PERFORMANCE-AS-RESISTANCE AND RESISTANCE-ASPERFORMANCE IN THE NO MUOS MOVEMENT IN SICILY
Marcello Messina1
ABSTRACT
One of the US-owned Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) installations was projected
and built in Sicily, near Niscemi. Since 2012, NO MUOS activists have excogitated
various forms of protest that are reminiscent of artistic performances and identitarian
rituals. Additionally, a number of creators/performers across different art forms
have supported the movement by referring to the NO MUOS resistance in their work.
This article seeks to explore the connection between protest and performance in the
symbolic practices staged within and outside the picket line. I argue that these protests/
performances possess an identitarian content that points to the reclamation of Sicily’s
sovereignty against the hysteric militarisation of an imaginary North/South border in
the Mediterranean.
KEYWORDS
MUOS, Sicily, Sovereignty, Resistance, Performance
PERFORMANCE DE RESISTÊNCIA E RESISTÊNCIA COMO
PERFORMANCE NO MOVIMENTO “NO MUOS”, NA SICÍLIA
RESUMO
Uma das instalações do Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), de propriedade dos
EUA, foi construída e instalada na Sicília, perto do município de Niscemi. Desde 2012,
ativistas do movimento NO MUOS (Não Muos) excogitaram várias formas de protesto
que lembram performances e rituais identitários. Ao mesmo tempo, vários artistas
suportaram o movimento fazendo referência à resistência do NO MUOS nas suas obras.
Este artigo pretende estudar a conexão entre resistência e performance em práticas
simbólicas encenadas dentro e fora dos atos de protesto. Eu sugiro que esses protestos/
performances possuem um conteúdo identitário que tem a ver com a reclamação da
soberania da Sicília face à militarização histérica duma fronteira imaginária entre o
Norte e o Sul do Mediterráneo.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE
MUOS, Sicília, Soberania, Resistência, Performance
Doutor em Composição Musical pela University of Leeds (2013). Bolsista PNPD e Professor
Colaborador do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras: Linguagem e Identidade da Universidade
Federal do Acre.
1
50
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A Santo Trovato,2 in
memoriam
Introduction
The Mobile User Objective
System (MUOS) is a military device
of global satellite communications
owned by the US Department
of Defense. One of the MUOS
installations was projected and
built in Sicily, in a natural preserve,
the Sughereta (Suvareta in
Sicilian), near the city of Niscemi.
While a fact sheet published
by the US Embassy in Italy claims
that the “[c]ompletion of [the]
MUOS is in the strategic interests
of Italy, the United States, and
NATO and does not pose health
risks to the public” (US MISSION
ROME 2015), the widespread
antagonism towards the MUOS
questions precisely these two
arguments.
In particular, judiciary and
political institutions in Sicily
have drawn upon the health risks
posed on the population,3 and on
This article is dedicated to the memory of
Santo Trovato, tireless NO MUOS activist and
historical leader of the Sicilian independence
cause. Santo released an extremely important
declaration for this work on 17 April 2017.
He passed away one month later, on 21 May
2017. His strength and passion will always be
remembered.
3
This was the position of Sicilian Regional
President Rosario Crocetta until 2013 (cf.
2
51
the fact that the installation is
situated on a natural preserve,4
in order to momentarily stop the
constructions. On top of adducing
the same arguments, a composite
grassroots protest movement
known as NO MUOS also openly
disputes the desirability of US and
NATO militarisation of Sicilian/
Italian territory.
A widespread argument,
which has been formulated long
before the construction of the
MUOS, claims that the presence of
NATO and US military installations
in Sicily violates the Paris Peace
Treaty (1947), which prescribed
the demilitarisation of Italian
islands, namely Sicily, Sardinia
and the smaller islands (MIGNEMI
1980; DI BELLA 2015; MESSINA,
2015a). The condemnation of
the Italian complacency to US
and NATO agendas, incorporated
in some formulations of this
argument (MIGNEMI 1980), has
somewhat anticipated the (initial)
tensions over the MUOS between
the Sicilian Regional Government
and the Italian Ministry of Defence,
which resulted in the latter suing
the former (ROMANO 2013).
MESSINA, 2015a).
4
According to the ruling of the Regional
Administrative Court (TAR di Palermo) in
2015 (cf. MESSINA, 2015a).
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As I have argued elsewhere, at
stake in this particular episode
is the question of Sicilian
territorial sovereignty, and of
whether it is desirable to have
it mediated by Italian national
interests (MESSINA, 2013, p. 16).
As previously reported in my
work (MESSINA, 2015a, p. 864),
however, the position of the Sicilian
Regional Government has changed
since 2013, when Governor
Rosario Crocetta has become
condescending and compliant
with the national government. Has
I have also reported (MESSINA,
2015a, p. 865), in November 2013
Crocetta has also criminalised
the activists, alleging that the
Movement was infiltrated by the
Mafia.
The grassroots antagonism
organised in the NO MUOS
Movement brings together all
these different arguments and
discourses in what Di Bella
describes as “popular geopolitics”
(2015:334), which refers precisely
to a counter-hegemonic vision
of the strategic territorialisation
operated over Sicily and the
Mediterranean by the US and
NATO. The Movement combines
discourses of health safety
52
and nature preservation with
claims about Sicilian sovereignty
and broader aspirations for
the demilitarisation of the
Mediterranean.
In this paper, I examine how
the ritual nature of many of the
protest forms excogitated by the
NO MUOS activists can qualify as
performance, and how, conversely,
the work of various artists endorses
and reproduces protest forms in a
way that resembles or represents
concrete activism. I then argue
that performance-as-resistance
and
resistance-as-performance
not only cooperate in formulating
counter-hegemonic
discourses
against the MUOS project, but
also
represent
fundamental
nodes of production of decolonial
thought concerned with visions
of a demilitarised Sicily and a
liberated Mediterranean. Finally,
and in contrast with the positions
of an anonymous reviewer
who has recently assessed an
earlier version of this work
(ANONYMOUS REVIEWER, 2017),
I maintain that the NO MUOS
protest is indissolubly linked with
identity politics, or, better, with
what Walter Mignolo describes as
“politics of identity” (2009, p. 14).
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Historical
context:
Sicily’s
struggle for demilitarisation
and autonomy
On 10 February 1947, in the
aftermath of World War II, Italy,
Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and
Finland signed a Peace Treaty
in Paris with the Allies. Article
43 of the Peace Treaty with Italy
prescribed that:
(2) In Sicily and Sardinia all
permanent installations and
equipment for the maintenance
and storage of torpedoes, sea
mines and bombs shall be
demolished or removed to
the mainland of Italy within
one year from the coming into
force of the present Treaty.
(3) No improvements to,
reconstruction of, or extensions
of existing installations or
permanent fortifications in
Sicily and Sardinia shall be
permitted […] (4) In Sicily
and Sardinia Italy shall be
prohibited from constructing
any naval, military and air force
installations or fortifications
except for such accommodation
for security forces as may be
required for tasks of an internal
character (COUNCIL OF FOREIGN
MINISTERS, 1946, pp. 18-19).
The pact that established
Sicily’s
demilitarisation
was
broken shortly after the signature
of the Treaty, by the US Navy, that
started sending troops to Sicily in
January 1948 (MANCUSO, 2009,
53
p. 45). Since then, NATO and US
militarisation of Sicilian territory
has been very intense, key
moments in this process being:
(1) The building of the Sigonella
Naval Air Facility in 1959 (NAVAL
AIR STATION SIGONELLA, 2009,
p. 7); (2) The deployment of 112
Cruise missiles in Comiso between
1981 and 1987 (GIANNA, 2007);
(3) The building of the Naval
Radio Transmitter Facility (NRTF)
in Niscemi, started in 1991
(CORADDU, LEVIS & ZUCCHETTI,
2013); (4) The deployment of
Trapani-Birgi airport and of the
Sigonella base for the 2011 NATO
bombing of Libya, as part of the
Operation
Unified
Protector
(NATO, 2011; NATO, 2015); (4)
The construction of the MUOS
near Niscemi, in the same site
that hosts the NRTF (US MISSION
ROME, 2015). Local resistance
against Sicily’s militarisation has
been perseverant throughout
post-WWII history,5 its most tragic
episode being the murder of antimissile protest leader Pio La Torre
in 1982, which raises suspicions
as to the US-based interests
that might have been behind it
My position on local resistance strongly
differs from the one held by Lutri (2016), as I
will illustrate later.
5
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(AMADORE 2012). The alleged
necessity to militarise Sicilian
territory acquires additional
urgency in light of the current
geopolitical division that traces
an imaginary North/South border
across the Mediterranean (HESS
1978; REIG BRAVO 2015).
The end of WWII was also
characterised by the emergence
of independence movements
in Sicily, which gained electoral
consensus
in
the
years
immediately following the War,
with the MIS (Movement for the
Independence of Sicily) gaining 4
seats in the national parliament in
the 1946 Italian general elections
(CASTAGA 2008:5). In addition,
the EVIS (Voluntary Army for
the Independence of Sicily) had
embarked, since 1944, in armed
resistance against the Italian State
(PACI & PIETRANCOSTA, 2010).
These years were characterised
by frequent massacres committed
by the Italian army and the
other occupation forces in Sicily
(MARINO 2007), including the
murder of the commander of the
EVIS (Voluntary Army for the
Independence of Sicily), Antonio
Canepa, in 1945. The momentum
gained by Sicilian separatism was
54
among the reasons that induced
Italy to concede a Statute of
Autonomy to Sicily, in 1946 (PACI
& PIETRANCOSTA 2010: 14). As
claimed by various observers,
many of the powers conceded on
paper by the Statute were either
never granted, or granted initially
and then slowly eroded (COSTA
2009; MIGNEMI 1980).
