fuckyeahmilitantresearch

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Syllabus for a Reading Group on Militant Research (from thisisforever.org, which is currently down)

Militant and Co-Research

The Politics and Practice of Militant and Co-Research Fall 2009 Seminar

Friday 2-4PM (approx. August 28th to December 11th) Room 3305 (NOTE:  Room Change) CUNY Graduate Center | 365 Fifth Ave

This self-organized seminar will introduce major themes and concepts of the history of political inquiry as they take shape in movements contexts.  Whether they have been described as movement research, research militancy, co-research, consciousness-raising, or worker’s inquiry, the tradition is long and varied.  Thus the focus of the seminar will be to explore the meaning, methods and examples of militant research and inquiry as political activity in a variety of instances.

What is this unique tradition and what are its contributions to the many ways we might conceive of our own research?  How does inquiry understand the politics and practices of the production of knowledge?  How are these politics and practices linked to the production of subjectivity?  In what ways does ‘militancy’ conceive of the relatedness of research and political self-organization and struggle?

With Engel’s “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” (1844) and Marx’s “Worker’s Inquiry” (1880) into the conditions of the French working class, we begin to see the trace of this tradition.  We can follow instances of worker’s self-research in labor struggles in the US in the 1950s (CLR James, Martin Glaberman, Johnson-Forest Tendency), and the Italian inquiries of the 1960s and 1970s Operisti and Autonomia movements (Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna, etc.) as well as its counterparts in the US, referred to by Harry Cleaver as Autonomist Marxism (Zerowork, Midnight Notes) since the late 70s.  Recent inquiries include research collectives such as Kolinko (Germany), Colectivo Situacciones (Argentina), Precarias a la Deriva (Spain), Edu-Factory (Italy), as well as more local examples such as Counter-Cartography Collective (US), Midnight Notes (US) and Team Colors (US).

The seminar will survey both historical examples of this type of research and contemporary practices across many parts of the world.  We will explore the use of writing as a research instrument in this tradition but also point to methods that incorporate photography, film and audio recordings.

Along the way, we might explore various theoretical contributions to this line of thought from the intersections of political and philosophical writings from Italy and France (Guattari, Negri, Badiou, Ranciere, etc.) in the last few decades.

The seminar is open to all. Participants may present their own research in relation to the many issues raised in this course.  Participation for credit and grade is available for CUNY students.   In this case, registration is required through the Geography Department (EES 79903, 3 credits).

Seminar Books (all available at Bluestockings Bookstore)

David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis (eds), Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, AK Press, 2007

Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism, Pluto Press, 2002

Midnight Notes Collective, Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, Autonomedia, 1992

Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically, AK Press/Antithesis, 2000 (also available online http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/357krcp.html)

Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, Semiotext(e), 1980 (also available online http://www.generation-online.org/t/ppp.htm)

Seminar Schedule and Readings

August 28th | Week One

Introduction to seminar

Beginning Threads

September 4th | Week Two

Approximately 90 pages

Marta Malo, “Common Notions, part 1: Workers’ inquiry, Co-research, Consciousness Raising”

(Written for the preface of Common Notions: Experiences and Essays at the Intersection of Research and Militancy, Madrid, Spain, 2004)

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en/print (9 pages)

Marta Malo, “Common Notions, part 2: Institutional Analysis, Participatory Action-Research, Militant Research” (2006)

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0707/malo/en (9 pages, 20 pages combined)

Gigi Roggero, “Brief relation about meaning, methods and examples of militant investigation and co-research as political action” (2005)

http://www.precarity-map.net/coresearch_method.html (2 pages)

Ed Emory, “No Politics Without Inquiry: A Proposal for a Class Composition Inquiry Project 1996-7” (Originally in: Common Sense, No. 18, December 1995)

http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/material/cs18inqu.htm (10 pages)

Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (2000 [1979])

Preface, pp. 9-21, especially 14-20 and Introduction, pp. 23-77 (60 pages)

Karl Marx, “Worker’s Inquiry” (1880)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/04/20.htm (7 pages)

Suggested:

Fredrich Engels, “The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844” (1844)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (excerpts)

