ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a particularly revealing polemical exchange of the 1980s between the Sicilian writer, Leonardo Sciascia, and several representatives of a new social movement, the Movimento Antimafia, that emerged then, in response to the dramatic increase in mafia violence associated with narcotics trafficking, and to mafia political hubris. This polemic illustrates the complexities involved in seeking liberation from the mafia without embracing the almost racialized categorization of Sicilians that permeates the national discourse on the South. Antimafia in that context was an instrument of conservative forces seeking to achieve superior power and restore public order. Anyone who dissented was labeled mafioso. By 1987, several developments were conspiring to bring about a waning of activists' commitment to the new antimafia movement—a return to "normalcy" that would endure until the terrible killings of both Falcone and Borsellino in the summer of 1992.