Currently, as a result of the
failure to achieve factual autonomy
and to a great extent also due to the
current and continued economic
crisis, the traditional political and
economic marginalisation of the
island in the context of national
and continental interests, and its
several social problems, such as
ever-growing unemployment and
mass emigration, have become
extremely critical. As evidences of
this state of affairs, it is sufficient
to mention the recent national
investment gap in key areas such
as railways and kindergartens
(CANNAVALE, 2014). Emigration
from Sicily is massive, and around
70.000 people left between 2012
and 2013 (TONDO, 2014). Sicily
is also the poorest Italian region
in terms of average income
(CORRIERE DEL MEZZOGIORNO,
2015) and the unemployment rate
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in the island is 21.0%, against the
national Italian average of 12.2%
and the Southern Italian average
of 19.7% (SICILIA INFORMAZIONI,
2014).
In brief, Sicily’s situation
is markedly characterised by
a bizarre contrast between a
strategic centrality, enforced by
diffused territorial militarisation
(and police repression), and an
increasing
politico-economic
peripherality. NO MUOS activists
appear to be aware of this situation,
and abundantly denounce the
unbearable
contradictions
embedded
in
this
doubly
articulated state of subordination
to external interests, to the point
that the general regional website
of the movement has recently
commented that
while
Niscemi
becomes
depopulated as a consequence of
unemployment, only the number
of policemen rises, together with
the acts of repression against
activists, including imputations
and fines! (NO MUOS, 2016).6
Since the activists come from
varied and often contrasting
ideological
backgrounds
(DI
BELLA, 2015), many of them
“Mentre Niscemi si spopola sotto in colpi
della disoccupazione, aumenta solo il numero
dei poliziotti e degli atti repressivi per gli
attivisti, denunce e multe comprese!”
6
55
may not subscribe to the
aforementioned
notions
of
statutory
autonomy
and/or
struggle for independence as
desirable ways to achieve the
territorial sovereignty they seem
to campaign for. However, the
necessity of Sicilian territorial
sovereignty seems to be an
implicit point across the whole
movement, which, I contend,7 is
also abundantly populated by
autonomists and independentists
(MESSINA, 2015a).
Notes on anthropology, political
science
and
practice-led
research
Anthropological approaches
to the study of Southern Italy have
produced negative and biased
representations of the region’s
populations and territories. In
late 19th century, the Lombrosian
School of criminal anthropology
theorised the racial inferiority
of Southerners and their innate
propensity for criminality and
illegal behaviours (LOMBROSO,
1900;
LOMBROSO,
1896;
NICEFORO, 1898). In the middle
of the 20th century, the volume The
Moral Basis of a Backward Society,
written by Edward C. Banfield
I will illustrate and address the
contentiousness of my point later on in this
article.
7
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after his stay in a Southern Italian
village, introduced the widely
employed cliché of “amoral
familism”, to describe the alleged
incapacity of Southerners to
honour civic interests over family
priorities (BANFIELD, 1958). In
1993, drawing abundantly on
Banfield’s conclusions, David
Putnam produced an extremely
influential volume of political
science, by the title of Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions
in Modern Italy: here Putnam tries
to validate the idea that the Italian
South, contrary to the Centre/
North of the country, lacks any
form of horizontal solidarity, due
to a general disaffection towards
democratic participation, which
originates from forms of vertical
exploitation (PUTNAM, 1993, pp.
121-162).
In partially appropriating
approaches that pertain to both
anthropology and political science
I cannot avoid to confront critically
the historical legacy of the
controversial approaches listed
above. Besides actively trying to
challenge these representations
in my work, I also look at avoiding
to achieve any distance from the
“object” of my investigation. I can
56
make two concrete claims about
this lack of distance: first, I do not
qualify as an external observer,
but as a (diasporic) Sicilian whose
political positions and actions as
to the MUOS are coextensive with
those of the NO MUOS movement;
second, as a composer I am
actively including a section on my
own musical pieces in this work,
alongside the work of other artists.
My first claim perhaps
makes my role as a researcher
understandable under the concept
of “action anthropology” (TAX,
1975), whereby the researcher is
actively “willing to make things
happen” in terms of helping “a
group of people solve a problem”
while also “learning something
in the process” (TAX, 1975, p.
515). Alongside this fundamental
perspective, I also subscribe to
Mattos’s formulation of a “reverse
anthropology” (2015), intended
to overturn the traditional
scheme that contraposes a
“Western” researcher to an
indigenous community, alongside
the racialised border between
humanitas
and
anthropos
(MIGNOLO, 2009). In rupture with
this tradition, the work of Mattos,
side by side with members of the
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Huni Kuin/Kaxinawa communities
of North-West Amazonia, intends
to designate those who are
traditionally considered a mere
object of investigation as teachers/
lecturers of indigenous thought,
practices, cultural expressions
and technical methods (MATTOS,
2015; MATTOS, HUNI KUIN/
SALES & MAHKU, 2015).
It is important to clarify that,
as seen above, Sicily’s provisional
and conditional inclusion in what is
globally represented as “the West”
does hardly alleviate the discursive
violence produced as the result of
observations conducted by selfproclaimed “Western” observers.
Thus, despite the enormous
distance between Mediterranean
and Amazonian settings, I consider
Mattos’s approach extremely
productive for the examination
of Sicily. Moreover, the focus on
creative practices and expressions
on which reverse anthropology
is predicated resonates with
the second of my above claims,
i.e., that related to my work as a
composer/practice-led researcher
in composition. In line with this
approach, artistic expression
is not simply an object whose
observation creates knowledge,
57
but a source of knowledge in itself
(PACE, 2016; MESSINA, 2013).
Due to the distinctive
heterogeneity that characterises
my academic activities, the data
presented in this work was
obtained in a series of different
ways, ranging from unstructured
interviews
with
artists/
activists, to personal electronic
correspondence and interaction
on social media,8 through to my
own artistic production, created in
collaboration with the performers
involved according to more musicspecific methodologies.9
The NO MUOS Movement as
Southern Antagonism
Sicily is situated at the very
bottom of a racialised geopolitical
divide between the North and
the South of Italy (PUGLIESE,
2007). Importantly, this applies
to left-wing activism too, in a way
that similar grassroots protest
I take the opportunity to thank Alessio
Micieli, Claudio Scirè, Fabio D’Alessandro,
Giuseppe Fiasconaro, Guglielmo Manenti,
Maria Rapicavoli, Mario Di Mauro, the dearly
departed Santo Trovato, the members of
Antenne 46 and Bella Minchiata, and all the
other artists and activists who kindly accepted
to talk to me in these months/years. The views
I express in this paper do not necessarily
coincide with their own views.
9
Endless thanks to the Red Note Ensemble,
the Portumnus Ensemble, and the Hull
Sinfonietta.
8
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movements elsewhere in Italy
are commonly granted much
more media coverage than the
NO MUOS movement. Italian
antagonism is narrated in terms of
a prevalently Northern genealogy,
which
meticulously
selects
Northern histories of resistance
and glorifies them as seminal
episodes in the formation of the
democratic (white) nation that
Italy identifies with. Contrariwise,
Southern histories of rebellion are
often relegated to the margins of
Italian history, when not actively
defamed. This trend manifests
itself most violently around two
historiographical nodes: first, the
demonisation and criminalisation
of the Southern Post-Unification
(1860-1870) freedom fighters
known as briganti (“brigands”)
(GRAMSCI, 1954, p. 68; DICKIE,
1992; PUGLIESE, 2008); second,
the official narrative on the Italian
Resistance Movement against
the Nazi-Fascists at the end of
World War II, which represents
it as an exclusively Northern
phenomenon, overlooking and
silencing the role of Southern
political movements in the context
of the liberation (GRIBAUDI, 1997,
p. 86; GRIBAUDI, 2009).
58
Against
this
peculiar
mortification
of
Southern
histories, Festa (2014) re-signifies
the South as an intrinsically
antagonist macro-region: the
targets of this antagonism are both
the criminal organisations and
the Italian state, and Southerners
are described as making active
political use of their own condition
of subalternity. This resonates
with Pugliese’s formulation of
“tactical blackening”, namely, a
“form of grassroots civic culture
that reorients the caucacentric,
monoglossic nation-state space
into a place that is coextensive
with
southern
community
histories, politics and cultural
practices” (PUGLIESE, 2008, p.13).
Importantly, Pugliese and Festa
stress on ideas of civic culture in
order to disavow Banfield’s and
Putnam’s allegations discussed
above.
Coextensively
with
the
resignifications proposed by
Pugliese and Festa, in this work
the concepts of “resistance”
and “movement” are employed
precisely to liberate them from
the
Northern
appropriation
and monopolisation of Italian
antagonism. I subscribe to Diani’s
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definition of social movement as a
“network of informal interactions
between a plurality of individuals,
groups and/or organisations,
engaged in a political or cultural
conflict, on the basis of a shared
collective identity” (DIANI, 1992,
p. 13). Here it is fundamental
to stress on the identitarian
element: despite the recent
studies by Flesher Fominaya on
a tendency towards an “antiidentitarian collective identity”
in social movements (2015),
the NO MUOS movement can
be understood, I contend, as an
instance of Southern antagonism,
in that, more or less consciously,
it underscores continuously its
Sicilianness within its activities.
Coextensively
with
the
antagonisms
described
by
Pugliese and Festa, the NO MUOS
movement could be described one
of the “politico-cultural practices
of antidiscipline” (PUGLIESE,
2008, p. 18) that characterises
the reclamation of spaces in the
South. Pugliese’s reference to
“antidiscipline” is to be understood
as a disavowal of the power of a
North-centric Italian state/society
over Southern histories and
identities. Similarly, in this work,
59
the concept of “resistance” is meant
to be very distant from the Italian
Resistance Movement narrated as
a Northern nationalist founding
myth of the Italian Republic: as
I have argued elsewhere, the NO
MUOS protest pertains to what I
describe as “post-Italian”, i.e., the
Southern Italian articulation of
the need to overcome the Italian
national
horizon
(MESSINA,
2015c; MESSINA, 2016; MESSINA,
2017).
