Making News: The Sonzogno Affair and the Politics of Citizenship in Liberal Italy

A talk by Silvia Valisa, professor at Florida State University. From Casa Italiana:

In 1875, a high profile crime brought together Italian newspaper journalism, legal courts, prominent political figures and a rising family of publishers in unexpected ways. On the evening of February 6, during the Roman Carnival, Raffaele Sonzogno, the director of the daily La capitale, was brutally assassinated at the newspaper’s headquarters. My research explores the intersection of personal ties, professional connections, and commercial exploitation that came to define the Sonzogno affair. Starting well before his death, with Raffaele’s incendiary editorials and Garibaldinian stabs, and lasting after the end of his murderers’ trial, the narrative proliferation of Raffaele Sonzogno’s story is an illustration of the pivotal role that publishers and journalists played in the formation of a democratic consciousness in Liberal Italy. The affair is also a case study of the tragically competing meanings that the signifier Garibaldi acquired for different political subjects in post-Unified Italy.