[P2P-F] CFP Post/autonomia Amsterdam May 19-22

Fri Feb 18 23:29:08 CET 2011

CFP Post/autonomia Amsterdam May 19-22
Amsterdam, 19-22 May 2011
http://postautonomia.wordpress.com/
University of Amsterdam/SMART Project Space

Keynotes from: Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Vittorio Morfino, Matteo 
Pasquinelli, and Stevphen Shukaitis

Immaterial labour; multitude; the communism of capital; commons; 
precarity; biopolitics: autonomist thought has undoubtedly provided 
contemporary critical theory with some of its major concepts and/or 
allowed for an important reconsidering of these. Most importantly, 
autonomist thought has been at the forefront of thinking the crucial 
shifts in contemporary capitalism and its effects in both the social and 
cultural sphere. Autonomism’s impact on current critical theory in both 
European and American academia can therefore hardly be underestimated. 
Moreover, today we witness a resurgence of autonomist models of activism 
and thought in social movements in for example Italy, Greece, the UK and 
California.

In particular, autonomist thought has expressed a keen interest in the 
extension of the notion of ‘labour’ well beyond the workplace, and in 
particular the mobilization of subjective (emotional and creative) and 
collective energies by contemporary capitalism (the ‘social factory’ and 
its subsequent ‘social worker’); the simultaneous disappearance of 
full-time employment and the marginalization of large social groups 
(youth, women, immigrants); the advent of new social antagonisms as a 
result of the changes within capitalist society. Moreover, ‘autonomia’ 
has not only been an important theoretical project, it has also been an 
equally crucial social movement in the 1960’s-1970’s: many of the 
tactics used by the autonomia- movement in the social (such as the 
mobilization of ‘marginal’ groups  unemployed, young, migrants) and 
cultural domain (such as the creation of alternative ‘free’ media) are 
appropriated and reinvented by today’s social and cultural movements.

  ‘What can ‘post/autonomia’ mean today?’ therefore is one of the 
pivotal questions in contemporary critical theory and activism.  Rather 
than packaging it as ‘Italian Theory’, we would like to explore the 
international dissemination of autonomous thought and activism today and 
their possible futures; in particular we would like to explore critical 
engagements and uses of autonomist ideas that shape what we might call 
post/autonomia. It is precisely the dynamics, tensions and ruptures 
between autonomia and its possible futures (or ‘posts’) that we would 
like to investigate. What are the effects of autonomia, as a thought and 
a movement, in a variety of domains: from critical theory to cinema, 
from activism to academic practice?

On the one hand we see the constant effort of Italian autonomist 
thinkers (Negri, Virno, Lazzarato, Berardi etc) to reinvent/rethink 
autonomist concepts, in dialogue with European or American critical 
theory; at the same time, crucially, we see how these efforts have fired 
off a new wave of ideas and forms of activism claiming or inspired by 
autonomist heritage, which resounds internationally. Furthermore, 
post/autonomia might name the as yet uncharted or obscured legacy of 
autonomism: its intersections with feminism, its rethinking of (state) 
sovereignty,  the locality and temporality of resistance, etc. etc.

Crucial questions raised by the notion of post/autonomia are:
how did it autonomist thought move from what was in fact a specific 
local context to the global activist and academic sphere? What are the 
possible connections between (post)autonomia and other contemporary 
conceptualizations of ‘communism’? What is the role of (post)autonomist 
thinking in current efforts to reassemble and reconstitute the militant 
left? What are possible connections/convergences between 
(post)autonomism and post-situationism, anarchism or the green movement? 
How can post/autonomia be situated in the aftermath or even afterlife of 
the ‘no global’ moment? How post/autonomia taking shape in diverse 
cultural and artistic interventions? What is the significance of 
autonomist thought in non-western/global contexts (e.g. the debates 
concerning precarious labour in China)? How does the current the 
interest in autonomism and its relevance relate to political discourses 
concerning the ‘heritage’ of 68/77 and their alleged ‘liquidation’ (by 
Berlusconi/Sarkozy); to what extent does it encourage or block these 
debates? What elements of autonomism remain unaddressed today (e.g. the 
feminist heritage)? What particular nexus between theory/militant 
practice takes shape in post/autonomia (e.g. in media activism and 
precarity-movements)?  What new perspectives/connections can be created: 
e.g. post/autonomia and queer, the metropolis, bioeconomy, etc. etc.

The conference will provide a platform for addressing these and other 
important questions. Papers may address the following topics (but are by 
no means bound to these):

Post/autonomia and
-       contemporary activism
-       conceptualizations of bio-politics
-       the neoliberal state
-       precarity
-       media activism
-       academic activism and new student movements (L’Onda ch vience etc)
-       post-situationism
-       queer autonomy
-       feminism
-       the work of individual theorists (e.g. Negri, Virno, Berardi, 
Lazzerato, Marazzi etc)
-       semiocapitalism
-       artistic and cultural activism
-       political/cultural memories of autonomia
-       the metropolis and the social factory today
-       the new communism
-       (the lessons of) Genova
-       strategies of resistance
-       populism
-       the law, the state of exception and legitimacy

We welcome both academic and practice-oriented contributions in English. 
Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts (350 words) 
before March 15 to postautonomia at gmail.com. For further information, 
please contact postautonomia at gmail.com.

This conference is the first of a series within the project Precarity 
and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage funded by NWO (Dutch 
Organisation for Scientific Research).

Organizing committee:
Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam
Silvia Contarini, Université de Nanterre
Monica Jansen, Utrecht University
Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Frans-Willem Korsten, Leiden University/Erasmus University Rotterdam
Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

-- 
Franco Iacomella