Another important element
characterises the NO MUOS
protest, namely, a perceived
inexorability of the final activation
of the MUOS which derives from
the enormous power imbalance
between the parties involved. In
other words, US strategic interests
are so powerful in the context
of global and local decisionmaking, that many NO MUOS
activists may not trust in a final
victory of the movement. A comic
strip by Guglielmo Manenti, an
artist/activist whose work will
be examined later in this work,
verbalises the perception of this
prospected defeat by staging a
dialogue between a father and a
son, both protesting against the
MUOS and dressed as Native North
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Americans:10
[Son] “Father, what’s the point
of keeping on fighting?” [Father]
“Fighting is life itself, son” [Son]
“But everything has already been
decided politically” [Father]
“Fighting for things you believe
in gives meaning to your life,
son”. (Figure 1)11
Figure 1 – Guglielmo Manenti 28 March 2015
(reproduced with kind permission of the author)
When confronted with the
prospective ineffectiveness of
their activities, agents might
continue carrying out these
activities despite the emerging
disconnection between the task
and its associated result. This is
It is important to note the comic strip
resorts to American indigenous identities as
a symbol of resistance against colonisation
in line with the affinities with Sicily drafted
above, while also evoking a problematic model
of essentialist exotic wisdom that resonates
with the Hollywood cliché of the “Magical
Negro”, i.e., a subsidiary black character
whose wisdom or supernatural powers serve
to benefit the white protagonist (GLENN &
CUNNINGHAM, 2009).
11
[Figlio]: “Padre che senso ha continuare
a lottare?” [Padre] “Lottare è la vita stessa
figlio” [Figlio] “Ma i giochi politici sono già
stati fatti” [Padre] “Lottare per le cose in cui
credi dà senso alla tua vita figlio”.
10
60
the moment when actions lose
their programmatic significance
and
become
performatic.12
Tasks turn into rituals, that is,
“forms of enacted meaning [that]
enable social actors to frame,
negotiate and articulate their
phenomenological existence as
social, cultural, moral, and political
beings” (MCLAREN, 1985, p. 85).
For example, commenting on the
last years of the mattanza (tuna
trap fishing) in the Sicilian island
of Favignana, Van Ginkel notes
that the fishermen continued to
practice the trap fishing for more
than 10 years, despite its emerged
unprofitability. He then argues
that the fishermen continued this
practice because, “[by] performing
the mattanza, the Favignanesi
recreate[d] their sense of selves”
(VAN GINKEL, 2010, p. 52). To
some extent, the various forms
of protest excogitated by the NO
MUOS activists are comparable
to the identitarian obstinacy of
the tuna fishermen in Favignana:
facing the extreme unlikeliness
of a cancellation of the projected
intervention, they support their
resistance by bringing up their
The word “performatic” is distinguished
here from the Butlerian concept of
“performative”: see Hunter (2008).
12
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own lives, bodies and identities as
an ultimate obstacle.
Importantly, in response to the
anonymous reviewer (2017), I am
not suggesting that the majority
of the activists did not hope to
eventually win the fight over the
MUOS – I am saying that many of
them expected that, regardless of
the result of every single judiciary/
political battle, US Defense would
find a way to implement the MUOS
in Sicily, as it eventually did.
61
As a matter of fact, NO MUOS
protests have at times taken the
form of artistic performances
and identitarian rituals, such as
playing cards, singing and making
music with various instruments.
Before illustrating some of these
performatic protests, I will spare
another subchapter to dialogue
with the existing literature on the
NO MUOS Movement.
NO MUOS Literature Review
(and a needed clarification)
I first wrote about the NO
MUOS Movement in 2013, in a
subchapter of my PhD Thesis
(MESSINA, 2013, p. 82-89), and
then in three different papers in
2015 (MESSINA, 2015a; MESSINA,
2015b; MESSINA, 2015c). Also
in 2015, Arturo Di Bella wrote an
extremely important article on
the NO MUOS (DI BELLA, 2015),
which I have extensively cited in
my work. Di Bella is part of a study
group on the NO MUOS, mainly
based at the University of Catania:
other important contributions
from this group were published
in 2016 by Lutri (2016), and Della
Porta and Piazza (2016).
In mid-2016, I submitted an
earlier version of this paper for
the special issue of an Ethnology
Journal. At that time, for purely
chronological reasons, I was not
aware of the last two papers cited
above, both of which I happened
to come across soon after my
submission. Almost ten months
later, after an interminable peerreview process,13 I received a series
of comments from a reviewer who
alleged that I did “not know all the
scientific literature on the topic”
(ANONYMOUS REVIEWER, 2017),
and then cited the very same Lutri
(2016), Della Porta and Piazza
(2016), together with an earlier
chapter by Piazza (2009), as the
Before the in-house peer-review at the
journal, my paper had already gone through
a one-year long peer-review process with
the two editors of the special issue, whose
excellent work I would like to acknowledge.
Without them, this article would not have
been possible.
13
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important works I had missed.
While I thank the anonymous
fellow scholar for her/his precious
suggestions and advice, I would like
to take the opportunity to engage
with some of her/his comments,
and with the literature that s/he
indicated as necessary. Among
other things, I do so to respond to
the other main complaint issued
in the reviewer’s report, which
revolved around the fact that I
had interpreted the NO MUOS as
an identitarian struggle, allegedly
reproducing “the vision of Sicilian
separatists/independentists,
which are very marginal in the No
Muos Mov[e]ment” (ANONYMOUS
REVIEWER, 2017). According to
the same fellow scholar, “the way
in which the protest is framed,
as a conflict between Sicily and
Italy/US, is not only simplistic
but also not corresponding to the
empirical reality” (ANONYMOUS
REVIEWER, 2017).
I would like to start this
needed self-defence by noting that
none of the illustrious colleagues
mentioned above does cite any
of my published work, despite
each of my papers and my thesis
being freely and easily available
on the internet and listed on
62
multiple academic repositories. In
light of this, none of the scholars
involved in the present diatribe
does actually know the existing
scientific literature on the topic in
its entirety, unless the anonymous
reviewer is trying to suggest that
my work is not “scientific”. In fact,
I have always actively tried to
acknowledge other people’s work
whenever I had the possibility
to do so, and the omission of the
two 2016 papers was only due to
the fact these works were being
published exactly when I was
about to submit my final draft.
The rest of my self-defence
will be focussed on my view of the
NO MUOS protest as a struggle for
Sicilian sovereignty. Already in its
earlier versions, my text contained
multiple disclaimers about the fact
that autonomy and independence
agendas are not uniformly shared
by activists, but that I nevertheless
see territorial sovereignty as a
key component of the NO MUOS
protest.14 Following my studies in
While at the beginning of this article I have
mentioned the Sicilian Regional Government
and the Sicilian Autonomy Statute, I do
not necessarily associate these Italian
institutions/laws to Sicilian sovereignty:
drawing on Crocetta’s aforementioned
U-turn on the MUOS, I rather see them as
ambivalent entities that may or may not be
orientated towards the reclamation of Sicilian
14
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Amazonian Brazil and Australia,
I subscribe to Joseph Pugliese’s
connection
of
indigenous
sovereignty with a continued
practice of social justice in the
face of colonial power (PUGLIESE,
2015). In this sense, I cannot refrain
from comparing the permanent
NO MUOS presidium (DI BELLA,
2015) with the Aboriginal Tent
Embassy in front of the Australian
Parliament in Canberra, Australia
(FELTHAM, 2004); or with the
recent Huni Kuin encampments in
the Parque Ecológico in Plácido de
Castro, Acre, Brazil (ALTHEMAN,
2015), or else, with the Kaiowá/
Guarani’s repossession of land
illegitimately seized (with state
support) by white farmers in the
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do
Sul (BRAND, 2016).15
Indigenous
sovereignty
is
continuously
usurped
(PUGLIESE, 2015) by national
law, which functions as “an
apparatus
of
biopolitical
63
sovereignty.
15
At the very moment of finalising this
article, a massive demonstration is being led
in Brasília by indigenous people of various
ethnicities. The protesters demand the
demarcation of indigenous lands and have
occupied the Esplanada do Planalto, i.e., the
land where the national Brazilian Ministries,
Government and Parliamentary Chambers are
located (GLOBO, 2017).
governmentality”, on the basis of
which the racialised nation-state
continuously reproduces itself
(PERERA e PUGLIESE, 2012). My
comparison between Sicilians
and the indigenous populations
of Australia and Brazil can only
appear unusual if one deliberately
ignores the silenced histories
of Sicilian and other Southern
Italian migrants in various settlercolonial states, or in Northern
Italy. In an important article about
Australia, for example, Francesco
Ricatti identifies a “conflation
between Aborigines and Sicilians
in Italian migrant discourse”
(RICATTI, 2013, p. 126): Ricatti’s
ground-breaking research shows
how, for example, Northern Italian
migrants in Australia used to
associate the fear and disgust they
had of Aboriginals with the fear
and disgust they had of Sicilians,
precisely on account of specific,
conflating constructions of the
racialised Other.
The
continued
military
occupation of Sicily, in this sense,
cannot possibly be understood
without considering the violent
racialisation of Sicilians and
Southern Italians both within the
national Italian territory and in
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
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the context of the mass emigration
of our people in the US. In other
words, both Italian and US law
apparatuses converge to transform
Sicilians, their bodies and their
lands, into voiceless objects, “nobodies” (SILVA, 2014a; SILVA
2014b) that can be sacrificed to
more important necessities. In
his critical analysis of repression
in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro,
Denise Ferreira da Silva suggests
that necessitas16 is precisely the
discursive ground on which
racialised bodies are tortured,
killed and sacrificed to guarantee
the
state’s
self-reproduction
(SILVA, 2014a; SILVA 2014b).
