"The Italian Effect Conference: A Shambolic Review"

Tall Paul

The Italian Effect conference was an important event that brought together activists and academics from all over the world in early September. Leading up to the conference there was the usual debate amongst activist circles that the event would be mostly a talking shop amongst intellectual ‘gatekeepers’ intent on keeping the level of discussion at an abstract and inaccessible level to outsiders. This view stems from the belief that academics use social movements to further their careers, writing about participants in movement as objects without necessarily including them in the discourse as intellectual equals.For those unwilling to accommodate other realities, this view could easily be justified by reading the abstracts of the speakers and extrapolating that the conference would likely be a polysyllabic assault aimed only at those with a very substantial understanding of radical Italian politics, philosophy and French Poststructuralism. To be fair to the organisers, no one was forced to come to the conference and they certainly never made any claims that the conference had the intention to be an introduction to these often-complex ideas and movements. Certainly I would find it difficult to believe that the detractors of the conference would tell the organisers of the Summers Nats muscle car event that their event is exclusionary. In fact, it’s very easy to accuse academic conferences of practicing social exclusion because in effect they do. However, so do every other special interest group from tropical fish fanciers to muscle car enthusiasts. The point is that ‘Fish Nerds’ and ‘Petrol Heads’ don’t deal with ideas that purport to have an emancipatory ideals. There is a great deal of difference between Chevrolet 351 power plants and Marxist theory, but only one offers a glimpse of potential human liberation. Furthermore, this raises the question: Is there a place for the ideas of working-class machine fetishists (which parallel the ideas of Virilio) to meet with academia focused on but not necessarily participating in social movements? I would argue that for a brief moment in time, the Italian effect conference offered such a place.

I must be honest and state that I have never attended an academic conference before. For over a decade I assumed the role of an activist and was dismissive of the ivory tower as a place for recuperators and charlatans secure in academic tenure, free to say whatever without fear of sanction. I believed that revolutionary ideas had to be lived and tried and tested outside of the lecture halls, which in Australia is sometimes very difficult. While we are lucky not to live in most countries of the world where activists are routinely tortured, I and some of my peers did try to move from beyond ideas to action and we experienced sackings, physical harassment and police intervention. Australia’s radical history, while valiant and inspirational, cannot be compared to Italy, which was the major focus of the conference. Italy’s history looks back to radical republicanism, anarchism, Marxism and fascism which molded and influenced participants in the ‘Autonomia’ movement(s) as well as various philosophical strains from Eco to Agamben. In Italy, academic theorists such as Negri were imprisoned for their ideas and the police and fascists alike routinely murdered workplace and community activists. It is for this reason that I hold the belief that it is disingenuous to present ‘the Italian Effect’ solely on the plain of ideas with all the guts of class struggle ripped out of it. Some participants did try to orient their discussion towards the notion that there can be no social movements without the participation and recognition of those in struggle. Others however, almost seemed deeply offended that the ‘activist’ contingent got in the door and had the chance to criticise (sometimes mercilessly) their ideas.

Organizing a conference is no easy task. Keeping everyone happy is an impossible ideal, and the organisers deserve a slap on the back for their effort. As far as I know this was the first conference in Australia to deal almost explicitly with radical Italian thought. While I acknowledge that the organisers wanted to use ‘the Italian effect’ as a starting point to move onto a more global outlook, the conference still focused mainly on Italy. In the late 1970’s Italian-born members of the Communist Party of Australia did hold discussions on the Red Brigades in Sydney, and published a small book with mainly translated reprints from the Italian Stalinist press. While this event was largely ignored by academia, the publishing of the ‘Autonomia’ edition of Semiotext(e) in 1980 inspired the anti-authoritarian left in Australia, academic and activist alike. In the early 1980’s there grew a movement in Sydney and Melbourne interested and based around the emergent punk and post punk scenes coupled with a reading of post structuralist writers, heretical Marxists and anarchism. These scenes carried and helped create a great deal of social capital and helped disseminate and increase the social cache of ideas which the Italian effect conference helped take up almost twenty years later.