The rest of the book Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver

Sebastiao Salgado, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (as an example of “militant photography”)

http://www.photography-now.info/sebastiao_salgado/

Nate Hawthorne, “What in the hell is Militant Research?” (2006)

http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/08/16/is-militant-research-3/#more-293 (10 pages)

CLR James, Johnson-Forest Tendency, Martin Glaberman

September 11th | Week Three:

Approximately 110 pages (plus selections TBA “Wartime Strikes”)

Martin Glaberman, “Different Strata of the Working Class” (1947)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/1947/08/strata.htm (9 pages)

The Johnson-Forest Tendency, “The American Worker” (1947)

http://www.prole.info/pdfs/americanworker.pdf (50 pages)

“The American Worker, Part Two: The Reconstruction of Society”

http://www.prole.info/texts/americanworker2.html (25 pages)

CLR James, Raya Dunayevskaya, State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1950/08/state-capitalism.htm (17 pages)

Martin Glaberman, “Ghetto Riots in the USA” (Winter 1965)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/1965/xx/ghetto.htm (2 pages)

Martin Glaberman, Wartime Strikes: The Struggle Against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW During WWII (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1980)

[Selections, PDF]

George Rawick, Working Class Self-Activity, Radical America, Vol.3, no.2 (Mar.-Apr. 1969)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/rawick/1969/xx/self.html (10 pages)

Suggested:

George Rawick, From Sunup to Sundown (1972)

Martin Glaberman, “Punching Out” (1952)

CLR James with Martin Glaberman, Marxism and Intellectuals (1962)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1962/destruction-paper/index.htm

Claude Lefort, “What Is Bureaucracy?” in Telos #22

http://classagainstclass.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221:what-is-bureaucracy-claude-lefort&catid=15:cornelius-castoriadissocialisme-ou-barbarie&Itemid=20

Guy Debord, Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy (1965)

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/decline.html (5 pages)

For more background and intellectual history, see this map of Libertarian Marxism

http://libcom.org/library/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map

September 18th | Week Four – No Classes Scheduled

Italian Inquiry and Autonomous struggles

September 25th | Week Five

Double up on readings: [total is about 230 pages]

Steve Wright, Storming Heaven (Chapters One and Two, 55 pages)

“Quaderni Rossi and the Worker’s Enquiry,” pp. 32-62

“Class Operaia”, pp. 63-88

Mario Tronti, “Lenin in England” (1964)

www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/it/tronti.htm (7 pages)

Raniero Panzieri, “Socialist Uses of ‘Workers’ Inquiry” (1965)

http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/panzieri/en (4 pages)

Mario Tronti, “The Strategy of Refusal” (1965)

Autonomia, pp. 28-35 but also available as download, here: http://www.generation-online.org/t/ppp.htm or www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/tronti_refusal.html (17 pages)

Romano Alquati, “Capital and Class at FIAT: A Middle Point in the International Cycle” (1967)

[Email PDF] (15 pages)

Guido Baldi, “Theses on the Mass Worker and Social Capital”

Radical America, vol. 6, No. 3, May-June 1972

http://info.interactivist.net/node/2026 (10 pages)

Sergio Bologna, “Class composition and the Theory of the Party” (1972)

http://www.geocities.com/Cordobakaf/bologna.html (21 pages)

Sergio Bologna, “Tribe of Moles,” (1977)

Autonomia, pp. 36-61 but also available as download, here:

http://www.generation-online.org/t/ppp.htm or http://libcom.org/library/tribe-of-moles-sergio-bologna (30 pages)

Toni Negri, “Domination and Sabotage,” pp. 231- 285 in Books for Burning (Verso, 2005 [1977])

[Email PDF] (54 pages)

Franco “Bifo” Berardi, “Anatomy of Autonomy” (1977)

Autonomia, pp. 148-171, but also available as download, here:

http://www.generation-online.org/t/ppp.htm ,” (20 pages)

Suggested:

Screening of Wildcat/Manuela Pellerin (2004)

“The Last Firebrands Porto Marghera: Workers’ Autonomous in the Veneto” (52 minutes)

Excerpted version of Toni Negri, “Domination and Sabotage” (1977)

Autonomia, pp. 62-71, but also available as download, here

http://www.generation-online.org/t/ppp.htm (10 pages)

