That day in May when this story begins, Bernat’s features are dark, worn. Maybe, I think, he’s still processing another night of partying. The choice of location, a quieter and more private cafe than usual, now feels off. He was late, as usual; he seems restless, as usual, but less playful. He asks the waiter for his regular cortado caliente and a lighter. For me a quinto of Estrella Galicia, the one I didn’t have with my regulars, just to slow things down.
They bring our drinks and Bernat starts frantically mixing the coffee with his spoon. Our eyes meet and I know something is wrong. He sees I know something and he gets even more restless. When he opens his mouth to speak, he does so as if about to pull a tooth, and he says: “A woman has made allegations against me.”
I look at him. What does that mean? I want to ask him but I don’t. I wait for him to add more, a little stunned. He grabs onto that silence and rushes to say: “There’s been a call-out in the neighbourhood, abuse of power.” It seems pretty serious, but the expression he used feels like a procedure, he mentions the neighbourhood, his neighbourhood, so maybe everything is under control? And from his eyes moving away, his evasive posture, he hopes I have no further questions. He wants to keep avoiding me, as he has been doing for some time, this is how he wants to tell me, counting on me understanding that he does not want to say more. And he’s right, because as soon as he changes the subject, I follow him immediately. Instinctively, we yield to routine, certain that something else will come along to occupy our attention, someone to meet, one of his thousands of engagements that he will invite me along to, one of his errands and his “let’s go, come with me.”
The text above, in my translation, comes about halfway through the opening section (‘The Tear’) of Giusi Palomba’s La Trama Alternativa (‘The alternative plot’; though it could easily also be ‘Another way of telling the story’), published by minimum fax in April 2023. The book is something incredibly innovative, in style and content, for the Italian landscape, a mixture of creative non-fiction and non-fiction proper, an essay which begins as a very personal story – as the book’s subtitle puts it: ‘dreams and practises of transformative justice against gender-based violence’.
‘The Tear’ is the story of her Barcelona friend Bernat – organiser, social butterfly, well known and liked activist in the local community – accused of assault and abuse by Mar, and the ways in which the people around both individuals moved to address the issue. Namely, by avoiding the involvement of institutions and police, avoiding ostracisation of Bernat, and operating as a community at every step along the way. Mar sets the conditions of her reparations, rotating individuals close to either her or Bernat make sure they are respected, Bernat is never left alone or demonised (though constantly held accountable), and aided on his way through therapy and self-reflection. These terms are revisited regularly.
The book and its contents are innovative, as I said, because they draw upon research and work from a number of writers in the field of antipunitive thought, such as Mariame Kaba, adrienne maree brown, bell hooks, Laura Kern, but also media the likes of I May Destroy You, Unbelievable and Ursula K. Leguin’s story ‘Those who walk away from Omelas’. It also references major, ongoing events in the UK; namely, the continuous misconduct and abuse of power of the Met Police, including the Sarah Everard case, and everything that followed (up to, I might add, the recent display of abuse during the coronation).
Palomba blends and builds upon a solid foundation of representation, research, thought and practice to present – and this is the additional innovation – her argument, her questioning, her challenges of currently mainstream punitive thought. Notably, she offers no solution or answers; that is not the point, or more precisely, that is very much the point.
Much like the notion of transformative justice, a solid set of answers that rely upon set rules would contravene the mandate of the book – the process is what matters, the checking in with the survivors and the people involved in the events and their aftermath. Palomba does not offer a manual, but an exploration, one cognisant of the reality of what it suggests.
Referring back to the story that opens the book, the type of community in which Mar, Bernat, and the author exist and operate is fertile grounds for the transformative process to be enacted, and perhaps, Palomba admits, too utopian for a fractured and disjointed wider society (my translation below):
It’s obvious that many of the practices I have described up to this point would be hard to apply beyond a stable and solid community. That solidity, however, is not an impossible dream. And it’s what I most admired of the process I was part of. The willingness and effort to repair, with no hesitation.
We have yet to allow ourselves to systematically explore the power of care, of presence, of actually aware management of conflict and reparation. We have yet to allow ourselves the possibility of reconciliation with all of the humanity of which we are capable. Anti-punitive, anti-prison, transformative perspectives allow us to discover that people are not predetermined and sentenced to hurt, nor to be eternal victims, but rather have the the potential to repair, to heal, to cease harming. The space of this possibility is also necessary to recognise, to distance ourselves from and find alternatives to coercive and punitive logic, to institutions, to police brutality and state violence. A space that isn’t a given for everyone, as not everyone wants to or has the privilege to explore at all times. We can, however, believe in the possibility of transformation without denying the difficulty of enacting it in practice, while keeping in mind that the ways in which we choose to manage conflict or abuse determine the shape of the society we inhabit. If the ways at our disposal are not sufficient to make these visions tangible, then we must invent new ones.
Giusi Palomba’s formation is anglophone, her studies and workshops are based in Scotland and the UK, her one specific experience is from Catalan Barcelona, and the scholarship is predominantly from US theorists. La Trama Alternativa is a book that aims to synthesise all that into a series of questions and questioning of Italian institutions, traditions and practices, at a time when punitive justice and state violence are at a historical high. At the same time, it’s a book that could easily have been placed in an anglophone readership from the start, and I sincerely hope to read more from her on the topic – in English or in Italian.
By Alex Valente
LA TRAMA ALTERNATIVA
(‘The alternative plot’)
by Giusi Palomba
Published in Italian by minimum fax (2023)
Translations from Italian by Alex Valente
Giusi Palomba lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and is originally from the Naples area in Italy. She’s a literary translator focusing on fiction and non-fiction, she writes for a number of publications and is involved in community organising.
Alex Valente (he/him) is a white European currently living on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ land. He is a literary translator from Italian into English, though he also dabbles with French and RPGs, and is co-editor of The Norwich Radical. His work has been published in NYT Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Short Story Project, and PEN Transmissions.
Read previous posts in The Italianist series:
THE ITALIANIST: Riveting Italian Books You Need to Know About by Katherine Gregor. One year on
THE ITALIANIST: From QUEL TIPO DI DONNA by Valeria Parrella, translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From QUEL TIPO DI DONNA by Valeria Parrella, translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From FIORE DI ROCCIA by Ilaria Tuti translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From L’ARTE SCONOSCIUTA DEL VOLO by Enrico Fovanna, translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From IL GIOCO DI SANTA OCA by Laura Pariani, translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From PONTI NON MURI by Giancarlo Ascari & Pia Valentinis, translated by Katherine Gregor
THE ITALIANIST: From ANDRÀ TUTTO BENE, translated by Katherine Gregor