ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a close-up on Aldo Moro as symbolic of state power and a detailed outline of the events that took place between his kidnapping and death. The kidnapping and death of Moro are habitually shrouded in figures of speech. The routine deployment of metaphor in place of a literal description of violent complex of events comprising the kidnapping and murder of Moro is accompanied, in Italian discourse and memory, by a parallel deployment of metonymic reference. The transformation of the figure of Moro in Il prigioniero is emblematic of narrative shifts of identity that take place throughout corpus of women's post-terrorist writing, and of distinct purpose that Moro as victim serves within that corpus. The chapter draws on the language of Lacanian criticism. According to Lacan's model, metaphorical language functions along an axis of substitution, and corresponds to that aspect of condensation whereby different figures can be subtituted or are condensed into one through an overdetermined nodal point.
