The Moral Imperative for Disobedience
- By Erri De Luca and Jim Hicks
May 20, 2014
Dear Erri,
First off, I should wish you a very happy birthday! A big day… and, of course, there's another one looming, just around the corner. I really wish I were in Italy now, so that I could participate more directly and stand together with everyone across the country—in social centers, bookstores, theaters, and auditoriums—who will be speaking out on your behalf on June 4th. And not just your behalf, of course; the principal thing is to make manifest the growing support for the No TAV movement. Instead Anna and I are stuck here, for the moment anyway, on the other side of the pond, following the news from a distance.
I also want to apologize for penning this open letter to you in English. But since what we have to discuss is also a matter of language, and of the willfulness by which governments attempt to control, police, sanction, and thereby limit speech, perhaps English is the most appropriate vehicle here. After all, at least on the internet, English is today’s lingua franca. And, as we’ve known at least since Antonio de Nebrija explained it to Queen Isabella back in 1492, languages may also be deployed as the instrument of empire. Whether or not Nebrija’s argument about language is sufficient, it is certainly necessary. Such an understanding of language is also in play, as far as I can tell, and best describes the preoccupations and motivations of the Italian magistratura.
From thousands of miles away, or even from Cit Turin, indeed, from anywhere outside the Val di Susa, I suspect that many will find it difficult to fully understand the resistance struggle against the TAV (the proposed high-speed train from Lyon to Turin). Such a failure of imagination may be especially common in my country, devastated as it is by its worship of the automobile and the airplane. I myself have lived in Philadelphia, a city that highways helped carve into ghettos, a city—during the Rizzo regime and after—with a history of declaring war on its own citizens, and I now live near Hartford and Springfield, two cities that have hardly fared better. And of course, having grown up in a General Motors factory town back in Michigan, I do know something of the toll that particular industry has left in its wake. In short, then, for those of us not from the Susa Valley, could you help explain why, as you’ve said on many occasions, “this construction project is an environmental disaster that needs to be prevented and obstructed”? Why isn’t a new train line better than the alternatives?
Secondly, I’d like to hear you what you have to say about the rhetoric most frequently marshalled against popular movements like No TAV—that the people who stand together in such movements are simply “Luddites,” or worse yet, “ecoterrorists.” Such namecalling is, I think, as historically inaccurate as it is offensive, yet it may well be rhetorically effective—sophism frequently is. Even the Apple Dictionary definition of “Luddite” (though one might be suspicious of a reference work given as free software on a laptop) offers this sample phrase: “a small-minded Luddite resisting progress.” Heard that before, haven’t we? The opposition to a given construction project should not be equated with opposition to all forms of technology, or to “progress,” however defined. But in the popular mind, progress often does feel like a high-speed train, and standing on the tracks, facing it down, might well conjure up images of a single soul standing up against a tank in Tiananmen Square.
As for the accusation of “ecoterrorism,” well, that brings us to the accusations currently being brought to bear against you. (And not, by any means, against you alone: I’ve read that there are already over a thousand charges levied against people in the No Tav movement.) So far, of course, the official charge in your case is “istigazione a delinquere,” i.e., instigating others to commit crimes. (The Italian delinquere, like the English “delinquency, is derived from the Latin delinquentia, though the Italian word is stronger, since the word for crime—delitto—is also related). Public trials of this sort, however, are also ligitated in the press, and there the word “terrorism” has frequently been bandied about.
When I cited you just now, expressing your opinion that potential disaster of the TAV “needs to be prevented and obstructed,” I intentionally translated the verb “sabotare” with the English “obstruct.” Of course, sabotare could also be translated in English more literally, as “sabotage.” This word, which isn’t itself an actual wooden clog thrown into any machine, does frequently refer to a criminal act, in English as in Italian. But words themselves can’t be jailed, and, as such, in my translation I preferred to follow what I take to be your meaning, rather than ape the accusations of Italian magistrates. Violent and antidemocratic rhetoric of the sort they’re using needs to be confronted and exposed each time it is used, so you’d better say a few words here on that subject as well. When I chose “obstruct” rather than “sabotage,” I meant to allude to the great tradition of civil disobedience, from Thoreau through Gandhi and Martin Luther King to the No TAV resistance today. So how do things stand in the Susa Valley? Do you also see the movement there as part of this noble tradition?