In 2004, the ideas of Autonomia and especially the thoughts of philosopher Giorgio Agamben are considered very hip in intellectual scenes in Australia. Agamben is certainly the poster boy for keen critical theorists, as reflected by the number of papers on his ideas at the conference whereas 20 years ago it would have been Baudrilliard or Derrida getting the guernsey. It is here that one could speculate that idea merchants and conferences such as these are little different from an intellectual ‘Big Day Out’ rock festival with an endless recycling of ideas under the guise of this year's next big thing. Certainly conferences provide a space for aficionados of various philosopher all-stars to meet and exchange ideas in a familiar atmosphere. This in itself is a good thing. Furthermore, conferences help bolster the careers of academics primarily because it’s an opportunity to showcase one’s research in front of people other than your immediate colleagues. Again, who cares? It’s all pretty harmless and so long as no one gets hurt. The organisers of the conference never posited the notion that they were going to change the world. That’s the job of the participants, if they so choose. Armchair critics can scream all they want about exclusion. There were no signs at the door saying those without a PhD in Critical Theory weren’t allowed. The abstracts alone were warning enough of the nature of the topics discussed. The conference organisers waived fees for unemployed activists to attend and went out of their way to accommodate divergent views. They were under no obligation to do so, and it is to their credit that this occurred. To put it bluntly, there is currently little interest in the ideas of autonomia in Australia’s varied workforce. The unions and employers have done a great job stitching up radical workplace action in Australia. Last years ‘Workers Control Conference,’ also in Sydney, was testament to the depressed nature of class struggle in Australia, with most of the talks of a historical nature, although far more accessible than most talks at the Italian effect owing to fact that it was positioned as an activist based conference.

The comparisons between last years ‘Workers Control Conference’ and the ‘Italian Effect are telling. On what could be seen as a superficial level, but is still vitally important to at least most of the participants, was the nature of both conferences. Put bluntly, apart from a few standouts the workers control conference was boring beyond belief and had the atmosphere of a morgue. This fact has a lot to do with the ultra-workerist, almost Stakhanovite, background of the organisers, infamous for their dismissal of oppositional currents within the libertarian milieu as being ‘lifestylist’. There were very few young people present and one left with the feeling that if this conference was representative of the radical workers movement (which it wasn’t) then there wasn’t much hope left for radical movements to emerge in Australia’s workplaces. The Italian Effect had a far more vibrant feel, but still (like all conferences) had it’s boring elements. The crowd was certainly much younger in some ways and the social capital of the participants was almost frightening. I would wager that most people in attendance would have had at least Masters, if not PhD’s to their name, which is hardly representative of the general populations of Australia, let alone the rest of the world, where most people can’t read and write. But again, it was an academic conference, advertised mainly in academic circles so it was unlikely that special interest would be shown from outside this sphere.

One thing I have noticed about intellectual circles and academia is the assertion (but not always practice) that physical violence is definitely off limits when philosophical disagreements ensue. While this is by and large a good thing, this phenomenon can lead to an extreme level of cerebral competitiveness which can be extremely alienating to ‘discourse outsiders’. The reasons for this striking competitiveness are manifold. Academia in Australia has not escaped the juggernaut of casualisation. Academic tenure is very difficult to achieve due to constant cost-cutting and downsizing, and this has led to a culture of competitiveness rather than solidarity amongst cultural workers and intellectual labourers. Anyone who has tried to write something worthwhile realises the extreme amount of labour put into such endeavors. Indeed, most critical thinkers would be fiscally better off investing their labour as casuals in construction, seeing the monetary reward for intellectual labour is so poor. This situation is also compounded with the specific intellectual culture that exists in mainstream Australia. In France the philosopher Jean Baudrilliard writes for mainstream newspapers and even appears on television chat shows. Imagine this situation occurring in Australia! The problem is not Australian intellectuals being any more high-falutin' than intelligentsia in other lands, rather it’s the gap that plainly exists between the culturati and the rest of us. This gap isn’t deliberately created by academics, but it nevertheless exists. Should they ‘dumb down’ their endeavors for the rest of us? I don’t know. I wouldn’t accuse spanner heads of being obscurantists for waxing lyrical over the most arcane car ephemera for fear of having my face re-arranged. However, it’s so easy to pick on academic intellectuals or dole queue intellectuals because often they conform to every commonly accepted stereotype of weakness. They are bookish, clannish, and most of all love talking about stuff we don’t understand, which makes us fear and loathe them equally. They are Australia’s own ‘insider outsiders’, we think they are all rich, get pissed and talk shit while never having to fear any outside criticism nor job loss while in reality there is a massive amount of insecurity, competiveness and, dare I say, unhappiness within the academy. At the end of the day, this has led to an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ situation in the sphere of radical politics because of misunderstandings and isolation between the two groups.

