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Paper short abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the construction of sources in the context of extensive fieldwork research, carried out on the post-industrial outskirts of Milan. I describe the silent memories that emerged with incisiveness in the relation between my interlocutors and me.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is intended as a reflection on the socio-political construction of oral sources in the context of extensive fieldwork research, carried out in a post-industrial area of the city of Milan, known as Bicocca. It investigates the ethnographic encounters as heuristic tools aimed at the construction of specific anthropological knowledge. Today, the University of Milano Bicocca, the Theatre Arcimboldi, CNR, and Siemens Italia, among others, occupy the site. However, until the 1980s, the same area hosted the Pirelli Industries, one of the major Italian plants for the production of plastics, tires, and cables. Even if the site has subsequently been transformed into a "technological integrated area", it is still permeated with both material and immaterial historical traces of its industrial past. I consider here my ethnographic interviews with former unionists and workers of the Pirelli focusing on the accounts of the years 1968-1969, also known as the "Second Red Biennium" or the "Autunno Caldo". Rethinking these "ethnographic documents" collected between 2008 and 2013, I describe the silent memories that emerged with incisiveness in the relation between the subjects involved in this ethnographic research and me.