While
the
activists
interviewed by Della Porta
and Piazza (2016) may not see
this racialisation as a relevant
component in the context of the
motives of their protest, I argue
that a vehement, identitarianly
charged
reaction
against
racialisation is omnipresent in the
political activities of Sicilians. In
order to unveil this omnipresent
reaction, I resort to the analysis
of cultural production within
the protest, confident that it may
Necessitas is opposed to selfdetermination, which is granted only to nonracialised communities (SILVA, 2014).
16
64
reveal sentiments that are not
immediately perceivable among
the frontline members of the
protest.
In the section of this work
about the historical context of
the NO MUOS, I have noted that
the movement is abundantly
populated
by
autonomists
and
independentists.
The
anonymous reviewer reacted to
this statement, claiming that it
lacked “any empirical evidence”
(ANONYMOUS REVIEWER, 2017),
and then proceeded to point me
to Della Porta and Piazza’s work,
where they report that some
groups involved in independentist
political activities were expelled
from the NO MUOS Movement in
2012, resulting in the formation
of a separate Movement, namely
the Movimento No Muos Sicilia
(DELLA PORTA E PIAZZA, 2016, p.
5-6). Della Porta and Piazza offer
an interview with a militant named
Alfonso as the only evidence of
this claim.
I happen to be in contact with
leaders and militants of several
independentist
organisations,
all associated to Movimento No
Muos Sicilia, and I asked several
of them to confirm whether they
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were expelled from the NO MUOS
Movement in 2012. On 17 April
2017, independentist leader Santo
Trovato responded to me:
I wasn’t aware that anybody
had
ever
expelled
us.
Regardless of any particular
political orientation, we, as
independentists, are close to
anyone who fights for economic,
social and cultural liberation
and for the respect of human
beings and of their wellbeing. We
were, indeed, much closer to the
first movements, that emerged
spontaneously
in
Niscemi,
Acate and Victoria before the
communists of Catania started
to appropriate this struggle.
(TROVATO, 2017).17
Here it is not important to
establish who is right about the
expulsion of the independence
activists: suffice it to say that this is
a disputed matter, and that there is
no evidence that independentists
were marginalised or expelled
from the movement. In general,
the (unproven) fact that a group
of protesters was marginalised/
expelled from a (self-proclaimed?)
“Non mi risulta che qualcuno ci abbia
mai espulso. Noi indipendentisti siamo vicini,
indipendentemente dal colore politico, a
chiunque lotti per il riscatto economico/
sociale/culturale ed il rispetto della persona
umana e del suo benessere. Siamo stati molto
più vicini ai primi movimenti, prima che i
comunisti di Catania si intestassero la lotta,
nati spontaneamente a Niscemi, Acate e
Vittoria”
17
65
main movement does hardly make
that group marginal in the context
of the examination of the protest,
unless one wants to (dangerously)
legitimise the hegemony of an
(allegedly) dominant group within
the movement itself. In fact, the
members of the Movimento No
Muos Sicilia have continued to
participate to events, rallies,
public assemblies, etc., after 2012
(TROVATO, 2017).
I would like to note that,
in Della Porta and Piazza’s text,
indipendentists are almost always
syntactically associated with the
extreme right (2016, pp. 5-6),
and this suggests a coextensivity
between the two political
phenomena, which is totally
misleading. I agree with Della
Porta and Piazza’s main argument
about the “scale shift” of the
NO MUOS protest – from a local
territorial dispute into a largescale struggle against war and
militarisation – and this has also
been one of my arguments since
I started working on the topic. I
nevertheless refuse to accept Della
Porta and Piazza’s argument that
connects the (alleged) expulsion
of independentists from the
main NO MUOS movement with
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antimilitarism and antifascism
(DELLA PORTA e PIAZZA, 2016,
pp. 5-6). Such argument implies
that
Sicilian
independence
movements are either populated
by militarists, or by fascists,
or by both, and overlooks not
only the historical importance
of antifascism for the history of
Sicilian independence activism,18
but also the extreme diversity
of the current independentist
spectrum in Sicily. While I trust
these views may reflect the
perception of some of the subjects
interviewed by the colleagues, I
nevertheless recommend that, for
this type of work, independence
campaigners should be heard
alongside other protesters, in
order to avoid generalisations and
misconceptions.
For the sake of clarity, this
work is not about independence
movements, nor it tries to
reduce the NO MUOS protest to a
struggle for Sicilian independence.
Moreover, my use of the category
of
identity19
unconditionally
refutes essentialist formulations
The antifascist militancy of EVIS leader
Antonio Canepa, for example, is abundantly
documented by Paci and Pietrancosta (2010,
p. 2).
19
As well as, I trust, the use of this category
by most independentists.
18
66
of the concept: I work identity
as a socially produced concept
(ALBUQUERQUE
JR.,
2009;
ALBUQUERQUE,
2016);
importantly, this socially produced
concept can also be a necessary
component in the collective
articulation of a resistance
against interventions from above
(CUSICANQUI, 2010). In other
words, and borrowing again Denise
Ferreira da Silva’s words, Sicilians
are represented and treated as
“no-bodies”, but the awareness of
this discursive imposition makes
the “no-bodies” able to unite and
fight collectively. It is essential,
then, to clarify that Sicilian identity
is understood in this work as an
attribute that has nothing to do
with blood or birth: as a matter of
fact, not all of the activists/artists I
discuss were born in Sicily, or have
Sicilian origins – some of them are
not even Sicilian residents. Here
I draw upon Walter Mignolo’s
notion of “politics of identity”,
which “is different from identity
politics – the former is open to
whoever wants to join, while the
latter tends to be bounded by
the definition of a given identity”
(MIGNOLO, 2009, p. 14).
What worries me, however,
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
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is the way in which essentialism
operates precisely in the works
I am supposed to engage with,
according to the anonymous
reviewer. On top of having my work
labelled as “simplistic” and “not
corresponding to the empirical
reality” (ANONYMOUS REVIEWER,
2017), I was pointed to a paper by
Lutri, on the formation of “new
subjectivities” in Sicily within the
NO MUOS protest (LUTRI, 2016).
The “new subjectivities” unveiled
by Lutri seem to refer to the sudden
awakening of Sicilians from an
habitual condition of passive and
condescending subalternity to US
neo-colonial agenda: as evidence
of this, Lutri only reports his
personal views as an antimissile
activist during the aforementioned
protests in Comiso in the 1980s,
when he perceived the local
population – except for the
militants of the Italian Communist
Party – as being hostile towards
the protest (LUTRI, 2016). Lutri
then proceeds to document the
activities of the female protest
committee known as “Mamme NO
MUOS” (“NO MUOS moms”):
The
courageous
female
paricipaion of women from
Niscemi and Caltagirone in this local
and regional poliical controversy
emerges as an absolute novelty
67
in their existences, at least as
far as the tools and the forms of
the protest are concerned. Right
from the beginning, the acivists
of the commitee “mamme
noMUOS” promoted aciviies of
counter-informaion by means
of public assemblies in Niscemi’s
main public square, in order to
alert the rest of the populaion
as to the risks of the satellite
antennas’
electromagneic
acivity for public health and the
environment. They have started
direct acions intended to try and
paciically block the installaion
works of the satellite antennas
with their bodies, used for the
irst ime in their lives as poliical
instruments of protest. The
women of Niscemi’s incorporaion
of acivism and poliical protest
has not only produced in them
a new consciousness of what it
means to be a woman, a wife and
a mother in the poliical, social
and cultural reality of Niscemi
(a community that is not much
used to paricipate in poliical
and social life), but has also had
consequences in the gender
relaionships with their partners
and/or husbands, who started
seeing them not only as mothers
and wives, but also as poliically
acive subjects who defend the
health of the populaion and the
environment, capable of leading
this protest much more than they
were before (LUTRI, 2016).20
“La coraggiosa partecipazione femminile
delle donne niscemesi e calatine a questa
controversia politica locale e regionale si
configura come una assoluta novità nella
loro esistenza, per quel che riguarda almeno
le forme e gli strumenti di protesta. Le
attiviste del comitato “mamme noMUOS”
20
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Essentially,
Lutri
seems
to subscribe to Banfield’s and
Putnam’s view of Southern
Italian communities as naturally
opposed to political participation,
by implicitly drawing upon a
supposed
backwardness
of
Sicilians, a backwardness seen as
the fundamental cause of their
subalternity. Lutri’s “discovery” of
women insurgency as a new and
unexpected political development
in Sicily propitiated by the NO
MUOS protest overlooks an entire
tradition of female resistance
promuoveranno sin da subito in atto delle
attività di controinformazione mediante
incontri pubblici nella piazza principale di
Niscemi, per avvisare il resto della popolazione
locale
della
pericolosità
dell’attività
elettromagnetica delle antenne satellitari
per la salute della popolazione e l’ambiente.
