Ritorno a Terni: una storia orale profonda

This contribution discusses Alessandro Portelli’s Dal rosso al nero, presenting it as an example of “deep oral history,” based on over four hundred interviews collected over fifty years through repeated returns to the field. It compares the current book with Portelli’s earlier work, Biografia di una città (1985). The review focuses on the author’s positionality with respect to his subject, the performative orality of public rallies, and the return of the square as a place for the construction of political subjectivity, as well as on the life trajectories and narratives of those activists who moved “from red to black”. It also reflects on how the narrative format has changed between the two texts — from the collective polyphony of the past to the fragmentation of the present — and on how melancholy over the decline of the working class intertwines with anxieties about the future. The result is a perspective that, in addition to discussing the book, highlights the role of oral history as a critical lens for understanding the present.