The “social question” in Naples is the permanent backdrop to the discourse on the city: as an endless emergency, latent violence, suffering both given and received. Its protagonists are subject to constant public scrutiny. Yet, its core remains a taboo: denied, immutable, unchanged over time. The reasons and essence of this phenomenon are not the subject of question, and it never becomes a political issue. It may be beneficial to draw upon the theoretical insights of Frantz Fanon, rather than those that we inherited from Marx, to identify and bring it to light.

The stories of Pio, a precarious worker in the tourism industry; of Ugo’s family, seeking truth and justice after the boy’s murder; and finally, the one of the organized unemployed who have been fighting for years for a dignified job, they reflect three movements along a single trajectory, which unites the lives of the invisible and voiceless of the city.