theoretical lens on political violence as spectacle, drawing on performance theory to explore how acts of violence are staged, circulated, and remembered. It interrogates the role of spectacularity in shaping public discourse, tracing how power and media mobilise violence into a visual and rhetorical regime. Performing Stragismo and Counterspectacularisation offers a new theoretical lens on political violence as spectacle, drawing on performance theory to explore how acts of violence – particularly terrorism – are staged, circulated, and remembered. It interrogates the role of spectacularity in shaping public discourse, tracing how power and media mobilise violence into a visual and rhetorical regime that leaves deep imprints on collective memory. In response, this book proposes counterspectacularisation: a repertoire of critical strategies developed by the public and by performance-makers to resist or reframe the spectacle of terror. Through a mix of theoretical reflection, close analysis of performance case studies, and four original artworks created by the author, the text explores how performance can respond ethically to silences and fractures in memory. It advocates for cross-disciplinary approaches that challenge dominant representations of violence and that offer alternative frameworks for grappling with trauma, remembrance, and representation in an age of political spectacle. This will be of particular value to researchers working on the afterlives of terrorism and state violence, especially within memory studies, media studies, and trauma theory. It will also speak to scholars in Italian studies, ethnography, and performance.