Tra storia e scienze sociali: la costruzione sociale del male

This essay, working between history and social sciences, tries to define the essence of those collective figures that represent evil: from witches to Assassins, from Thugs to mafiosi and terrorists. These are changing figures that move in the collective imagination and drag with them the narratives of evil symbolically characterized and, so to speak, condensed through a process, often politically characterized, aimed at the production of social types. They are therefore what we might call «typified symbolic configurations». The social sciences, however, do not seem to have offered interpretative models suitable for conceptualizing them. Therefore, to understand their nature, it may be useful to turn to history and go back to those processes of identification and repression that have configured them; and also, to the transformations undergone over time through which it is possible to follow their often tumultuous evolution.