Talking about silence

Abstract

The paper focusses on an oral history project on homosexuality during Fascism in Italy that I worked on. The project transformed itself as the research progressed and I encountered unforeseen difficulties, in that participants refused to collaborate or denied having been persecuted during the dictatorship because of their homosexuality. This article explains how I dealt with the obstacles and the moral dilemmas that arose and how I interpreted silence, omissions and denials.