Esse daranno vita a delle azioni dirette volte
a cercare di bloccare pacificamente con i
propri corpi i lavori di installazione delle
antenne satellitari, i corpi usati per la prima
volta nella loro vita come strumenti politici
di protesta. L’incorporazione dell’attivismo
e della protesta politica da parte delle donne
niscemesi non solo ha fatto emergere tra loro
una nuova consapevolezza di cosa vuol dire
essere donna, sposa e madre nella attuale
realtà politica, sociale e culturale niscemese
(una comunità molto poco avvezza alla
partecipazione alla vita politica e sociale), ma
ha avuto conseguenze anche nelle relazioni
di genere con i loro partner e/o mariti, i quali
hanno iniziato a vedere queste donne non solo
più nel ruolo di madri e di spose, ma anche di
soggetti politicamente attivi in difesa della
salute della popolazione e dell’ambiente, in
grado di trainare anche loro in questa protesta
molto più di quanto non lo siano stati sino a
ora”
68
in Sicily and in the South of
Italy, which persisted also in
diasporic contexts (CALAPSO,
1980; DINO, 2016; COSCO, 2016a;
COSCO, 2016b; GRIBAUDI 1997;
GRIBAUDI 2010; GRIBAUDI &
MARMO 2010; PALOMBO, 2015);
moreover, the allegation that the
women of Niscemi and Caltagirone
had never conceived their female
bodies as instrument of political
protest and had never articulated
their womanhood, motherhood
and
wifehood
as
political
concepts before the NO MUOS
protest, sounds also extremely
paternalistic, especially when
coming from a man (as Professor
Alessandro Lutri is). Finally, the
idea that partners/husbands had
never ever seen their companions
as political subjects reveals an
equally disturbing view of Sicilian
masculinity. According to such a
text, it would emerge that Sicilians
are rebelling precisely because
they are liberating themselves
from their “Sicilianness”, seen
as a set of crystallised atavistic
attributes such as political
passivity, cultural backwardness,
endemic patriarchalism, etc.
Lutri’s construction of these
subjectivities as “new” is trapped
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ARTIGO
in a thick web of assumptions that
permanently locates Sicily in a
periphery, both in spatial and in
temporal terms. In this context, the
NO MUOS, rather than being seen
(as I think it should) as an important
episode in a whole history of
resistance against other-directed
apparatuses of geopolitical and
biopolitical
governmentality,
materialises as Sicily’s unique
occasion of salvation from alleged
backwardness. Importantly, this
salvation is implicitly oriented in
the direction of a normative centre
that is allegedly not affected by
backwardness and passivity, and
that is naturally characterised by
civic participation. Needless to say,
this centre seems to coincide with
Northern Italy, North-America,
Northern Europe, etc.
Overall, as I have mentioned
earlier, I am worried that the
fact that resistance and political
participation
are
generally
narrated as Northern prerogatives
might induce some observers
and academics to (more or less
consciously) categorise the NO
MUOS protest as a step towards a
“necessary” whitening of Sicilians.
On the contrary, one of the points
I am trying to demonstrate in this
69
work is that the NO MUOS protest
is precisely a proud reaction
against the normative colonial
power of whiteness, both in its
national Italian manifestation and
in its North-American one.
Finally, and before getting
back to my article, I need to
gratefully
acknowledge
the
anonymous reviewer’s premise,
whereby s/he declares to be a
supporter of the NO MUOS like me,
and claims not to feel any hostility
towards me and my work. As far as
I am concerned, this non-hostile
attitude is totally reciprocal.
Resistance-as-Performance
Turi Cordaro
The protests staged by activist
Turi Cordaro (aka Turi Vaccaro)
are often assimilable to artistic
performances. On 29 April 2013, he
staged a singular protest by resting
on the ground in front of a police
car, while playing the traditional
Sicilian recorder (friscalettu)
(Figure 2). The performance,
symbolically aimed at impeding
the transit of the car, seems based
on the consciousness of its nonthreatening character, and yet
assumes a powerful oppositional
content which seems to disturb
the authorities considerably, as
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ARTIGO
the officers seem to struggle to
figure out what to do in response
(MOCCIARO & FIASCONARO,
2013). Here the activist enacts the
obvious contraposition between
the human body, that lies in its
most inoperative position, and a
vehicle characterised by strength
and rapidity of action. Additionally,
there is a performatic element
represented by the recorder
played by the activist, which
puts individual and community
practices, with their ritual
dimension, in direct opposition to
the immediate exploitation of the
site for its strategic utility. This
particular significance is not only
attributable to Cordaro’s protest:
on various occasions, for example,
while the main group of protesters
was blocking access to the site, a
smaller group of protesters was
sitting on a table, in the middle of
the group, playing cards as a form
of passive resistance (MOCCIARO
& FIASCONARO, 2013). Again,
bodies, rituality, slowness, are set
against the immediate access to
the site.
Figure 2 – Turi Cordaro’s protest on 29 April 2013 (reproduced with kind permission of photographer
Giuseppe Fiasconaro)
Going back to Cordaro’s
individual activities, he seemed to
be well conscious of the symbolic
potential of his performances on
the occasion of another incident
occurred on 8 May 2013, when
he resorted to getting under the
wheel of a police van, again in
an attempt to prevent access
70
to the construction site. In that
circumstance, while the police
officers were trying to pull him
out from underneath the van,
Cordaro almost seemed to attempt
to use his recorder to hinder the
wheel (Figure 3). The resistance
of the NO MUOS movement, here
epitomised by Cordaro’s symbolic
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manifestations, is totally nonthreatening, and yet possesses an
intense symbolic power, capable
of unnerving the authorities to the
point of setting off various acts
of reprisals, including random
house searches in the activists’
habitations (MARKEZ, 2013),
and the incarceration of various
members of the movement,
including
Cordaro
himself
(SICILIA, 2014).
Figure 3 – Turi Cordaro’s protest on 8 May 2013
(reproduced with kind permission of photographer
Antenne 46).
Another
of
Cordaro’s
performances/protests in March
and April 2015 involved walking
400 km from the city of Palermo
to the MUOS site to symbolically
pour salt on the site (PERROTTA,
2015) (Figure 4). Importantly, the
act was meant to celebrate the
1930 Salt March in India started
by Mohandas Gandhi. This is
probably the most blatant occasion
in which the protester almost
points to the performatic nature
of his NO MUOS activism. The
several weeks of Cordaro’s March
did not in fact involve any sort of
material confrontation with the
authorities until his very arrival
in Niscemi. This slow, prolonged
march does not seem to have any
particular function if not that of
making a point. Cordaro, most
probably, links Gandhi’s critique
of British colonialism in India with
his denunciation of the colonial
appropriation of Sicilian land.
Figure 4 – Turi Cordaro’s “salt march” in 2015 (Source: PERROTTA, 2015).
71
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The “SUCATE” sign
On 13 February 2015, the
Palermo Regional Administrative
Court (TAR) had declared the
MUOS illegal because it had been
built on a natural preserve, the
Sughereta (Suvareta in Sicilian)
(TAR DI PALERMO, 2015). This was
only one chapter of the long and
complex judicial battle between
Sicilian local institutions and US/
Italy. However, this sentence was
particularly significant for the NO
MUOS movement, to the point
that, to celebrate the decision
of the Palermo TAR, a group of
activists excogitated a singular
manifestation, namely a gigantic
sign made of detached white
letters leaning against a hill. The
sign read “SUCATE” (“Suck it off”),
a characteristic Sicilian expression
alluding to fellatio that is generally
used to deride one’s adversary
after a victory (Figure 5). The sign
was also highly reminiscent of
the Hollywood sign, a landmark
that commonly symbolises US
culture in the global imagery.
The “SUCATE” sign also assumes
a powerful counter-symbolic
charge that is reminiscent of
Pugliese’s aforementioned notion
of grassroots reorienting of a
72
monoglossic space. Specifically, the
NO MUOS protesters challenged
the authority of the Hollywood
sign as a symbol of US success
and influence over global culture
and as a self-proclaimed bearer of
imposed values such as freedom
and prosperity; they symbolically
disfigured the original Hollywood
sign by reproducing it and turning
it into an instance of irreverent
and blunt defiance; they replaced
the glorified English toponym
with a rude and desecratory
Sicilian expression; by doing so,
they celebrated their victory by
underscoring its exceptionality
in the face of the huge power
imbalance between the parties
involved. The highly parodic
nature of this celebration makes
the SUCATE sign also function as
a Bakhtinian “decrowning double”
of the Hollywood sign, which, as a
symbol of the self-celebratory and
imperialistic US culture, is laughed
at and “force[d] to renew [it]self”
(BAKHTIN, 1984, pp. 126-127).
Charged with indecorous
phallic references, the SUCATE
sign may possess obvious sexist
overtones, but points also to the
often silenced queer politics of the
obscene and of the marginal, of the
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unsuitable and of the indecent, of
the desirable and of the repulsive,
all
of
which
reverberates
sympathetically with what Larissa
Pelúcio’s describes as Teoria
Cu (PELÚCIO, 2014).21 In their
performatic act, Sicilian activists
are literally inviting the Americans
to have sex with them, and by doing
this they reposition the terms of
the debate from the domains of
warfare and court litigation to that
of sexual intercourse/domination.
Pelúcio attempts to “go beyond
translating
‘queer’,
towards
thinking of a theory informed
by [the] productions [of North
American and Northern European
queer theorists], but which also
dares to invent itself through
questioning our own marginalized
experience” (2014, p. 1): while
Pelúcio seeks to account for Latin
America, I see the exercise of Teoria
Cu as applicable to marginalised
Southern European communities
such as Sicily. In general,
queer speech-acts from global
peripheries cannot be separated
from a passionate decolonial
politics of identity, as the SUCATE
signs brilliantly exemplifies.
The word “cu” literally means “asshole” in
Brazilian Portuguese.
21
73
Figure 5: the “SUCATE” sign (reproduced with kind
permission of photographer Fabio D`Alessandro).
Bella Minchiata
Bella Minchiata is a group
of artists/activists from Catania,
dedicated exclusively to the
public apposition of the words
“Bella
Minchiata”
(roughly
translatable as “What a lovely
piece of bullshit”) to public
buildings, infrastructure and other
components of the public space
which are deemed to be useless,
wasteful, counterproductive, or
simply unbearable. Thus, “Bella
Minchiata” signs appear from time
to time in the urban landscape
in the form of graffiti, banners,
detached cubital letters, etc. Here
the expression “bella minchiata”
draws upon the same semantic
sphere as the “SUCATE” sign
discussed above, as the word
minchiata comes from minchia,
which denotes the phallus:
literally, minchiata is something
which is so bad as if it had been
done using one’s phallus, instead
of using one’s hands. Here,
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again, the combination of sexist
overtones with a radical politics of
obscenity, desire and repulsion are
as evident as in the SUCATE sign.
