For a brief but explosive period in the mid-seventies, the young, unemployed and the homeless of Italy's cities joined with workers, forming an unexpectedly militant movement known simply as Autonomy (Autonomia). An insurrectionary moment followed, exploding in the face of the austerity programmes and social discipline of the ruling Christian Democrats and their would-be partners in the Communist Party. Social antagonism expressed itself through school occupations and factory sabotage, mass shoplifting and violent street protest – creating a "politics of refusal" through the joys of resistance. In turn, their successes united their opponents behind the draconian measures more severe than any since the war.
Nanni Balestrini, himself a victim of that repression, follows in spare but vivid unpunctuated prose Autonomy's trajectory through the eyes of one working-class protagonist, from high-school rebellion, squatting and attempts to set up a free radio station, to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment. This is a powerful and gripping novel: a rare evocation of the intensity of commitment, the passion of politics.