Reproductive Labor

October 2nd | Week Six

Approximately 110 pages

Mariarosa Dalla Costa, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (1971)

http://libcom.org/library/power-women-subversion-community-della-costa-selma-james

(28 pages)

Selma James, Sex, Race and Class (1973)

http://libcom.org/library/sex-race-class-james-selma (5 page excerpt)

Selma James “Women, the Unions and Work, or…What is Not to be Done,” Radical America, 7, nos. 4-5, July-October 1973: 51-72

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1124976284500408.pdf (pp. 53 -74 of the PDF of the entire issue of the journal, 21 pages)

Silvia Federici, Wages against Housework (1975)

[Email PDF] (8 pages)

Silvia Federici and Nicole Cox, “Counter-Planning from the Kitchen: A Perspective on Capital and the Left” (1974) and “Capital and the Left” (1975)

[Email PDF] (20 pages)

Silvia Federici, “Women and Welfare (Written for the NY Wages for Housework Committee)” (1975)

[Email PDF] (4 pages)

Mariarosa Dalla Costa, All Work and No Pay, Women Housework and the Wages Due, (in A General Strike, Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press publishers, London, 1975)

[Selections, Email PDF]

Silvia Federici, “Introduction” in Caliban and the Witch (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004) pp. 11-17

[Email PDF] (6 pages)

Zerowork

October 9th | Week Seven

Approximately 90 pages

Harry Cleaver, “Marxist Categories, the Crisis of Capital and the Constitution of Social Subjectivity Today” in Common Sense (Scotland), 14, October 1993

[Email PDF]

Harry Cleaver, “Kropotkin, Self-valorization And The Crisis Of Marxism” (1992)

http://libcom.org/library/kropotkin-self-valorization-crisis-marxism (9 pages)

Zerowork, Political Materials #1, December 1975

Zerowork, “Introduction”

Reprinted: Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 109-114 (6 pages)

Paolo Carpignano, “U.S. Class Composition in the Sixties”

http://libcom.org/library/us-class-composition-sixties-paolo-carpignano-zerowork (25 pages)

Peter Linebaugh and Peter Taylor, “Crisis in the Auto Sector”

Reprinted: Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 143-168 (25 pages)

George Caffentzis, “Throwing Away The Ladder: The Universities In The Crisis”

http://libcom.org/library/throwing-away-ladder-universities-crisis-george-caffentzis-zerowork (7 pages)

Bruno Ramirez, “Working Class Struggle Against the Crisis: Self-Reduction in Italy”

Reprinted: Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 185-192 (7 pages)

October 16th | Week Eight

Approximately 80 pages

Zerowork, Political Materials #2, Fall 1977

Harry Cleaver, “Food, Famine and the International Crisis”

http://libcom.org/files/Food_Famine_Int_Crisis.pdf (42 pages)

Christian Marazzi, “Money in the World Crisis: The New Basis of Capitalist Power”

http://classagainstclass.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=231:money-in-the-world-crisis-the-new-basis-of-capitalist-power-christian-marazzi-&catid=5:general-autonomist-texts&Itemid=7 (15 pages)

Donna Demac and Philip Mattera, “Developing and Underdeveloping New York: The ‘Fiscal Crisis’ and the Imposition of Austerity” pp. 113-139

[Email PDF] (26 pages)

Midnight Notes

October 23rd | Week Nine

Approximately 128 pages

Midnight Notes (various issues)

Midnight Notes (Monty Neill), “Audit of the Crisis” and “On the Very Thought of Solvency”

Midnight Notes #6 [available at http://www.midnightnotes.org] (8 pages)

The first article is reprinted in Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 273-279

Midnight Notes, “Oil, Guns, and Money”

and “To Saudi with Love: Working Class Composition in the Mideast”

Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 3-38 (35 pages)

Midnight Notes, “Recolonizing the Oil Fields”

and “The Post-Energy Crisis US Working Class Composition”

Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 39-66 (27 pages)

Midnight Notes, “The New Enclosures”

Midnight Notes #10 (available here http://www.midnightnotes.org/newenclos.html)

Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 317-33 (16 pages)

Midnight Notes, One No, Many Yeses (Midnight Notes #12, 1998)

http://www.midnightnotes.org/oneno.html (42 pages)

Suggested:

