ABSTRACT
The far ranging field of writings and films that works to portray Palermo has tended to make up an embattled space, as perceptions vie over the metropolis with respect to state law, mafia law. More at issue is the explicit linkage that the author draws between Idas consuming desires and criminal elements of the metropolis, which enables an analysis of female agency in Mafia relations and the sense of Palermo thereby produced. Indeed, through oblique and direct references, the diverse stories of Palermo fashioned by the two young men and the aged driver, all members of the working class with substantial ties to the city expose critical problems concerning the urban traces of the Mafia, trauma, memory, and injustice. The chapter also focuses on Crisantino's representation of forces of psychological and physical violence marking territories structured by the Mafia, and thus their inhabitants as well.
