ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the use and meanings of violence inside Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, seen within a wider theoretical framework which stresses the importance of communicative aspects associated with violent mafia acts. Adopting a chronological and comparative outlook while taking up studies, trial proceedings, wiretappings, interviews with state witnesses and other firsthand empirical data, special attention is given to: communicational aspects and the realm of emotion; narrative and discursive forms; the relation between violence, secrets and power; violence and death; violence, fear and pain; violence and guilt; violence and repentance; violence and falsehood. The analytical framework is borne out by references to specific episodes in the history of Cosa Nostra during the past few decades: from the spectacle made of violence during the second mafia war to the internal violence against women; from the ‘immaterial’ extent of the symbolic domain that spans the entire process of raising youth, to the dialectical violence expressed in verbal confrontations. Lastly, the ‘terroristic’ and ‘hyperbolic’ violence seen in the massacres committed in the 1990s is discussed, as is the deception with which investigations are led astray, identifying ambiguity as the most sophisticated form of a violence that is no longer ‘solely’ mafia-related.
