Hat der bewaffnete Kampf ein Geschlecht? Politische Militanz und Gewaltfrage im Italien der Siebziger Jahre. Eine Betrachtung aus der Gender-Perspektive

By analyzing narrative interviews and already published memoirs, interviews and publications from the 1970s, the article demonstrates in which ways the former activists remember their involvement in radical left or feminist groups and in illegal underground movements and how gendered public discourses and hegemonic interpretations on violence in the 1970s form the framework for memoirs and personal narratives. Firstly, the article pinpoints the attitudes, the motivations, and the methods of operating of women engaged in "Lotta Continua", one of the most relevant organizations in the Italian radical left in the 1970s. When talking about political violence in the 1970s, most women who were militant activists depict themselves as victims of violence rather than militant women. Female and male former activists in "Lotta Continua" still interpret their violent militancy as counterviolence, and use narrative patterns that draw on gender dichotomy and hegemonic interpretations of women and violence. Secondly, the text analyzes how militant female activists from the terrorist groups depict themselves and their motives in memoirs and interviews. Finally, the text raises the question of the relationship of the feminist movement in Italy with regard to violence and militant terrorist groups, and focuses on the question as whether a gendered motivational background influenced women in their decision to actively participate in the armed struggle of terrorist organizations such as the Brigate Rosse.