[csaa-forum] CFP: The Italian Effect

[Melissa Gregg]

Apologies for cross-postings


CALL FOR PAPERS

The Italian Effect: Radical Thought, Biopolitics and Cultural Subversion

University of Sydney , September 9-11, 2004

Presented by: the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social
Sciences, 
University of Sydney, the Institute for International Studies,
University of 
Technology, Sydney, the Centre for Cultural Research, University of
Western 
Sydney and the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie 
University.

Aims of the Conference
After several decades during which the humanities in Australia and
globally 
have been strongly influenced by French thought, in the new millennium
the 
work of Italian thinkers is having a profound impact upon intellectual 
activity. The most notable signs of this "Italian effect" are the
widespread 
interest in the work of Giorgio Agamben and the popularity of Antonio
Negri 
and Michael Hardt's Empire, but this is only to scratch the surface of
the 
productivity of contemporary Italian thought across a wide variety of 
disciplines. This conference aims to address the current and potential 
international impact of radical Italian thought, focusing not only on
Negri 
and Agamben but also on the work of Franco Berardi (Bifo), Paolo Virno, 
Maurizio Lazzarato and others. Presentations will be invited both on
Italian 
thought and political practice itself and on the productivity of this 
thought in a global context. We invite papers on the following topics:

---The Concept of Biopolitics
---The Theory and Practice of Autonomia
---The Multitude, Refugees and Globalisation
---Empire, Postcolonialism and Postmodernity
---Negri's Political Philosophy
---The Thought of Agamben
---The Media/Cultural Subversions of Berardi (Bifo)
---Radical Thought and Cultural Activism
---Autonomia, the Crises of Marxism and Anti-Capitalism ---Radical
Italian Thought and Cultural Studies ---Italian and Global Media
Subversion ---Italian Thought, "General Intellect" and Collective
Literature (Luther 
Blisset)
---Radical Italian thought and (Italian) Cinema
---Immaterial Labour, the Infosphere and Biopolitical Production.

Keynote Speaker
Franco Berardi (Bifo)- Leading Italian "nomadic" cultural theorist and
media 
activist whose media projects include Radio Alice and Telestrada.

Presentations
Presentations should be of no longer than twenty minutes and will be 
organised into panels based around the above topics. Abstracts should be

sent by the 31st of May to:
goddardmichael at hotmail.com or timothy.rayner at pgrad.arts.usyd.edu.au
Participants will be invited to submit formal versions of their papers
by 
September 30th for inclusion in a publication based on the conference.

Registrations
Registration payments should be made out to: Sydney University and sent
to 
Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS), Woolley 
Building A20, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA. The rates
are 
as follows:
Earlybird registration (received by 31/7/04):AUD $88 (Full)/AUD $66 
(Concession)
Regular registration: AUD $110 (Full)/AUD $77 (Concession).

Franco Berardi (Bifo) Biography
Franco Berardi has been known as "Bifo" since he began to sign his
abstract 
paintings at school with the name. He later became a left-wing
anarchist, 
joining the group Potere operaio (Worker Power). In 1975 he founded the 
magazine "A/traverso", which became the paper of the Bologna creative 
movement. In '76 he was part of the editorial team of Radio Alice. The 
relationship between communication technology and social movements
became 
central to his thinking and action. He became interested in new media 
developments and published the article " Tecnologie comunicative" 
(Communicative Technology), which forecast the explosion of TV channels
as a 
decisive social and cultural phenomenon, in the magazine "Alfabeta". In 
1989, he published the pamphlet Cyberpunk with the publisher Synergon.
That 
was followed by "Piu' cyber che punk" (More Cyber than Punk), "Cancel", 
"Politiche della mutazione" (The Politics of Mutation) and "Mutazione e 
cyberpunk" (Mutation and Cyberpunk). In 1991 he wrote and acted in the
film 
"Il Trasloco" (The Move) by Renato De Maria. In 1994 he organised, with
the 
consortium Universita' Citta' di Bologna the international convention 
CIBERNAUTI, which was published in four volumes by Castelvecchi. He has 
published "Come si cura il nazi" (How to cure the Nazi), :Neuromagma",
and 
"Exit, il nostro contributo all'estinzione della civilta" (Exit, our 
contribution to the extinction of civilisation). More recently he
published 
a book on Felix Guattari "Felix" (2001) and most recently the book 
"Telestreet - Macchina immaginativa non omologata" on the experiment of 
Telestreet, a network of micro-channels spreading all over Italy against
the 
media-dictatorship.

Melissa Gregg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
4th Floor, Forgan Smith Tower
University of Queensland Australia 4072
 
ph     61 7 3346 9762
mob    61 4 1116 5706
fax    61 7 3365 7184