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Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, ‘Io volevo ucciderla’ – Per una criminologia dell’incontro [‘I wanted to kill her’: for a criminology of the encounter]. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2022, 442pp., ISBN: 9788832854336.
In 2009, Stefania Albertani, 26 years old, drugged and killed her sister, burned the body and subsequently attempted to kill her mother (and to commit suicide). Due to its brutality, the crime attracted a lot of media attention, in Italy and beyond. The trial, held in Como, was also unprecedented: neuroscience was used extensively in order to assess the offender’s capacity at the time the crime was committed. As a result of neuropsychological tests and brain scans (Voxel-Based Morphometry) showing diminished grey matter in Albertani’s frontal lobes, partial insanity was declared and the sentence was reduced from 30 to 20 years imprisonment, in addition to three years to be spent in a psychiatric hospital. During the whole trial and for a long time afterwards, the offender affirmed not having any memory of the act of killing her sister. Under the guidance of the psychiatrists, she started believing the scientific reconstruction of the crime made by the judges during the trial, to the point that she felt like a ‘walking judgment’ (308).
The book Io volevo ucciderla – Per una criminologia dell’incontro contains the dialogues between its authors, Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, and the offender, Stefania Albertani, that took place over the period of one year (2018/2019) within the prison of Milano (San Vittore) and online. The aim of the dialogues was to understand how and why this extremely violent act took place, through the narrative of the perpetrator. Starting from the perspective of radical interactionism (Athens, 1992, 2007), the authors wished to go beyond a binary approach, which sees crime as the result of either psychological or social factors, and look instead at the interaction between the inner world of the offender and the outside world by which he or she is surrounded (and with which he or she constantly negotiates), an interaction that the authors define as violent cosmology (Ceretti & Natali, 2009, 2020). Listening to the story of the offenders and exploring together with them their violent cosmology allows a broader understanding of the violence by bringing into the picture the symbolic, emotional and ethical dimensions of what was committed, thereby uncovering the subjective sense and meaning of their acts (11).
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 introduce the theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework from which the authors depart and from which they will navigate throughout the dialogues with Stefania Albertani. The density as well as the importance of these sometimes-challenging chapters should not be underestimated. The theories, concepts and methods described and used in this book are those already employed by the authors in their work Cosmologie violente – Percorsi di vite criminali (in English, Violent cosmologies – Criminological paths) (Ceretti & Natali, 2009). As already mentioned, Ceretti and Natali draw from radical interactionism but they enrich this approach and set it in a dialogue with the theoretical perspectives of narrative criminology (Presser & Sandberg, 2015), philosophical criminology (Millie, 2017), and phenomenological sociology (Popitz, 1992). Here, the key concepts that emerged during the course of the dialogue are introduced and explained. Among these, of paramount importance are the earlier mentioned notion of (violent) cosmology and the concept of internal parliament, also known as phantom community (Athens, 1994). These hint at the interlocutors (our significant others) that lead our soliloquy and therefore orient our action. Linked to this are the ideas of self-reflection, which allows us to enter into a dialogue with ourselves; of looking-glass self (Cooley, 1902) and recognition (Honneth, 1993), which explain how our self-image is influenced by the perception of our appearance to others; as well as that of domination, which we exercise on others while performing a violent act (Athens, 2007). Finally, the concept of dramatic personal change (Athens, 1994) conveys the complexity of our personal cosmology, made of our past, present and future selves. Dramatic personal changes are radical changes in our lives (fragmentations of the self) in which we become aware of the presence of the phantom community in our lives (Athens, 2007) and which lead to a re-interpretation of our entire life (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).
Having in mind these fundamental concepts, the authors and the offender engage in eleven (in-depth, semi-structured) narrative interviews aimed at ‘exploring, designing and then building together the violent cosmology’ of the latter (76). This is done by granting Stefania Albertani a non-judgmental space in which, with no pre-established aim, she becomes the author of both her self-narrative and of the story of the crime she committed, thereby reaching a new narrative personal truth (77). The interviews focus mainly on three aspects: the violent act, the narration of the self (self-perception and emotions) and the image (and perception) of the victim by the offender. This is accompanied all along by the exploration of the origins of the violent cosmology of Stefania Albertani, in particular of the ‘internal dialogues that took place before, during and after the violent act’ (53), which include looking at her phantom community (and her significant others), her previous violent experiences, her self-image and the sociocultural context surrounding her, as well as her experiences and perceptions of change.
