Giving Voice to Silence: A Study of State Violence in Bolzaneto Prison during the Genoa G8 Summit - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 187

In this section we will concentrate on the forms of interaction between police and
arrested persons that took place inside Bolzaneto prison starting from the narrative
structure of the legal trial and hearings that enabled what was said to come to light,
creating visibility where silence and darkness had been imposed previously. As was
already stated, the trial was the first time that victims and perpetrators were called
together publicly to testify, and this “narrative construction” (Darley 1999 ) remains
the only binding material for understanding what happened.

10.5.2 Theory of Social Delegitimization

One of the more noted sociopsychological theories to explain the legitimacy of
violence is social delegitimization of Daniel Bar-Tal ( 1989 ). In fact, to exercise
an abuse of power inside a state or government institution, a “civic discharge” is
often required (Zamperini 2001 ), a social process by which the figures of alterity
are transformed into enemies and are, thus, eligible for moral exclusion (Staub
1987 ; Opotov 1990 ). Moral exclusion is a process by which individuals or groups
are placed outside the normal moral community's boundaries, perceived as beyond
the boundaries within which norms and values are applied, guided by criteria of
equity and justice, becoming a sort of nonentity to exploit or to be no longer worthy
consideration. It is the position occupied with respect to the moral boundaries that
determine different treatments aimed at opinion and social action. Consequently,
anybody may become a target of violence and prevarication, with the difference
being that when damage is inflicted from within, it is more likely to be considered
an unjust action, following which there may be legitimate requests for repair, while
when the target comes from outside the group, it is much more likely that any form
of aggression against the outsiders is acceptable and appropriate, and no violation
of human rights is perceived.
Specifically, in Bart-Tal's conception, delegitimization is a process characterized
by extreme moral exclusion that results in a willingness to harm someone. In
addition, from the point of view of the narrative paradigm, delegitimization can
be a narrative that appears in public discourse as well as in cultural and educational
products (Bekerman and Maoz 2005 ; Savage 2007 ), becoming a fundamental part
of the culture of conflict.
According to Bar-Tal's theory, delegitimization is defined as a cognitive process
of categorizing a group or groups into extremely negative social categories that
exclude it or them from the sphere of human groups that act within the limits
of acceptable norms or values so as to make physical or psychological expulsion
socially plausible and morally acceptable, to commit acts of violence, or to consider
maltreatment as having been deserved. Bar-Tal ( 1990 ) proposed five main processes
of delegitimization; they represent the rhetorical strategies of categorization that
authorize inflicting harm on the delegitimized group. Through dehumanization the
group is labeled as nonhuman, and in discourse the main linguistic labels used refer
to an inferior race or to the animal world and the supernatural, for instance demons,