George Caffentzis, “The Work/Energy Crisis and the Apocalypse” [1980]

Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, pp. 215-271 (56 pages)

On Research Militancy

October 30th | Week Ten

Approximately 95 pages

David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis (eds), Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, Introduction, pp. 11-34 (23)

Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization:

Brian Holmes, “Continental Drift,” pp. 39-43 (3 pages)

Antonio Negri, “Logic and Theory of Inquiry,” pp. 62-72 (8 pages)

Jack Bratich, “Fragments on Machinic Intellectuals,” pp. 137-154 (15 pages)

Michal Osterweil and Graeme Chesters, “Global Uprisings: Towards a Politics of the Artisan,” pp. 253-261 (8 pages)

Colectivo Situaciones, “On the Researcher-Militant”

Transversal – Buenos Aires, Argentina, from previously published texts in 2001 and 2002(2003)

www.transform.eipcp.net Classic text (10 pages)

Colectivo Situaciones, “Something More on Research Militancy”

Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, pp. 73-93 (20 pages)

Colectivo Situacciones, “Politicising Sadness”

Turbulence, Summer 2007

http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/politicising-sadness/ (9 pages)

November 6th | Week Eleven

Approximately 90 pages

Raul Sanchez Cedillo, “Toward New Political Creations: Movements, Institutions, New Militancy” (Madrid, Spain, 2007)

http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0707/sanchez/en (8 pages)

Precarias a la Deriva, “First Stutterings”

http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/antigua_casa/precarias/balbuceos-english.htm (20 pages)

Precarias a la Deriva, “A Very Careful Strike”

The Commoner, (Madrid, Spain, 2005)

http://www.commoner.org.uk/11deriva.pdf (12 pages)

MACHINES, “Sharing Tools for Intervention and Assembly,” (Barcelona, Spain, 2007 with participation of Argentineans, 3Cs, etc)

http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1177371677 (2 pages)

ESC Atelier (Gigi Roggero et al.), “The Anamorphosis of Living Labour” (Ephemera Journal)

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1contietal.pdf (10 pages)

Counter-Cartographic Collective, “Transatlantic Translations: A Trilogy of Insurgent Knowledges”

In the Middle of a Whirlwind, journal contribution (Durham, NC, 2008) (20 pages)

http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/transatlantic-translations-a-trilogy-of-insurgent-knowledges/

Maribel Casas-Cortes and Sebastian Cobarrubias, “Drifting Through the Knowledge Machine”

Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, pp. 112-126

(12 pages)

Ultra-Red, “Some theses on militant sound investigation, or listening for a change”

In the Middle of a Whirlwind, journal contribution (Los Angelos, 2008) (5 pages)

http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/some-theses-on-militant-sound-investigationor-listening-for-a-change/

Suggested:

Gigi Roggero, “Research and Co-Research”

[Email PDF]

Contemporary Class (and Political) Composition

November 13th | Week Twelve

Approximately 140 pages

Kolinko, “Class Composition” (2001)

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/engl/e_klazu.htm (11 pages)

Kolinko, “Hotlines”

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm (120 pages, select passages)

Riff-Raff, “Call Centers and Militant Inquiries”

http://www.riff-raff.se/en/6/callcenters_en.php (3 pages)

Riff Raff, “Hamburgers vs Value”

http://www.riff-raff.se/en/3-4/burgers_vs_value.php (7 pages)

Contemporary Political (and Class) Composition

November 20th | Week Thirteen

Approximately 90 pages

Team Colors, “To Show the Fire & the Tenderness,” Indypendent Reader (City From Below, 2009)

http://indyreader.org/content/to-show-fire-and-tenderness-by-teams-colors-collective-conor-cash-craig-hughes-stevie-peace-

Team Colors, Of Whirlwinds and Wind Chimes (or ways of listening): Movement building & Militant Research in the United States (2009),” Commoner N. 13 – Winter 2009

http://www.commoner.org.uk/?p=76

Turbulence Collective “Move into the Light?”

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-4/7-4turbulence.pdf (12 pages)

Gigi Roggero and Sanda Mazzadra, “Singularization of the Common”

Turbulence, Summer 2007

http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/singularisation-of-the-common/ (9 pages)

Michal Osterweil, “Becoming-Woman? In Theory of in Practice?”

