<nettime-ann> Paolo Virno @ Free Metropolitan University

Paolo Virno on 'the turmoil and the theory of exodus'

Friday 18 March,

6pm GMT/ 7pm CET/ 1pm EST

live streaming > www.globalproject.info/it/produzioni

::2011 reseach event::

The virtue of turmoil: the revolt between exodus and revolution

In full swing of the systemic crisis of global capitalism, the debate among radical transformations is a living one. In fact, on the one hand the financial capitalism and transnational corporations do not accept any form of regulation and consider the crisis to be a structural condition to be viewed as part of the contemporary production of value. On the other hand, the parabola of Obama indicates that reformism has come to halt and neo-keynesian receipts are blunt weapons. This situation causes a rise in social tension, above all in the old continent, where deflationist policies dragged by Central Bank and Germany hit with more harshness. For about one year now on both sides of the Mediterranean turmoil has been spreading. The protagonists of these movements are the young, students, precarious and migrants. This turmoil indicates a powerful resistance to austerity and rises the question concerning the project of transformation: what is the goal of metropolitan riot? Is the no-future issue enough to explain the passions and the discord that animate the revolts that are taking place from Rome to London, from Athens to Tunis, from Paris to Cairo?

The aim of the LUM cycle of seminars is to deal with these questions, starting from the assumption that the events of the last months have opened a new space of possibility, a space that must not be limited to the cheering narration of the «burned generation», a generation that rebels against its parents. There is undoubtedly a gap in the future, a lack of job prospects as well as an existential void. There is however also a search for a new kind of politics, for a new way to qualify the transformation that is taking place in the revolts carried out by students and by the young. Something that urgently questions life and language, social relations and knowledge, the line of colour and sexual difference.

But how can we articulate this research with the revolutionary theory and praxis that we have known and that has taken shape over the past two centuries? Does the desire to gain a monopoly on political decision, the state, lurk among the tumult that penetrates European markets? Does the violent breakthrough differ from the everyday construction of meaning that aims at creating new political institutions? Does the concept of exodus – on which critical thinking has focused on several occasions during the last years- take full account of the unprecedented relationship among turmoil and constitutional praxis?

In order to answer these questions the LUM cycle of seminar sets two goals:

a) to qualify a theoretical and political conceptual constellation able to deal with contemporary change: we will do this through a critical review of texts and political materials that have most informed the debate of movements over the past twenty years.

b) To focus the attention on some revolutionary historical events of the last two centuries, to trace the irreducible discontinuities concerning the present and also, on the contrary, the problematic knots that the great revolutionary experiences have exhibited and that still today remain unresolved.

Seminar program:

[All events will start at 6pm GTM]

1. Actuality of the Revolt (from Europe to the Maghreb, and Egypt) - Augusto Illuminati (Friday, 18th February)

2. On the Concept of Turmoil (in Machiavelli) - Gabriele Pedullà (Friday 4th March)

3. The Turmoil and the Theory of the Exodus - Paolo Virno (Friday 18th March)

4. The Revolution in Europe from 1848 to the Commons (through the political writings of Marx) - Paolo Vinci (Tuesday, 1st April)

5. Jacqueries and Political Institutions - Marco Bascetta (Friday 15th April)

6. 1968 and the Politics of Difference (through the political writings of Carla Lonzi) - Federica Giardini (Wednesday, 29th April)

7. "War Machine" and the Multitude – Francesco Raparelli and Alberto De Nicola (Friday 13th May)

8. Haiti and the Black Jacobins - Fred Moten and Laura Harris (Friday 20th May)

info:

info@lumproject.org

www.lumproject.org

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LUM (Libera Università Metropolitana) presenta:

Il tumulto e la teoria dell'esodo - Paolo Virno

venerdì 18 marzo, ore 17

presso Esc, atelier autogestito (via dei Volsci 159 - Roma)

diretta streaming: www.globalproject.info/it/produzioni

nuovo website: www.lumproject.org