After having provided a detailed description of the case (Chapter 4), Chapter 5 contains the entire dialogue (eleven encounters) between Adolfo Ceretti, Lorenzo Natali and Stefania Albertani. It is hard to describe in a few words the richness and complexity of these pages, which lead the reader through the entire life of Stefania Albertani and the transformation of her self-image until she can affirm, ‘Here I am, this is me!’ (80). The authors accompany and lead the interviewee (and the reader) through the creation and acquisition of new awareness. From the sense of failure (and fear) for not being seen or recognised, for being invisible, to the acquisition of a new form of visibility (and credibility), through a new role as a social actor. From the exposure to violence (horrification) and the interpretation of violence as the glue that keeps together relationships, to the overcoming of certain automatisms (loss of control) and the acquisition of a new space of internal freedom (260). Most importantly, from the denial of her responsibility (previously ascribed to her partial insanity) to that turning point that let her affirm ‘I wanted to kill her’ (188). Embracing the voluntariness of her act, and recognising the context in which that voluntariness developed, allowed her (and her interviewers) to engage in a reconstruction of her whole story, in that dramatic change of self that will make it possible for her to coexist with this new awareness and accept not only the legal but also the personal, moral, psychological and relational responsibility. It is this responsibility that, in the last part of the dialogue, allows the authors and the interviewee to explore the possibility for the latter to engage in a restorative justice programme, which, through reparation, shall allow her to switch from the ‘moral of guilt’ to the ‘ethic of harm’ and ‘to consolidate that new vision of the self’ that she re-built during the eleven encounters, closing thereby this transformative process (351).
The sixth and last chapter of the book contains some reflections of the authors about what they mean by ‘encounter criminology’ and on the added value of encouraging a reflective responsibility that brings to the centre the dignity of the offender.
What the authors of Io volevo ucciderla successfully manage to do is to use the dialogue with Stefania Albertani to let those areas that usually remain segregated emerge and give a new meaning, name and story to the violent act. If restorative justice literature usually focuses on dialogues between two or more individuals, in this case the authors become facilitators of an internal dialogue aimed at gaining self-awareness. The concept of encounter adopted in the field of restorative justice is here broadened to include the encounter of the offender with her true self. By engaging in a conversation with Stefania Albertani and building trust (while keeping what they call ‘therapeutic distances’), the authors create a dialogic self-reflection that allows her to develop a ‘reflective conscience’ and leads her to build a reflective sense of self (166). Through an internal negotiation, Stefania Albertani is able to recognise the complexity of the self: she starts reassembling the fragmented self and building connections between her thoughts and her feelings, acknowledging and accepting certain parts of the self that were already present but not yet visible, in a path that she herself defines as growth.
The growth of Stefania Albertani along these eleven encounters is impressive and so is the strength with which her words reach the reader. It is hard, if not impossible for the reader not to draw a relationship between their own experiences and the story she tells. Likewise, the ‘narrative accelerations’ impressed by the authors of the book help Stefania Albertani and simultaneously the reader to acquire new awareness about their lives. It is through this strong relationality between Stefania Albertani, Adolfo Ceretti, Lorenzo Natali and the reader that everyone learns to ‘walk in somebody else’s shoes without leaving [theirs’]’ (309). References Athens, L. (1992). The creation of dangerous violent criminals. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Athens, L. (1994). The self as a soliloquy. The Sociological Quarterly, 35(3), 521-532. doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1994.tb01743.x.
Athens, L. (2007). Radical interactionism. Going beyond Mead. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37(2), 137-165. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2007.00329.x.
Berger, P.L. & Luckmann, T. (1966). La realtà come costruzione sociale. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Ceretti, A. & Natali, L. (2009). Cosmologie violente. Percorsi di vite criminali. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
Ceretti, A. & Natali, L. (2020). Exploring violent cosmologies from a ‘radical interactionist’ approach. Critical Criminology, 30(2), 245-266. doi: 10.1007/s10612-020-09536-y.
Cooley, C.H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. Glencoe: The Free Press.
Honneth, A. (1993). Riconoscimento e disprezzo. Sui fondamenti di un’etica post-tradizionale. Messina: Rubettino.
Millie, A. (2017). Philosophical criminology. Bristol: Policy Press.
Popitz, H. (1992). Phänomene der Macht. Tübingen: Mohr.
Presser, L. & Sandberg, S. (2015). Narrative criminology: understanding stories of crime. New York: New York University Press.
DOI: 10.5553/TIJRJ.000166
The International Journal of Restorative Justice |
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Book Review | Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, ‘Io volevo ucciderla’ – Per una criminologia dell’incontro [‘I wanted to kill her’: for a criminology of the encounter] |
Authors | Clara Rigoni |
DOI | 10.5553/TIJRJ.000166 |
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Clara Rigoni, 'Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, ‘Io volevo ucciderla’ – Per una criminologia dell’incontro [‘I wanted to kill her’: for a criminology of the encounter]', (2023) The International Journal of Restorative Justice 333-336
Clara Rigoni, 'Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, ‘Io volevo ucciderla’ – Per una criminologia dell’incontro [‘I wanted to kill her’: for a criminology of the encounter]', (2023) The International Journal of Restorative Justice 333-336