Turbulence, Summer 2007

http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/becoming-woman/ (9 pages)

Nick Dyer-Witherford, “Commonism”

Turbulence, Summer 2007

http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/commonism/ (10 pages)

Wildcat, “Class Struggle in a German Town” (1986)

http://libcom.org/library/class-struggle-german-town-wildkat (10 pages)

Experimental Chair on the production of Subjectivity, “From Knowledge of Self-Management to the Self-Management of Knowledge” (Rosario, Argentina, 2007)

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0707/catedraexperimental/en (7 pages)

Experimental Chair on the production of Subjectivity, “Call Center: The Art of Virtual Control”

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1experimentalchair.pdf (4 pages)

Raul Sanchez Cedillo, Tomas Herreros, et al., “Social Centers: Monsters and political machines for a new generation of movement institutions” Transversal, (Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, 2008)

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0508/carmonaetal/en (7 pages)

November 28th | Week Fourteen – No Class

Precarity

December 4th | Week Fifteen

Approximately 130 pages

Sivlia Federici, “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint”

www.inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/precarious-labor-a-feminist- viewpoint/ (9 pages)

Emma Cosse (ACTUP-Paris), “The Precarious Go Marching”

In the Middle of a Whirlwind, journal contribution (Paris, France 2008)

http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/the-precarious-go-marching/ (15 pages)

Alex Foti (Chainworkers), “Precarious Lexicon” and “Mayday Maday: Euro Flex Workers Time to Get a Move On” GreenPepper Magazin, Precarity Issue, 2004

[photocopy] (5 pages)

Precarias a la Deriva, “Precarious Lexicon”

available here: http://deletetheborder.org/node/1818 (6 pages)

Precarias a la Deriva, “Adrift through the circuits of feminized precarious work”

http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/antigua_casa/precarias/femrev.htm (4 pages)

MetaMute, A Precarious Reader: Texts on the Politics of Precarious Labor

Minimute #0, 2005 (select articles)

“Introduction: Exploring Precariousness”

“Precari-us?”

“Precarious Straits”

“Precarity and n/european Identity: (an interview with Alex Foti (ChainWorkers)”

“Is Precarity Enough?”

“Precarious, Precarisation, Precariat?”

“Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald’s”

“Disobbedienti, Ciao”

“Wages for Anyone Is Bad for Business”

“Call to Arms”

http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/node/416 (50 pages)

Bret Neilson and Ned Rossiter, “From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labor, Life, and Unstable Networks,” Fibreculture, #5, Multitudes, Creative Organization and the Precarious Condition of New Media Labour

http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/neilson_rossiter.html (15 pages)

Sandra Mezzadra, “Citizenship in Motion” (3 pages)

http://www.generation-online.org/t/tmezzadra.htm

Suggested:

[Precarity Map]

Precarity Map’s list of militant research collectives

http://www.precarity-map.net/wiki/index.php/Category:Militant_research_group

Entire issue of GreenPepper Magazin, Precarity Issue, 2004

[Email PDF]

Maurizio Lazzarato, “Towards an Inquiry into Immaterial Labour”

http://makeworlds.net/node/141 (2 pages)

George Caffentzis, “Crystals and Analytic Engines: Historical and Conceptual Preliminaries to a New Theory of Machines”

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1caffentzis.pdf (22 pages)

Knowledge Conflicts and Transformations

[Including our own]

December 11h | Week Sixteen

[Edu-Factory] Approximately 37 pages plus suggested readings

edufactory #1: Conflicts in the Production of Knowledge (February-May 2007)

http://www.edu-factory.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=7&id=17&Itemid=39

Andrew Ross, “The Rise of the Global University,” edufactory, 29 April 2007 (7 pages)

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis, “CAFA and the Edu-Factory,” edufactory #1, 06 May 2007 (3 pages)

Massimo De Angelis, “Measure, Excess and Translation: Some notes on “Cognitive Capitalism,” edufactory #1, 15 May 2007 (3 pages)

Rete per l’Autoformazione (Uniriot Roma), “Knowledge Conflicts, Self-Education, and Common Production,” edufactory, 19 April 2007 (4 page)

edufactory #2: Hierarchisation and Autonomous Universities (25 November 2007- 28 February 2008)

http://www.edu-factory.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=7&id=18&Itemid=40