Coming from a pronounced ‘workerist’ background as a shop steward in the health sector and growing up in a working class background I was exposed to physical violence as a main way of settling differences. My main experience at union meetings was the inevitable punch up when disagreements ensued. This was also standard practice amongst the Autonomia movement in Italy, but they also resorted to using iron bars and chains to settle disputes. While I don’t wish to glorify violence, as it is usually highly counter-productive, I don’t subscribe to the view that intellectuals are any better at resolving disputes. In fact some of the behavior I witnessed at the Italian Effect was little better than that of kindergarten students with one particularly boring speaker going into a huff when his reformist programme was called to account. Academics have to realise along with the rest of us that if you talk shit be prepared to be told that you stink.

The main draw cards of the Italian Effect conference were the two big ‘stars’ Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi and Ida Dominijanni. Bifo really lived up to everyone’s expectation and was a very gracious speaker. I got the feeling from Bifo that he was a man who was intensely passionate about his ideas and that he didn’t think he was better than any one else. When Bifo spoke he was extremely animated and captured the audience's attention with his manner and enthusiasm. Seriously, Bifo should coach other theorists on public-speaking skills. I like the idea of a ‘Team Bifo’ with him having a Sloppy Joe with the words ‘Head Coach’ emblazoned on the front. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Bifo used to be a high school teacher, as students will eat you alive if you can’t make ideas accessible and entertaining, as Bifo certainly tried to do at the conference. Bifo even looked the part with his ‘Nutty Professor’ hairstyle and slick Italian style. He was certainly very popular with the conference participants, no doubt due to his exuberant nature. The only difficulty I had with Bifo’s speeches was largely my own fault. I am 40% deaf in one ear owing to an industrial accident and found it difficult to follow the flow of words. Also Bifo hails from Bologna and I’m used to hearing Sicilian accents owing to their massive migration to Australia, so his Northern accent was hard for me to decipher. I only knew of Bifo from the Semiotext(e) article he wrote and had no idea he was so famous for his other writings. Due to my ignorance, at the start of the conference on Wednesday I had no idea what he was talking about. But by his talk on Friday night I felt that I understood at least 75%, which is pretty good for me in regards to heavy theory. Unfortunately, I did not hear Ida Dominijanni speak but I heard from reliable sources that her talk was excellent but that it demanded rigorous attention which I am hopeless at.

The opening plenary speech on Friday morning was by Brett Neilson on ‘Provinicialising the Italian Effect.’ Brett teaches in Western Sydney and this has rubbed off on his delivery style. Student’s in the West have very finely tuned bullshit detectors and you will be pulled up quick smart if you start mouthing off about theory without being interesting and accessible. He was a very clear and concise speaker and gave a valuable introduction to the themes encapsulated in the conference. Brett showed he could certainly handle himself on field as he set the scene for the rest of the conference. What I found pleasing about Brett’s talk was him mentioning the term revolution as a serious and viable proposition. Basically, I gathered Brett’s talk was about how the strive for Autonomy is an international aspiration. He hit everyone with a Marazzi quote from Semiotext(e) to back up this notion but didn’t include the section about how Italian theorists were so influenced by Americans such as Glaberman, the I.W.W and the industrial organising drives of the 1930’s that led to the development of the C.I.O. Steve Wright made note of this in question time in a very genial way, which he excels at. I don’t know many academics, but I haven’t got a bad word to say about Steve. He always lets you know when you are wrong without making you feel like a dickhead.