Bella Minchiata operates
anonymously: various unidentified
groups carry out the intervention,
photograph the sign, and then
send it anonymously to the Bella
Minchiata website and its social
network pages. Often, the photo is
accompanied by an explanation of
the intervention in a comic mixture
of Sicilian and Italian. Although
Bella Minchiata operates mainly
in Catania, in 2016 it “moved”
twice to the MUOS site in Niscemi
to try and appose its message in
the vicinities of the fence of the
military site.
The first time they tried was
in April. On that occasion, the
activist were stopped by the Italian
police and military patrolling the
site (Figure 6). A short memoire,
submitted anonymously with
a picture of the act, comments
polemically on the role of the
Italian police and military in
the repression of the NO MUOS
protest:
Unbelievable! They stopped us!
Even if we, from Bella Minchiata,
are very good at not getting
caught […]. I’ll tell you what, with
74
these new antiterrorism laws, the
cops, or better, the occupation
forces, are everywhere: you
open the closet, and instead
of the monster you find a cop
dressed as the monster – the
kids can no longer sleep! […]
Those cops saw us with these
super-dangerous letters made of
polystyrene, [thinking that these
letters] could have ruined the
day of the Americans […]. They
surrounded us […], they also
took pictures of our documents,
as it was obvious that we were
people to be afraid of […]. Dear
cops, at this rate, one day you’ll
find yourselves badly dressed,
side by side with us behind the
trenches of the slaughterhouses,
and you’ll cry from your own
tear gas, considering how stupid
you were when you supported
the power with your truncheonshaped dildos, and when you
didn’t defend the rights of the
majority, usurped by a minority.
Then we will tell you: you, too,
are lovely pieces of bullshit!!!
(BELLA MINCHIATA, 2016a).22
“Mai e poi mai! ci avevano femmato,
noi di bella minchiata, siamo bravi a non
farin’azziccari […] Ti dico che oggi con le
leggi anti terrorismo, i vaddia, anzi le forze di
occupazione sono ovunque, se apri l’armadio,
al posto del mostro c’è il poliziotto vestito da
mostro. I bambini non possono più dormire
[…], comunque chisti ni vistunu cu sta scritta
pericolosissima in polistirolo […] che poteva
condizionare la giornata de li Miricani […]. Ci
hanno attorniato […], Questi ni fecero anche le
foto dei documenti, perché si vedeva che eromo
gente di cui spaventarisi […] Cari poliziii, così
facendo un bel giorno vestirete loddi, lurdi
assieme a noi dietro le trincee dei mattatoi, e vi
cadranno lacrimogeni dagli occhi e penserete
quanto siete stati stronzi ad avallare il potere
22
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Figure 6: the first, unsuccessful attempt to appose
the “Bella Minchiata” sign outside the MUOS site,
in April 2016 (reproduced with kind permission of
the Bella Minchiata group).
Here, encoded within the
goliardic tone of the report, there
are discernible assessments of
the role of the Italian military
as an “occupation force”, on the
exaggerated repressiveness of
the “new antiterrorism laws”, and
on the exaggerated deployment
of forces to counter a few people
with “super-dangerous letters of
polystyrene”. The final lines also
articulate a clear dystopic vision
whereby the police is expected
to share a gloomy future of
“slaughterhouses” with common
people. The detached polystyrene
letters used for this protest are
perhaps meant to assume the
same decrowning significance
as the “SUCATE” sign mentioned
above.
A few weeks after the first,
75
dei potenti con i Dildo a manganello, e a non
difendere i diritti rovesciati dai pochi verso i
molti. Noi vi diremo a quel punto: siti macari
vuatri na Bella Minchiata!!!”
unsuccessful
attempt,
Bella
Minchiata returned to the MUOS
site and managed to excogitate
a way to avoid attracting the
attention of the authorities and
deliver their “love message”
(BELLA MINCHIATA, 2016b) to the
MUOS: this was done by setting the
camera to long exposure, and “airwriting” the phrase with a lamp
(Figure 7). This artifice may only
be appreciated in the photo, but it
is still an impressive achievement
in the face of the disproportionate
militarisation of the site.
Figure 7: The second, successful attempt to deliver
the “Bella Minchiata” message, in May 2016
(reproduced with kind permission of the Bella
Minchiata group)
In fact, the exaggerated
deployment of repressive forces
lamented by Bella Minchiata
manifested itself in a megatrial against 129 NO MUOS
activists, which was announced
in August 2016 by the Gela
prosecutor. In commenting this
event, Barbagallo talked of a
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conflict of “Italy against Sicily”
(BARBAGALLO, 2016), coherently
with the aforementioned problem
of Sicilian territorial sovereignty
and in line with Bella Minchiata’s
aforementioned description of
the Italian military and police as
“occupation forces”.
Here, again, the anonymous
reviewer warns me that this
vision of Italy vs. Sicily “is a
stretch, a point of view of some
people/activists/artists, but not
largely shared by the NO MUOS”
(ANONYMOUS REVIEWER, 2017).
However, I have never claimed to
interpret the most widely held
opinion of the NO MUOS activists:
I am rather trying to interpret acts
connected to the protest, in order
to unveil the presence of certain
identitarian elements that are not
dissociable from the whole of the
protest itself.
Performance-as-Resistance
Alessio Micieli
Alessio Micieli is an actor/
documentarist from Vittoria,
intensely active on YouTube. In his
homemade video NO MUOS SICILIA
- Il Turista Del Futuro (NO MUOS
Sicily – The tourist of the future)
(MICIELI, 2014), he appears as
a “tourist from the future” with
76
a radiation suit, holding a home
satellite dish as the “new souvenir
from Sicily” (MICIELI, 2014). In
such an outfit, Micieli poses with
the MUOS antennas (Figure 8),
imitating the silly poses of tourists
visiting
famous
monuments
worldwide. He notes that “under
the Tower of Pisa there are all
those people posing for those
weird photos” and then wonders:
“here, how are we supposed to
pose for photos?” (MICIELI, 2014).
The comparison with the
Leaning Tower Pisa, with its
global touristic success and its
commodified status of universal
landmark, perennially consumed
and resignified in the most
trivial and unnecessary ways by
casual travellers, points to the
marginalised status of Sicilian
land, which is made inconsumable
and unsignifiable precisely by the
presence of the MUOS installation.
Micieli’s polemical and caustic
comparison between Sicily’s
ravaged land and Pisa’s glorious
landmark exposes the blatant
contrast between a portion of
Italian territory which is abused
for
strategic,
other-directed
agendas, and another portion of
Italian territory that is among
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the most celebrated touristic
destinations in the world.
Figure 8: Alessio Micieli doing silly photo poses
with the MUOS antennas (reproduced with kind
permission of the author)
Dressed in his “touristy”
outfit, Micieli then joins a serious
NO MUOS protests (Figure 9),
standing in the middle of a crowd
of protesters as a tourist would
stand in a crowded road in Italy’s
travel destinations.
Figure 9: Alessio Micieli dressed in a radiation
suit and holding a home parabolic antenna in the
middle of a NO MUOS protest (reproduced with
kind permission of the author)
Importantly,
Micieli’s
commentary on tourism is parallel
to a commentary on progress and
on discursive constructions of the
future as a temporal space where
to project individual and collective
77
hopes for a better existence.
In this sense, Micieli’s protest/
performance tackles precisely the
colonial discourse of modernity,
seen as a series of assumptions
about wealth and prosperity
that, in reality, underlies a global
project of subjugation under a
Eurocentric hegemony (DUSSEL,
2000; MIGNOLO, 2009).
As claimed the anonymous
reviewer, in previous versions of
this work I might have implicitly
and
unwantedly
suggested
the fact that the majority of
protesters were resigned as
to the unlikeliness of a victory
against the MUOS (ANONYMOUS
REVIEWER, 2017). In fact, it was
pointed out that “until the last
ruling of the CGA,23 most of them
hoped in a victory against [the]
MUOS” (ANONYMOUS REVIEWER,
2017). In this context, Micieli’s
absurd performance in the crowd
seems to stand out precisely
for being rooted in frustrated
pessimism, and this is reflected in
his status as an outsider, looked
at with surprise and confusion
by the other protesters (Figure
9). Again, I reiterate the fact that
these marginal figures and acts are
I will report this ruling in the conclusive
section of this article.
23
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extremely important in order to
understand fundamental aspects
of the protest that might not be
immediately and consciously
shared by the large majority of the
movement.
Maria Rapicavoli
Maria Rapicavoli is a visual
artist from Catania, also active
between Europe and the US.
Rapicavoli has explored the issue
of Sicilian militarisation in A Cielo
Aperto (2014), a solo exhibition
hosted by the ISCP in Brooklyn,
New York, in February-April 2014.
The exhibition brief states that “A
Cielo Aperto, an Italian idiomatic
expression that can be translated
to ‘Open Sky’ contextualises
Rapicavoli’s current and longterm artistic research while
seeking to open, and therefore
disclose, Sicily’s sky as a space
occupied by military forces” (ISCP,
2014). The exhibition contained
a mixture of video, and a “largescale photograph of Sicily’s sky”
(ISCP, 2014), various pictures of
the MUOS, and military maps of
Sicily which “the artist acquired
from a soldier” (ISCP, 2014).
In fact, Park sees Rapicavoli’s
reference to the concept of
open sky as an ironic remark
78
about the condition of “being
in a hermetically sealed space
of
virtual
control”
(PARK,
2014:27), where even portrayals
of the sky become oddly angled
“trapezoids” (PARK, 2014:27),
in a way to depict the deforming
surveillance of the open aerial
space operated by the US military
installation. In this context, the
map (Figure 8), understood
as “an abstraction of physical
geography into miniaturized
form” (PARK, 2014:27), is exactly
the product of this deformation.