The final issue we need to address is perhaps the most important, and not just for writers, poets, editors, and readers. In Italian there is a fixed phrase, reato di opinione, literally an “offense of opinion.” (In English, it’s hard to imagine using such a phrase, except sarcastically. Free speech is, of course, a right grounded in constitutional law in the United States—something we USians can be proud of, though the fight is forever.) You’ve stated that, for a writer, to be accused of a reato di opinione is an honor, and I couldn’t agree more. For writing never to offend, it must merely repeat established consensus, rather than challenge it. Shelley was no romantic when he acknowledged what the world still has not: poets, if they are to deserve the mantle, must be “legislators, or prophets” and, indeed, “a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters.” From this distance, however, the accusation against you is still hard to understand. How can the country of Beccaria contemplate sending a writer to jail for saying what he believes? I don’t know if I’m naïve or if they’re simply stupid. Foucault long ago argued that nothing is productive like repression, and that what it produces is precisely what it attempts to prohibit. Could they really be dumb enough to put you in jail?
So, that about covers it, I guess. Certainly not the most cheerful birthday greeting you’ve ever received. I hope you’ll find a minute to write back. I also hope that the Fourth of June will turn out to be a day we all celebrate—in the Val di Susa, across Italy, and everywhere that the voice of the people is heard.
Un abbraccio forte,
Jim
May 21, 2014
Dear Jim,
Thanks for your birthday wishes, and also for your intention to help people outside of Italy understand the Val di Susa and its struggle. It’s a simple question, really—the legitimate defense by the masses against tunneling through mountains that are natural deposits of asbestos. In England, there’s a law prohibiting construction on any site that contains asbestos. For me that’s motive enough to share an already twenty-year-old struggle against a criminal enterprise.
Have a good one,
Erri
Along with this short note, in order to answer more fully the questions above, Erri also forwarded an interview he did with Le Monde on April 10, 2014. What follows is a translation of that interview.
“There is a Moral Imperative for Disobedience”
An enormous construction project, the TAV (high-speed train) from Lyon to Turin has provoked the wrath of ecologists on both sides of the border. For years, the residents of the Susa Valley in Italy have been mobilized in opposition to this construction, which would involve drilling a tunnel thirty-five miles long between Susa, in Piedmont, and Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in Savoy. Already rejected on many occasions, this project for a mixed-use transport line, carrying both freight and passengers, was first proposed in 1991, then approved by an international treaty in 2001, and since postponed at length for lack of funding. The total is projected to cost close to thirty-five billion dollars, with roughly twelve billion of that for the international segment. For this section, the work has been contracted to the Lyon Turin Railway company (LTF), a subsidiary of the France and Italian national railways.
The Italian writer Erri De Luca has fully taken up the cause of the Susa Valley inhabitants and their struggle stop the drilling. A former member of the militant leftist group Lotta Continua during the 70s, Erri De Luca is the author of many books, essays, newspaper columns, stories, and novels—one of which, Montedidio, won the France’s Femina Prize as the best book in translation in 2002. His last novel, The Crime of a Soldier, has just been published in a French translation by Gallimard.
On the Italian site for the Huffington Post, on September 1, 2013, he stated that the construction of the high-speed train ought to be sabotaged. Charges were filed by LTF, which resulted in De Luca’s indictment by the Italian magistratura on January 24th.
The construction of the Lyon-Turin high-speed railway has provoked a great deal of resistance in the Susa Valley? For what reasons?
First of all, the mountain is full of asbestos and pitchblende, a radioactive material; drilling a tunnel over dozens of kilometers will put such materials into the open air. Above all, this construction project is essentially designed to divert public funds, in order to fill the pockets of private enterprises, when a traditional railway exists already and is being used less than 20% of its capacity. Italy is full of unfinished construction sites, bridges, roads, hospitals… there are hundreds of them. In a certain sense, these sorts of construction sites sabotage themselves. It’s a model for development. Don’t forget that Italy is the most corrupt country in Europe.
How far along is the construction?
