Antigone, Creonte e Danilo Dolci: un processo che preannuncia l’avvenire

Danilo Dolci’s 1956 ‘reverse strike’ at Partinico, and the ensuing criminal trial in Palermo, illuminate a crucial juncture in Italian constitutional history: the transition from the rule-of-law State to the constitutional rule-of-law State. Within the courtroom, in Calamandrei’s celebrated reading, the eternal dialogue between Antigone and Creon is re-enacted – ordinary legality, embodied in the Fascist-era Testo unico delle leggi di pubblica sicurezza, set against the new constitutional legality – yet with a decisive difference: Dolci appeals not to ‘unwritten laws’ but to the still-unimplemented Constitution of 1948. From this vantage point, the significance of the claim to the right to work comes fully into view, for the Palermo trial emerges as the paradigm of an age that does not exhaust itself in the annals of court reporting but heralds the future.