Counter-Cartographies Collective, edufactory, 13 December 2007 (7 pages)

Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, “Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labor” edufactory, 27 December 2007 (4 pages)

Jason Read, “University Experience: Neoliberalism against the Commons,” edufactory 04 January 2008 (2 pages)

Angela Mitropoulos, “Difference and Indifference. Part One: hierarchy and equality” edufactory, 05 January 2008 (2 pages)

Alberto De Nicola and Gigi Roggero, “Eight Theses on University, Hierarchization and Institutions of the Common,” edufactory #1, 05 January 2008 (2 pages)

Rete per l’Autoformazione (Uniriot Roma), “Autonomous University as a Common Process,” edufactory, 18 February 2008 (1 page)

after edufactory #2

Anna Curcio, “The Corporate University and the Financial Crisis, what is going on?,” edufactory 21 November 2008 (2 pages)

http://www.edu-factory.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=103&Itemid=1

Gigi Roggero, “The Power of Living Knowledge: Crises of the Global University, Class Struggle and Institutions of the Common,” transversal: knowledge production and its discontents (June 2009)

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0809/roggero/en/print (5 pages)

[This syllabus used to be on thisisforever.org.  That website seems to be down now, So I re-posted it from the Internet Archive - http://web.archive.org/web/20120430024915/http://www.thisisforever.org/fall-seminar ]

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Check out the BREAD UPRISING Bakery in Durham, NC.  They are a collective that bakes bread for their community, produces a weekly zine, and follows these radical principles:

"We see our work as part of the struggle against capitalism, and it includes building alliances with others in the same struggle.

We believe that building community requires working to undermine socialized and institutional systems of domination.  For us, that means we try to partner with people-of-color led organizations, develop a critical practice as regards our place as white folks in a rapidly-gentrifying city, and build analysis and movements around food justice.

The bakery is a queer space, and we're trying to bake daily bread that meets the needs of all kinds of families and households.

We're committed to putting out food which respects the dignity of both the folks who consume it and the folks who produce it.

We source ingredients and formulate recipes in ways that are healthy and sustainable for our land, critters and communities (e.g., no soy, mostly vegan, local, organic)." (from their Annual Report)

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Romano Alquati -- militant researcher, operaist, autonomist marxist -- has passed away, age 75.

Operaist Freedom   For Romano Alquati   “Look, you went to the wrong floor” Romano Alquati would answer at the beginning of the 1990s to a leftist student who wanted to write a dissertation on (factory) workers. If you want to write a dissertation on (factory) workers you should go to the second floor, to “ Archeology.” Like the “rude pagan race” [Tronti’s description of the mass worker], Alquati had no gods and refused myths. The cult of the past is a wretched thing. When he arrived in Torino in 1960, after growing up in Cremona and having lived in Milano in the commune of via Sirtori 2 (a true cultural and intellectual crucible of the ‘50s and ‘60s, meeting point of Phenomenology and Marxism, international cross-road of philosophers and revolutionaries), Romano, like the politically and humanly exceptional generation that would give life to operaism, was not in search of a metaphysical, disembodied subject, heroic custodian of the general interest. “There have been and there are still a populist and welfarist operaism (of Christian origin), a trade-unionist operaism, a combination of both, whose characteristic was considering (factory) workers “the weak section” of the population, thus in need of help. These operaists love (factory) workers, the very condition of being a factory worker. The ‘political’ operaists, instead, were interested in proletarian workers because, against all universalisms, they saw them as strong, a power.”

