Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence

295 Pages·2021·2.919 MB·English

by  Deborah Puccio-Den

Mafiacraft
An ethnogrAphy of
deAdly silence
Hau
Books
Director
Anne-christine taylor
Editorial Collective
deborah durham
catherine V. howard
Vita peacock
nora scott
hylton White
Managing Editor
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Editorial Officer
Jane sabherwal
hau Books are published by the
society for ethnographic Theory (set)
www.haubooks.org
Mafiacraft
An ethnogrAphy of
deAdly silence
Deborah Puccio-Den
hau Books
chicago
© 2021 hau Books
Mafiacraft by deborah puccio-den is licensed under cc By-nc-nd 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
cover: “il silenzio è mafia” (“silence is Mafia”), from the funeral of father pino
puglisi, against the mafia, in Brancaccio, palermo 1993, © shobha (courtesy of
shobha).
cover design: daniele Meucci and Ania Zayco
layout design: deepak sharma, prepress plus
typesetting: prepress plus (www.prepressplus.in)
isBn: 978-1-912808-25-0 [paperback]
isBn: 978-1-912808-49-6 [ebook]
isBn: 978-1-912808-69-4 [pdf]
lccn: 2019955835
hau Books
chicago distribution center
11030 s. langley Ave.
chicago, il 60628
www.haubooks.org
hau Books publications are printed, marketed, and distributed by The University
of chicago press.
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printed in the United states of America on acid-free paper.
to Judge giovanni falcone,
the first anthropologist of the mafia

contents
List of figures xi
acknowledgements xiii
Permissions xv
Personages xvii
introduction: from witchcraft to “mafiacraft”: Shifting paradigms 1
omertà as a folk “act of silence”? 6
“What is the mafia?” 7
Ethnographing the silence 11
Mafiacraft vs witchcraft 13
Mafiacraft: An embodied history of silence 19
A compass for the Mafiacraft reader 21
The ontological issue and the question of proof 22
reframing the mafia 24
photographing the mafia 25
grassroots process of responsibilization 26
fleeting words, fleeting worlds 27
from traces to proofs 29
vii
Mafiacraft: An ethnography of deadly silence
from honor to responsibility 31
from rumor to truth 33
from intention to crime 35
The ultimate proof 37
Part i: Naming the mafia 41
chapter 1: Does the mafia exist? 43
The history of a question 43
The birth of the mafia as a criminal offence 49
The Buscetta theorem 50
The “third level” 54
The “white mafia” 57
chapter 2: The mafia as a plague 61
From Falcone’s new theoretical model to the grassroots
anti-mafia fight 61
The bloody Palermo Spring 63
Sacrifice for the city 64
The mafia as “martyrdom” 66
chapter 3: How to photograph something that does not exist? 69
Anti-mafia photography as a political and cognitive act 69
The ground zero of 1992 76
The banalization of the mafia 77
chapter 4: Bearing witness 83
Pilgrimage to the Falcone Tree 83
The tree 86
Pilgrimage as bearing witness 89
Imago Christi 93
Martyrs as witnesses 99
viii
contents
chapter 5: The unnamable mafia 105
Crafting the anti-mafia (silenced) memory 105
The “event” 106
Institutionalizing remembrance 110
Remembrance on paper, remembrance in stone 113
Politics of remembrance, poetics of remembrance 116
Part ii: Judging the silence 121
chapter 6: The falcone method 123
Investigating the Sicilian mafia 123
The ethnographer and the inquisitor 125
The evidential paradigm 128
Heuristics of silence 130
On initiation 132
Constructing the other 137
Returning to the self 140
chapter 7: The Buscetta theorem 145
On responsibility 145
What does honor make and what is it made of? 150
Silence broken, truth recomposed 163
Honor in the courtoom 169
chapter 8: The impastato affair 179
Mafia: state of violence or state violence? 179
From rumor to affair 182
From vendetta to justice? 186
Impastato: From “terrorist” to “mafia victim” 190
Testing the state 198
ix