Since 2008, the construction site for the TAV has been militarized and residents are obliged to show their IDs before going to work in their vineyards. The government has sent an army to oppose a local population that has been resisting them for years. A medieval form of repression. At least a thousand people have suffered this sort of legal persecution. In one example, they were charged for having cut through a protective netting surrounding a construction site, one which LTF had illegally put on community property. And now, four of them have also been arrested for “terrorism,” after having been accused of damaging a compressor on the worksite. In Turin, an entire team of magistrates does nothing except work on this—they act like guard dogs for the LTF. In Genoa, back in 2001 [after the revolts at the G8 summit], the police arrested hundreds of people, but the judges set them free. Here, judges are working as policemen…
But the residents of the Susa Valley are united. In February, they paid a self-imposed tax in order to cover the fines imposed on the leader of the resistance movement, Alberto Perino. The Susa Valley has become a national story—and an important cause for the real Italian left, the grassroots, from its social organizations to some small political parties like Beppe Grillo’s Five Star party, or the Left and Liberty party (SEL). The Susa Valley movement is the most powerful and robust struggle of the people in Italy today.
What is your role in this movement?
I’ve been at their side since 2006. Back then, I was touring the region for my theatrical production, Quixote and the Invincibles. One day I went to speak with them and then that same night they called me back: the police had destroyed their encampment near the town of Venaus. We blocked the road—a form of passive resistance. Afterwards, I’ve continued to attend their public meetings and fundraisers.
At present, an indictment has been issued for you. What is it about?
Police officers from the Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (DIGOS), the department that investigates charges of terrorism, showed up at my house on the 24th of January with an indictment for the “instigation of violence.” An investigation had been started in response to a grievance filed by LTF in September of 2013. The reason: two sentences reprinted on September 1, 2013 in the Italian version of Huffington Post. I said, “The TAV ought to be sabotaged,” and then that such acts of sabotage “are needed to make people understand that the TAV construction site is useless and harmful.”
Isn’t calling for sabotage a serious matter?
My comments on the Huffington Post are an opinion. It’s only my point of view about this project, and about what would be good to do in response: to sabotage the work. There’s no question, therefore—such comments are not an act. I didn’t climb up onto a barricade and harangue a crowd. Sabotage is a form of political resistance that can’t be limited to only the material sense of the word. It has a larger meaning, a political meaning. When government representatives in Parliament oppose a law, in their own way, they sabotage it. A strike is also a form of sabotage. And if someone refuses to follow an order to create mass destruction, that person also participates in sabotaging. There is a moral imperative for disobedience. The magistrates have taken my sentences and put quotes around them; they’ve interpreted them in order to suppress them. It’s as if they’ve put my words in handcuffs. And as for me, I have no power to free them, I can only repeat them.
Isn’t democracy founded on the respect for law?
Laws exist only in transit. They change. In democracy, there’s also the possibility of changing things. Moreover, it’s minorities that make things move, that change laws, or political systems. It’s the same in science: individuals are often more effective than the masses. When Copernicus wrote De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, he was on his own. In Italy, the resistance to fascism was the work of small groups taking refuge in the mountains. The twentieth century was the century of revolutions, begun by minorities. During the 70s, with the working-class struggles in factories, Lotta Continua, the movement I belonged to, incited the workers to sabotage their assembly lines. It was necessary to improve working conditions. And that destroyed nothing, except perhaps the steady stream of production. That’s how it is in Italy: power is immobile, and so sometimes it takes activists to lead the struggle, in the name of the majority. Because in the Susa Valley, it’s people defending their health. They’re fighting against the poisoning of the valley. There, it’s become a movement of the masses. Wherever there’s big industry, there’s ecological tragedy. Defending the air, the soil, the water, now that’s revolutionary. And the people who are born there have the right to be citizens of their lands, and make decisions about the sort of environment that they want.
In the 70s, militant left-wing movements like yours, Lotta Continua, defended universal causes. In the Susa Valley, the fight is focused on a local struggle. Where do you see the connection?
The resistance of the Susa Valley is no local struggle. It’s a fight against the reduction of citizens to the rank of subjects, confronted with absolute power. And that is universal.
How is this accusation linked to your activity as a writer?
Because it’s a question of the words I’ve spoken. It’s my words that have been called into question. As a single individual, I can become physically engaged, as I did when I went to Yugoslavia during the war. But as a writer, I take up a cause in writing. It’s a clear and elemental form of engagement. And of course, I’m also very sensitive to questions concerning the right to speak.
Among other Italian intellectuals and artists, after the accusation, who has spoken out on your behalf?
In September, there was a petition of intellectuals on my behalf. After that, the writer and actor Ascanio Celestini, the singer Fiorella Mannoia, and the actor Alessandro Gassman made personal statements of support. Otherwise, the television and newspapers have been silent. Their owners haven’t changed…
What penalty do you face?
Prison. And if I am judged guilty, I will not appeal.