Most of my heterosexual academic female friends in Gender and Cultural studies continually complain about the lack of talent in academia. Which isn’t surprising judging by the sun-starved and follicly challenged male academic specimens so prevalent in critical theory. Maybe their big brains had scared their hair off their heads and onto their chins, where it settled into various creative arrangements. Not that I’m against baldies, Foucault was a chrome dome and he is one of my favourite theorists. Academia is the one place smart men into mental culture can flourish. I too, am frequently appalled by the anti-intellectual climate that pervades Australian social commentary which derides mental labourers as being jumped-up wankers. Having been stung by such barbs before, I sympathise with the plight of men in academia who don’t conform to the accepted norms of Australian masculinity. However, many academics have put such a high price on their intellectual development they have let many other aspects of their being fall by the wayside. The Ancient Greek philosophers who espoused a meeting of physical and mental cultures in the gymnasium argued that healthy minds depended on having healthy bodies. This is not a reactionary viewpoint. It stands to reason that the brain is not isolated from the body and therefore each need exercising. Many of my female academic friends now trawl rough trade scenes for their sexual fulfillment and rely on each other for intellectual stimulation such is the paucity of viable candidates who fulfill both criteria within Australian academia.

I attended Session 1A: Negri, Multitudes and Empires because I knew I wouldn’t understand a thing in the other session which was about Agamben . When ‘Empire’ came out in 2001 it was a sure fire way of getting a root by telling prospective objects of desire you had read it and even understood it. Plenty of my mates got their money’s worth and swore by its aphrodisiac powers. One of my mates thought it was even better than ‘The Ethical Slut’, which was usurped as a mainstay in his booty repertoire. I found it difficult to understand Timothy Rayner’s talk ‘Sovereignty without Government: Hardt and Negri’s Challenge to Political Theory’. Usually I would get upset in this situation but I started to reason with myself using the techniques I learnt during my anger management course. Normally I would lash out and blame everyone but myself for my lack of comprehension. This time I went into myself and meditated on all the fun times I have had in life thanks to Hardt and Negri. Anyway, I was kidding myself if I thought I could get away with understanding the talk without even bothering to read the book. At the end of the day I had to face facts that I was a lazy scholar looking for the ‘Idiots Guide’ explanation first without putting in any hard work myself. Timothy had a very cool Guy Debord hairstyle and was very friendly towards me at the pub the night before. It seemed like everyone else was getting a great deal out of his talk and I was happy for him. When I don’t understand talks I usually scan the room and check people out. Some of the punters in the room were unbelievably good looking and oozed style. Obviously there had been a great deal of changes since I left Uni a decade ago. Back then there were no style merchants, just lots of elbow patches on bad tweed jackets and coke-bottle glasses. When I started to check people out I got paranoid because not only was everyone better looking than me they were probably smarter. I began to feel like a real dumbo. Then I realised that these people were probably lonely because everyone thought they were unapproachable and steered clear of them. Life’s funny like that.

James Arvanitakis’ talk ‘Get a real job! The Counter Globalisation Movement as the Multitude’ was very entertaining. He had a real physical presence and looked a bit like the lead singer of ‘Boom Crash Opera’, which has to be a good thing. He said he used to be an investment banker but then had a revelation and dropped everything. I’m not sure if I would drop millions of dollars and fast cars for activism, but horses for courses. He had plenty of good one-liners in his talk which is a sure fire way to get a good reaction. Most academics are of the belief you have to be boring to be taken seriously. This is unfortunately true. One certainly doesn’t read ‘Arena’ magazine for the jokes pages. This is one of the reasons why academic conferences usually only attract academics and masochists. Anyway, most of the action happens away from the talkfest when everyone’s got a few under their belt at the pub. I feel like David Attenborough in these situations watching nature take it’s often cruel course. The mating rituals of the male academic have to be seen to be believed and have unfortunately never before been captured on film before. I was astonished to see serious theory heads lighten up after a few coldies and witness those who had hair let it down. I was even privileged enough to witness an attempted seduction using the works of Deleuze and Guattari which was enthralling to say the least. Unfortunately, the ribald pursuants desiring machine didn’t get a work out that night and he had to go home with his rhizomes instead of a root.

