Abstract

The article aims to analyze the «Berlusconi years» through the exploration of an anomalous and marginal issue which is somehow revealing of some aspects of the political experience of «Berlusconism» and of the ways it has been told by the (print, electronic and digital) media: the body of the leader (Silvio Berlusconi) read through the metaphor of the zombie, the «living dead» who returns to political life every time he seems to be politically dead. What makes this metaphor interesting for the political communication scholarship is its openness to a variety of issues and frames - from corruption to anti-politics, from «Berlusconism»'s political lifestyle to the connection between politics and capitalism, from the (symbolic) violence of the neo-liberal policies to the (material) weakness of their Italian protagonist. Read through the «zombie metaphor », these issues and frames draw an unusual and unorthodox map of the experience of «Berlusconism» in the last twenty years.