“Massacri” e “violenza di massa”: sfide nuove, paradossi storici

A widespread, if not colloquial term, “massacre” is actually at the heart of a strand of socio-politological literature that gained its own, albeit limited, independence in the early 2000s. Understood in most cases as an episode (or set of episodes) of intentional violence against unarmed civilians, the massacre (and mass violence, often synonymous) are actually phenomena inherent in different forms of the organization of power and, especially, its concentration. In the face of domestic and international violence that shows no sign of subsiding, the recent interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary literature on massacre and mass violence underscores the need to build a corpus that can open up the politicalological debate toward the study of similarities and differences between different episodes; or to investigate ontological and normative specificities without limiting itself to specific sub-categories (e.g., genocide, ethnic cleansing, political dissidents...). The objective of this chapter will, therefore, be to present the ways and, more importantly, the reasons behind the introduction of the concepts of massacres and mass violence into contemporary academic debate. Particular emphasis will be placed on the coexistence of the immunity of civilians and innocents with the asymmetrical relationship between subjects and objects of violence, delving into the centrality of this “paradoxical” relationship in the dynamics of violence and its various articulations in both the literature and empirical reality.