Thus, Rapicavoli’s work seems to
point precisely to what Di Bella
describes as “a very selective
form of geographical knowledge,
[whereby] the environmental,
social and cultural complexity of
territory is overlooked and the site
has no intrinsic value except the
strategic localisation” (DI BELLA,
2015: 342).
The unrevealed circumstances
whereby Rapicavoli received the
military map from a US soldier, and
the fact that the artist participated
in at least one of the Niscemi
rallies in 2013 (PARK, 2014, p.
26), suggest Rapicavoli’s keen
participation in various activities
of the NO MUOS Movement,
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and implicitly underscores the
continuity between her activism
and the exhibition in Brooklyn.
Figure 10 –Map excerpt from Rapicavoli’s A cielo aperto (reproduced with kind permission of the
author).
The very act of exhibiting in
the US work that is critical of US
militarisation of Sicilian territory
represents
undoubtedly
an
important statement. Rapicavoli
implicitly subverts the normativity
of US-produced (or US-influenced)
discourses about the strategical
priorities of Sicilian territory by
staging her own counter-discourse
precisely within a US-based art
venue, which, regardless of any
liberal narratives it might foster,
can nevertheless be described as
a locus of reproduction of national
power discourses. This subversion
of both the subject of the discourse
and the place of the discursive
intervention could be seen as
79
what Mignolo defines “epistemic
disobedience” (2009), that is,
the refusal and the subversion of
categories defined by Western
consciences
and
imposed
as universal ontological and
epistemological parameters in the
uninterrupted process of colonial
and neocolonial domination.
Blu
Blu is a male street artist
from central Italy, who is only
known under his pseudonym.
Internationally active, Blu works
between the Americas, Europe
and the Middle East. In 2013, he
painted several walls in Niscemi,
most of which engage with the
MUOS.
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One of these murals portrays
a
gigantic
anthropomorphic
monster, whose head and limbs are
made of the MUOS antennas. The
giant walks on a surface made of
war aircrafts and is confronted by
a crowd of protesters, one of whom
stands out with a megaphone
(Figure 9). The protesters appear
to be considerably smaller
than the monster, and the work
obviously displays and reproduces
the immense power imbalance
between the parties involved in
the dispute. At the same time, this
imbalance is implicitly suggesting
a great deal of heroism in the
grassroots struggle against the
MUOS.
Figure 11 – Blu’s street art in Niscemi (reproduced with kind permission of the author).
The depiction of the protest
within the work, together with
the natural antagonism intrinsic
to street art, suffice to describe
this painting as activism. Within
the suburban landscape of
Niscemi, Blu’s murals attempt
to disrupt the narratives of the
strategic US interests right in the
site of the intervention, in a way
that resembles what Pugliese
80
describes as “Provisional Street
Justice” referring to the graffiti
on the statue of Dante Alighieri in
Naples (PUGLIESE, 2008).
Guglielmo Manenti
Guglielmo Manenti is a Sicilian
NO MUOS activist and cartoonist.
He published various comic strips
on the MUOS on social media,
which were then abundantly
displayed at demonstrations by
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ARTIGO
the members movement (NANNI
e MANENTI, 2014). Similarly to
Blu’s murals in Niscemi, Manenti’s
comics abundantly engage with
the NO MUOS protest, proudly
representing grassroots resistance
as a heroic deed in the face of an
enormous power imbalance.
The strip displayed in Figure
10 shows an arm wrestling match
between an eagle-shaped Uncle
Sam and a crowd of protesters
shaped as a giant. The general
caption reads: “The tug of war
continues”24, while Uncle Sam
nervously wonders: “How many of
them are there?”.
Figure 12 – Guglielmo Manenti, 2013 (reproduced
with kind permission of the author)
Here the insurmountable
power imbalance between the
protesters and the US military
agendas is symbolically resolved,
and the protesters are able to
stand in front of their enemy. In the
24
81
“Il braccio di ferro continua”. “Ma quanti
sono?”
cartoon, the bone of contention of
the arm wrestling match is Sicily,
which lies on the table between the
eagle Uncle Sam and the protesters:
alongside his commentary on
the protest, Manenti associates
a precise geopolitical argument
to his work, an argument about
Sicily’s condition as a contended
territory.
This argument is abundantly
articulated throughout Manenti’s
work, and another comic, shown in
Figure 11, portrays Uncle Sam, this
time represented as a bloodthirsty
human, who banquets on African
territory using Sicily as a napkin,
and spills blood on both lands.
This is another example of what Di
Bella defines “popular geopolitics”
(2015, p. 334), referring to a
variety of emancipatory discourses
formulated within the protest,
and on which the protest itself is
predicated. In a nutshell, Sicily
is seen as a colonised territory,
whose main function is that of
providing land and resources for
US foreign military agendas.
Matilde Politi
This same popular geopolitics
is relevant to the work of Matilde
Politi, a singer-songwriter from
Palermo whose work, among
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other things, is committed with
the preservation and diffusion
of Sicilian identity, as she often
performs in the style of the Sicilian
cantastorie (cuntastorii in Sicilian,
meaning
“storyteller(s)”).
In
2013, Politi wrote a song against
the MUOS, entitled Cantata NO
MUOS, and performed it publicly
as part of various NO MUOS
demonstrations, including a major
rally on 30 March 2013.
In the song, Politi openly
condemns US policies since the
Allied invasion of Sicily during
World War II. The US are accused
of having nurtured crime and
corruption in order to maintain
their control over Sicily and Italy:
does not refrain from exposing the
US foreign defence policies as a
perverse global hegemony agenda:
Figure 13 - Guglielmo Manenti, 2013 (reproduced
with kind permission of the author)
The Americans / landed in Sicily
and promptly / they made pacts
with fascists and criminals / in
order to keep the population
in poverty / while they could
nurture the villains. / There
they plotted a detailed project
/ to keep Italy under their
jurisdiction / in order to stop
communism at the other side.
(POLITI, 2013)25
Corruption and crime are also
functional to warfare, and Politi
(“L’amiricani / Sbarcaru cca ‘n Sicilia e
prontamenti / s’appattaru cu fascisti e cu
Briganti / pri mantiniri u populu a li stenti
/ nta mentri chi pascevano furfanti / Ddocu
‘ntisseru tuttu lu progettu / pi mantiniri a
‘Talia ‘u so’ sirviziu / pi firmari u comunismu
dirimpettu”).
25
82
26
And henceforth war became
an addiction for them. / An
addiction that worked almost
as a game: / wherever they
had won the war / they filled
the place with military bases, /
Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy or
Greece. / In this way, they seized
the entire world! / And here, in
the middle of the Mediterranean,
/ every war that they want to do
over here, / they can control it
from Sicily. (POLITI, 2013)26
(“E ddocu a guerra addivintau nu viziu
/ Nu viziu ca pari macari jocu: / a tutti banni
unni vinceru a guerra / inchieru ‘i basi militari
u locu / Corea, Giappone, Germania, Italia
o Grecia / Tuttu u munnu accussì strincinu
‘mpugnu! / E ccà, nno menzo du Mediterraneo
/ p’ogni guerra c’a sta banna vonnu fari / di
cca ‘n Sicilia a ponnu controllari”).
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Politi’s focus on the military
domination of the Mediterranean
operated through the occupation
of Sicilian land is coextensive
with the narratives offered by
Guglielmo Manenti’s comics: later
in the song, Politi declares that
“Sicily wants peace” (2013). The
song glorifies the history of the NO
MUOS Movement, and the mixture
of militancy and spontaneity that
characterised its foundation:
At this point people began / to
feel uncomfortable, and from
that a conversation started /
that nothing was able to stop /
and the NO MUOS movement
was born: / the experience of the
old militants / was helpful to the
younger ones, / and they decided
to form a civic committee /
and then to create a regional
coordination (POLITI, 2013).27
For Politi, the demilitarisation
of Sicily has initially to be mediated
by the intervention of Italy:
Sicily needs to be demilitarised
/ Italy needs to get back on its
feet / and stand in front of the
Americans to end / this eternal
slavery sealed by a pact. 28
(POLITI, 2013)29
Ddocu la genti tutta ncominzau / a sintirisi
nti spini, e dda partiu / un parra parra ca nenti
l’astutau / e u movimento NO MUOS nasciu: /
ai picciotti l’esperienza s’aggiuvau / di vecchia
militanza ca cririu / un comitato cittadino di
furmari / coordinamento regionali po’ criari.
28
Reference to the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty.
29
Sicilia s’avi a smilitarizzari / l’Italia arreri
‘n peri si mittissi / nfacci l’amiricani pi canciari
27
83
In the following verse, though,
the Italian Government is criticised
and insulted, and the task of
liberating the island is given back
to Sicilians:
This government of fat pigs leads
us / to a path that no one likes.
/ But if people are sovereign
/ our voice will defeat every
abuse, and like embers / on
which the Americans are sitting
/ we are thousands of NO MUOS
Sicilians!30 (POLITI, 2013)
It thus becomes clear that for
Politi, the main issue at stake in the
MUOS dispute is the restitution of
Sicilian sovereignty, against both
US control agendas and Italian
complacency. Again, grassroots
movements are deemed capable
of reverting a situation of
undisputable power imbalance, as
it is evident in the metaphor of the
embers. Politi’s song is permeated
with a strong trust in the ability
of Sicilians to rebel, and she tries
to show that this is written in our
history:
We fought together against the
villains, / so history tells us,
and those who deny that / to
make us believe we are lambs,
/ know well that we are lions
/ l’eterna schiavitù ca un pattu scrissi
30
Guvernu i porci grossi nni cunnuci / supra
‘n caminu c’a nuddu nni piaci / Ma s’u populu
è sovranu, a nostra vuci / scunfiggirà l’abusu,
e comu braci / sutta lu culu di l’amiricani /
semu migliaia di NO MUOS siciliani!
