This article is a reflection of the relation between bodies, symbols and violence of political terrorism both in Italy and Germany. According to Michel Foucault's triadic relation: powers, knowledge and bodies, bodies represent the field in which powers work and where knowledge, through different typen of communications, become symbols. States and terrorists groups act in a dialogical way according to this relation: the analysis of bodies should be a good empirical approach on this theorization.
This article uses also Agamben's terms: Homo sacer and profanations. Homo sacer is the condition of bodies that should be sacrificed in the name of knowledge (or ideologies) either by State or by terrorism as Sovereign power. Profanation is the name gi-ven to this dialogical reproduction of State's violence and power structures by terrorist groups, according to Pierre Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence.
This essay develops a brief genealogy of the conditions and status of bodies during the War on Terror in Italy and Germany; First, the idea of bare life, in relation to Sovereign power and symbols. Second, the relation of bodies and masks; Third, bodies, torture, hungerstrikes and suicides, and finally, bodies kidnapped, or "bodies without bodies", the last step of the relation between bodies and symbols. Profanations are attempts to manage violence and symbols, and the attempt to the legitimate monopoly of physical violence.
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