The Italian Effect:

Radical Thought, Biopolitics and Cultural Subversion

Sydney University, 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@hotmail.com or timothy.rayner@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.