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instead! / Our history has been
written in the blood / of those
who fought with courage and
wit, / the cane never bent under
the flood, / and (we) always
repudiated tyranny. / That’s why
they’ve bound us up with chains,
/ from which Sicilians cannot
free themselves: / the Mafia, the
Church, corrupted governments,
/ all of them under the shadow of
the Americans (POLITI, 2013).31
These passionate claims
seem to challenge precisely the
representations of social activism
as part of a “new” subjectivity
offered, as shown above, by
Lutri (2016): Politi tries to
reclaim a silenced memory of
proud rebellions that appears
to have been erased from the
contemporary (academic and
non-academic) debate on Sicily.
This erasure, obviously connected
to the aforementioned Northern
genealogy of the founding
narratives of Italian resistance,
is precisely what Pugliese calls
“white historicide” (2007). By
reclaiming and dignifying the
histories of Sicilians, Politi reacts
precisely against white historicide.
La storia nostra è scritta cu lu sangu / di
cu ha luttatu cu curaggio e ‘ncegnu, / sutta
la china ‘un si calau ddu juncu / e contra
la tirannia sempri appi sdegnu / Pi chistu
nn’annu misu sti cuddari / ca i siciliani ‘un si
ponnu allibbirari: / mafia, chiesa, guverni di
latruni /sutta lu mantu di l’amiricani
31
84
My
artistic
contributions:
Nzikitanza and Not peace, but
other things
This
last
subchapter
documents my own artistic
responses against the building
and activation of the MUOS, in the
form of musical pieces. Providing
a full description of these pieces
is not among the purposes of this
work, and here I only mention
them and briefly outline the ways
in which they might qualify as
performance-as-resistance.
Written
in
2012
and
premiered in the same year by the
Red Note Ensemble, Nzikitanza
is an instrumental piece for
accordion, violin, violoncello
and fixed media.32 In the piece, I
resort to a number of structural
constraints and timbral elements
in order to celebrate the protest. In
particular, I took advantage of the
rhythmic staticity prescribed by
the ensemble to express a sense of
stubbornness and perseverance.
I also used repetition in a slightly
asymmetrical manner, in a way
to break the musical phrase
and render an idea of unstable
cyclicality. Finally, I used a tape part,
In electroacoustic music, fixed media
denotes a track that has been pre-recorded or
pre-generated and is stored in a support such
as a tape, a CD, or a hard disk.
32
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also requested by the ensemble,
to evoke both an atmosphere of
serious protest (by using samples
from various demonstrations),
and of a bold and derisory
attitude towards authority (by
using various slapstick sound
effects). The main purpose of
Nzikitanza is that of expressing
dissent in a confrontational, yet
non-violent manner, in a way to
imitate the status of the NO MUOS
protest, and in particular of the
aforementioned protests by Turi
Cordaro (MESSINA, 2015b).
Not peace, but other things
is a vocal piece, premiered by
the Portumnus Ensemble in June
2013. Here the unescapable
constraint imposed on my work
was represented by the use of
poetry by Philip Larkin. Due to the
intensely militaristic content of
some of Larkin’s works33, I decided
to arbitrarily juxtapose some of
his lines from different poems of
High Windows (1984) in order to
obtain a pacifistic, antimilitaristic
text, which I then set to music:
Man hands on misery to man.34
/ It deepens like a coastal shelf.
33
I refer in particular to the poem “Homage
to a Government”, contained in High Windows
(LARKIN, 1974).
34
I was not able to modify the explicit
androcentric lexicon of this particular verse.
85
/ The soldiers there only made
trouble happen: / Not peace, but
other things. / Get out as early
as you can, / Next year we shall
be easier in our minds. (LARKIN
apud MESSINA, 2013).
The text thus obtained seems
to address antimilitarism as a
general concept without referring
to any particular situation, but
the composition of this piece was
prevalently inspired by the NO
MUOS protest. Here I draw upon
Mignolo’s aforementioned concept
of
“epistemic
disobedience”
(2009) in a similar way to what
Rapicavoli did with the military
maps she obtained from a soldier:
both Rapicavoli and I took a
text/trace whose very existence
serves a militaristic purpose, and
subverted it by using it as part of
an antimilitaristic work.
Conclusions
In May 2016, the Sicilian
Council
of
Administrative
Justive (Consiglio di Giustizia
Amministrativa - CGA) has judged
legitimate the authorisations
granted to the MUOS (ANSA,
2016). Two months later, the
MUOS ground station in Niscemi
has been judged legal by the
Review Commission (Tribunale
del Riesame) of Catania (IACCH,
2016). Often, during the long
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
ARTIGO
stops
imposed
by
Italian
(national and regional) law and
politics, the US Department of
Defense has continued building
the ground station violating
sovereign
Italian
decisions
(CASTELVETRANO SELINUNTE,
2013; CASTROGIOVANNI, 2013),
and producing further tensions
between the activists and the
Italian police patrolling the site.
In February, 2017, the Italian
Supreme Court of Cassation
confirmed the legal legitimacy
of the MUOS installation (ZINITI,
2017).
In this work, I have attempted
to illustrate the mutual permeation
between protest and performance
as fundamental components of
NO MUOS activism. Frequently,
a blurred line distinguishes
performers
from
activists,
and this two roles are often
interchangeable, to the point that
an activist like Turi Cordaro could
well be described as a performer,
while a performer like Matilde
Politi, is also commonly involved
in activism. Both the “SUCATE” and
the “Bella Minchiata” signs also
occupy a liminal space between
activism and artistic expression,
and only a feeble line separates
86
them from Blu’s militant street
art – perhaps, what distinguishes
Blu’s art from the other two works
is the aesthetic assessment that is
normally expected in reaction to
his work, an assessment that is not
probably expected in reaction to
such traces as the “SUCATE” or the
“Bella Minchiata” sign. Guglielmo
Manenti’s comics and Matilde
Politi’s songs occupy a precise role
in the protest, as Politi has sung
in various NO MUOS rallies, while
banners reproducing magnified
versions Manenti’s work are
often displayed by demonstrators.
Alessio Micieli did also produce
part of his video during a
protest. With respect to Maria
Rapicavoli’s work and mine, they
seem to belong more inflexibly to
exhibition venues, concert halls
and similar settings: however,
both Rapicavoli and I have
participated to NO MUOS events
and demonstrations outside our
role as creative artists and despite
normally living outside Sicily.
By examining the various
discourses
thus
produced
both within performance-asresistance and within resistanceas-performance, I have also
verified that the highly symbolic
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
ARTIGO
nature of the protests and their
ritual/identitarian content do
not point exclusively to the
specific circumstances of the
territory occupied by the MUOS,
but broadly address the issue of
Sicily’s geopolitical role in the
face of a growing hysteria that
insists on the militarisation of the
imaginary North/South border in
the Mediterranean. This confirms
Di Bella’s point about the fact that
the NO MUOS protest “cannot be
reduced to an egoistic NIMBYism,
insofar as the dissent assumes a
symbolic and political dimension
that goes beyond the defense of an
idyllic status quo or of a bounded
space” (DI BELLA, 2015: 348);
additionally, this confirms Della
Porta and Piazza’s argument about
the “scale shift” of the protest
(DELLA PORTA & PIAZZA, 2016).
The
ritual/performatic
dimension of the protest, and its
broad geopolitical significance
that refuses to address exclusively
the specific situation of Sicilian
territory, are both intrinsically
connected to the aforementioned
expectation of a possible defeat.
Confronted with the enormous
power imbalance between their
protest and the US interests
87
behind the implementation of
the project, Sicilians resort to
the ritual enacting of meaning
to express their dissent, and this
enacted meaning refers to their
specific identity and condition
as well as to broader geopolitical
issues.
The broad dimension of NO
MUOS does not prevent the protest
from being indissolubly linked
with the issues of sovereignty
and identity that I have discussed
in this article. On the contrary, I
contend, the scale shift envisaged
by Della Porta and Piazza is totally
coextensive with the focus on
Sicilian sovereignty that emerges
from my analysis.
To finalise, I will briefly
mention the three other MUOS
ground stations outside Sicily:
two of them are hosted in the US
(one in Hawaii and one in Virginia)
and one in Western Australia,
in Kojarena, 30 km away from
Geraldton. Upon a recent visit
to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy
in Canberra, it was impossible
for me not to notice various
placards demanding indigenous
sovereignty,
surrounded
by
Aboriginal flags (Figure 14).
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
ARTIGO
Figure 14: Banners and signs demanding sovereignty outside the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in
Canberra, Australia (Marcello Messina’s personal archive)
Among these various protest
signs, I noticed a banner that
advocated precisely the closure
of the Kojarena-Geraldton “spy
base” that hosts the MUOS Ground
Station (Figure 15). In Australia,
the protest against the MUOS
Ground Station is indissolubly
linked with the repossession of
usurped Aboriginal sovereignty.
The sign in Figure 15 might well
represent only a limited and
marginal part of the protest against
the Kojarena base, but it is certainly
understood that US military
presence in Western Australia is
mediated by an illegitimate AngloWhite government that has seized
Aboriginal sovereignty by means
of genocide and racial subjugation.
Figure 15: Protest sign against the Kojarena-Geraldton MUOS base outside the Aboriginal Tent
Embassy (Marcello Messina’s personal archive).
Something similar happens
with Sicily, whose sovereignty was
usurped by means of racialised
military violence, and whose
88
territory is nowadays deployed
for US military agendas. Like the
Aboriginal people in Australia,
when Sicilians fight for the
Muiraquitã, UFAC, ISSN 2525-5924, v. 5, n. 1, 2017.
ARTIGO
demilitarisation of their territory
they implicitly reaffirm their
sovereignty, in the face of the
militarised racialisation of their
bodies and lands.
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