<nettime> Paths to Autonomy

[Stevphen Shukaitis <stevphen@autonomedia.org>]

Now available for ordering and/or free download…

Paths to Autonomy
Edited by Noah Bremer & Vaida Stepanovaite

Collection exploring the history and development of autonomous politics 
in Lithuania and Eastern Europe

A path is created when a direction is taken, its production marks the 
imbrication of personal choice, communal action and subhuman 
(structural, historical, ecological) conditionings. We are at the same 
time the makers of our paths and subject to the inheritance of paths we 
have made with others and which have arrived before our own makings. And 
just as class is not a static, abstract, transhistorical form, neither 
are the paths of its articulation as autonomous revolts of selves 
against capital – there are many paths to, for, and of autonomy. The 
autonomist tradition, that politically experimental effort to build 
autonomy within and against capitalism, has been intensely variegated 
from its inception in the 1970s. From an initial focus upon the question 
of proletarian autonomy, its paths have multiplied, bifurcated, and 
diffused. Following the legacies of decolonial and feminist autonomism, 
we would argue for an embrace of autonomy’s differences and 
bifurcations. We see not one path but many. A diffusion that not only 
amounts to the proliferation of oppositional subjects – i.e. a 
proliferation of the modes by which we refuse to be subjects for capital 
– but also of the geographies, ecologies, and temporalities that mediate 
the articulation of selves.

Paths to Autonomy began in 2020 as our effort to think these manifold 
paths through assemblies, talks and readings situated in the post-state 
socialist, Eastern European, context of Lithuania. For we, ourselves, 
begin in the East. It is the circumstance within and against which our 
path to autonomy is necessarily mediated. We, the present inheritors of 
state socialism’s experiments, catastrophes, and subterranean 
potentialities step into a future conditioned not only by its highways, 
nuclear plants, wars, and imperialist historiographies, but also by the 
manifold paths of autonomy, resistance, and rebellion that arose both 
within and against its territories. In Paths to Autonomy you will find 
excavations of this parallel history of Eastern autonomism; the opening 
of dialogues between militants in the East and the global autonomist 
movement; and some critical interventions in contemporary autonomist 
theory. Threaded throughout the book is a lexicon of concepts formed by 
contributors, which can be approached on one hand as a red thread – 
suggesting connections and affinities amidst notable differences – and 
on the other as a toolkit for the journeys and struggles that await us 
in the cultivation of paths to come.

Contributions by Katja Praznik, Stevphen Shukaitis, Marina Vishmidt, 
Roberto Mozzachiodi, Paweł Nowożycki, Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė, Emilija 
Švobaitė, and Vaida Stepanovaitė, Edward Abramowski and Bartłomiej 
Błesznowski, Airi Triisberg and Tomas Marcinkevičius, Ayreen Anastas, 
Rene Gabri, Arnoldas Stramskas, and Noah Brehmer.

Bio: Noah Brehmer is a militant researcher, editor, and union member who 
migrated from NYC to Lithuania in 2013. Currently based in Vilnius, Noah 
organizes a range of activities through the movement space Luna6 and is 
a co-coordinator of Solidarity Network Y?! (an emerging support network 
for comradely organizations in the region). In 2022, Brehmer cofounded 
Lost Property Press, with Vaida Stepanovaitė. Brehmer has published 
articles and essays in Blind Field Journal, LeftEast, Mute Magazine, 
Metropolis M, Artnews.lt, and OpenDemocracy.

PDF available freely online: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1148

Ordering Information: Available direct from Minor Compositions site.
Release to the book trade December 2022.

Released by Minor Compositions in Collaboration with Lost Property Press
Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing 
from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of 
everyday life.

266 pages, paperback, 5.5 x 8.5
UK: £18 / US: $23
ISBN 978-1-57027-404-6




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