I spent lunch that day trying to organise my talk. I was shitting bricks and didn’t know what to expect. It turned out that Patrick Cuninghame couldn’t make it to the conference and therefore Steve and I were going up unopposed as the main draw card meaning everyone was going to show up. I felt like I was going to throw up and didn’t know if I could pull it off. I had spent months on my talk and was about to speak in front of more Doctors than at an A.M.A conference. I don’t actually remember giving my speech, it was kind of like when you first start using smack and you get an enormous rush and then you feel pretty good while you throw up a few times. I managed not to spew, got in a few good one-liners and was pretty happy with my effort. My mate from Melbourne, who used to be involved in builders labourers scenes, said it was ‘good stuff’ and who could argue with that? Incidentally, friends of mine who were involved with the N.S.W- B.L.F in the 70’s said that it was probably the most libertarian outfit going at the time up against pretty stiff competition from the Spanish C.N.T and the European Autonomist movements. I include this example to show that right here at home we have some great examples of radical organising and we needn’t exoticise other movements at the expense of home grown models.

Steve Wrights talk ‘One day in 2000…’ Reflections upon the Futuro Anteriore Project’ focused on a number of interviews done with prominent Autonomists. Steve also had to deliver Patrick Cuninghames paper which is no mean feat. Steve’s paper was very interesting and it’s good to see he is finally getting the attention he deserves. There has been so little English language scholarship of the Italian movements which makes Steve’s contribution all the more commendable. Besides his book and Robert Lumely’s ‘State of Emergency’ there is very little out there for parties interested in researching the Autonomia movement. Steve made great use of visuals in his presentation(s) which was a welcome relief from the up-until-now auditory method of communication. It was amazing to see photographs from Italy in the 1970’s, the young activists were all impossibly good-looking, making the Autonomia scene possibly the sexiest social movement ever. I wonder what has happened to the people in those photos. Did they move on after growing dissatisfied with the struggle or simply got married, had kids and gone straight? Are any of them still causing trouble? I hope so. Someone once said that revolution is a young person's game and I still think this is largely true. It’s very difficult when you get to middle age or beyond and realise that you are the only one still keeping the faith. Revolutionary movements don’t offer any retirement or pension plans, let alone recognition of often-backbreaking struggle. It’s amazing to think that there are still people rotting in jail in Italy from the 70’s who were involved in movements touched upon by the Italian Effect. I fervently hope that someone out there remembers their plight. After all, they went into jail holding beliefs most of us share. If one thing comes out of the conference, I hope it's recognition and not recuperation of the social struggle in Italy and practical assistance for those inside. If the Italian State could put uber-philosopher Toni Negri under detention for so long, imagine what must have happened to the movement’s front-line activists? Remembering the fascist legacy of Italy and the brutal conditions endured in Italian jails, I think it’s high time academics and intelligentsia who profit from the movement through their research or careers start acknowledging their intellectual debt and start repaying it through prisoner solidarity. If it’s good enough for Guattari, Foucault and Sartre, it’s good enough for us!

After I had given my talk I felt very disembodied and remote but still very hyper and animated, not unlike the effect of mistakenly combining uppers and downers on a big night out. It was weird when people came up to me later and said they liked my talk. I’m used to people telling me to fuck off and calling me a wanker so it was a nice change but I didn’t know what to say. I just felt kind of lonely and exhausted. I had never put so much effort into anything since I worked in the nursing home when there was a gastro outbreak amongst the residents and all my workmates called in sick. I showered 20 people that morning, and thereafter — showered most of them up to three times after they defecated into their geri-nappies. I felt much the same back then, but nobody thanked me for my effort that time.

Owing to my parlous state, I didn’t really follow much of session 3A: Italian and Global Media Subversions. It was getting towards the end of the day and most of us were feeling mentally drained. I feel for presenters who are forced to give presentations which demand a great deal of concentration under such circumstances. They have a right to feel ripped off. Most of the session for me was a blur and instead of being a conference warrior I probably should have gone for a walk and taken in the rarified air of the magnificent grounds of Sydney University. After the session ended there were free drinks in the foyer which offered a good chance to have a few in a congenial atmosphere. It was great to see that the conference organisers had spent our registration fees wisely investing in some of Australia’s top beers and wines. Unwisely for me I decided to get stuck in to the plonk with gusto. Seeing I had sworn off the demon drink and owing to not eating anything all day due to pre talk nerves I got pissed faster than a first year uni student at O-week. I find socialising around members of my own class pretty easy but get terrified when surrounded by academics. I tried to look suave drinking my red and leaning absent-mindedly against the wall, all the while wondering what everyone was talking about. I’ll don’t think I’ll ever cut it amongst this scene. It’s just too hard. I can’t keep up with all the theory and with which PhD supervisor is rooting her students. It’s all too much for me. I wonder if academics realise how intimidating they sometimes appear to outsiders? Maybe if we were all forced to converse in the nude it would be different? At the time I wondered how many people at the conference except Shane would be into catching the bus up Parramatta Road to the Bald Headed Stag to watch the jelly wrestling? When I was researching the Sydney Push scenes of the 1950’s and 60’s it seemed a lot better. Academics and wharfies and B.L’s getting tanked and talking philosophy. Sydney’s fucked with the lack of places to hang out and socialise these days. I wondered how many of us present at the conference would continue to socialise in the outside world. Would it inevitably end up like the time my factory made us all redundant and went off shore and we all promised to keep in touch and of course none of us ever did. Life always gets in the way of these things. But why do we continually drift off into private life, into our own safe little worlds? Do conferences serve purely a cynical role for career advancement with maybe a short-term fling for bonus points? Could it be as the situationist Raoul Vaneigem was right when he said that ‘real life, is indeed, elsewhere’?

I have mixed feelings about the plenary session with Bifo on ‘Autonomy and Class Composition, From the Refusal of Work to the Rise of the Cognitariat’. These feelings stem from the way the audience treated Michael Goddard, who introduced Bifo’s talk. Michael was one of the main forces behind organising the conference and he tried to summarise Bifo’s entire intellectual output in his introduction. I believe he carried off this Herculean task admirably. Michael managed to make very difficult concepts clear and I felt I understood Bifo’s intellectual trajectory far better thanks to the context he provided. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, you can’t sum up 30 years work in 5 minutes. Michael’s talk lasted about 30 minutes which is probably a little bit too long for an introduction, but from the way the audience complained you’d think he’d demanded everyone donate their left kidneys to science. Michael’s talk was certainly more interesting and informative than some others I’d heard and I thought that some of the audience’s obvious rudeness i.e. talking loudly and telling him that ‘He talks too much!’ was uncalled for. Seeing Michael put so much effort into the conference surely he should have got a better reception? I thought this behavior was a cheap shot and I was very embarrassed to see people who should know better act in such a way. This was the only lowlight for the whole day.

Session 4A: Italian Thought, Autonomy and Aesthetic Practices on Saturday morning was easily the standout session in my mind. I had got talking to one of the presenters Timothy Murphy the day before and found that we had many shared musical tastes especially based around 80’s U.S hardcore bands such as Black Flag and M.D.C. Timothy’s talk was mainly about an Italian composer Nonno who went into factories 50 years ago to make avant-guard sound collages using the sound of machinery and workers voices. Nonno’s eclectic output prefigured poststructuralist-influenced ‘industrial’ music bands such as S.P.K from Sydney and Cabaret Voltaire from Sheffield, who employed similar tactics, by 20 years. I was amazed to see that Timothy’s notes were easily book length. His talk for me alone was worth the price of admission. It was great to see that so many people had come from all over the world to share their knowledge. I was continually amazed to hear the parallels that Timothy drew between Marxism, music and popular culture. It was eons ahead of the twaddle Trots such as the S.W.P dish out when they try and latch onto the latest musical craze and try to either co-opt it (Punk and Rock against Racism) or try and prove some mythical link (i.e. positing that Reggae and Michael Manley were somehow a revolutionary force in Jamaica in the 70’s.) It was also interesting to learn that Nonno had collaborated with Nanni Ballestrini as well. I tried to read Ballestrini’s novel ‘The Unseen’ when I was younger but gave up because the lack of any punctuation really freaked me out. Anyone interested reading a similar sort of narrative might try the ‘Valpreda Papers’ which was written by an anarchist ballet dancer framed for a bombing done by fascists. The book terrifyingly describes the horror faced by political prisoners in Italian jails and is very gripping in a ‘Papillion’ sort of style.

I also greatly enjoyed Mireille Astore’s presentation entitled ‘Tampa: A Performance/Sculpture/Photography/Web Project. Mireille described her performance piece where she made a detention centre out of bamboo and stayed in it for 18 days not uttering a word.