Alquati went to Torino not to cry over cardboard suitcases, but in search of an antagonistic power. The conflict in front of him was no longer between below and above, but between workers and capital. Power against power. To the scandal of the leftist intellectuals and party leaders, the mass-worker did not sacrifice for universal justice, did not have conscience and ideals, but wanted more money and less work. The working class liberated itself only by extinguishing itself, refusing work and the identity of oppressed. For this reason it was an extraordinary cycle of struggles. Humanism died forever in the wildcats of Mirafiori and among the rivers of Porto Marghera. In those years of the Italian transitions to taylorism and fordism no one was interested in factory workers. The CPI (Italian Communist Party) has chosen to chase the “middle class: half a century later they have neither caught up with them nor have found them. The union, after the defeat of FIOM [Federation Metalmechanic Workers] at FIAT in ’53, believed the game was over: it believed the working was completely integrated, according to the mantra of a sort of Frankurt School idea but in an opportunistic way. There was no sociology of work -- it did not even exist in Italy-- studying the factory. In fact when Romano and the other young militants of the Red Notebooks (Quaderni Rossi) and then Working Class (Classe Operaia) began to do conricerca they were contemptuously labeled anarco-sociolist, both by the Marxists who had no need of bourgeois science and by the academics who were the rentiers of bourgeois science. The conresearchers , instead, studied the global literature of the social sciences in order to understand and anticipate the struggles, for only from a partial viewpoint you can see the whole. And there they found the formation of class composition (On Fiat and Other Writings remains a fundamental text to comprehend it. More than that: they organized themselves within it. For conricerca has never been for Romano a “research from below”: either it was the organization of workers’ autonomy, or it did not exist. He had no populist ideal of horizontalism: the prefix “con” meant to question the borders between the production of knowledge and political subjectivity, science and conflict. It was not simply a matter of knowledge but the organization of a threat. Conricerca was working class science. At the same time, there would not be any sociology work in Italy today without that experience. Radically bypassing it, they invented sociology. But in no way Alquati wanted to be called the inventor of conricerca. “ Political militants have always done conricerca. We would go in front of the factory and speak with workers: there cannot be organization otherwise. If I put shoes on and find a street full of stones, I cannot say I invented them.”

 In fact Conricerca is above all a political methodology. Here the traditional categories of spontaneity and organization loose their consistency. “Spontaneity was organized.” But nothing was achieved once for all.

The operaists had broken with the Marxist and Leninist tradition to reread Marx and Lenin within the new composition of living labor. And in this way they grasped the breach represented by the mass-worker, witch was also a clash within the class producing something that previously did not exist.

Operaism, like conricerca, essentially is this : the methodology of a constitutive breach. Never a thinking at the margins, always the political culture of a transformative power --organization of a development proceeding by leaps. In the 1970s the task was to make a leap again. Romano’s research with the new intellectual proletariat (just think of Universita’ di ceto medio/ Middle Class University) is the future perfect of the contemporary class composition.

A crystal clear wording, formative in the best sense of the word. A difficult, tortuous writing. “ It is not my fault if there are less and less people who can read” was his answer. The same was the case with the pictures he painted, that were covered with glass because they were always modified and ready to be made more complex by new designs and paint strokes. They were not art works, but a process continuously open to its transformation.

Thus, breaking your head again and again over every line of one of Romano’s texts (those of the ’90 on conricerca, subjectivity and the transformations of the university, knowledge and work, though they have circulated very little or are unpublished, are extremely precious) you could see something you had not seen before. And when you thought you had understood something, you were displaced and forced to proceed on a new terrain. Once again you had to make a leap. “They are not books” —he would say— “but machines.” War machines. Adding:” I never said I would write for everybody.” Of course. In a famous passage of The Eighteen Brumaire, Marx says that the beginner who has just learnt a language continuously retranslates it into his mother tongue, but does not succeed in possessing its spirit and express himself freely in it until he can move within it without reminiscences, forgetting in it his original language. Let us those disapprove then who are only preoccupied with measuring the scientificity of research with numbers and statistics and measure politics by the enlisted and the general interest. It is their loss. Alquati taught us that the problem is to grasp the truth, not to describe it. For the capacity to anticipate a tendency is not an intellectual artifice but the compass of the militant and the condition for the possibility of organization. Thank you Romano for having taught us this new language. And to have taught us that to possess it one has to constantly leap to re-invent it. This is why we will always be free and they will never take us.   Gigi Roggero [Translation by Silvia Federici] (via edu-factory.org)

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Announcing Creative Class Struggle’s response to this year’s ‘Creative Places + Spaces’ conference

October 29, 2009

Creative People? Collaborative Spaces? Innovative Places?

According to the event’s website – politicians, private consultants, architects, community development advocates, culture workers, and public space activists are meeting to plan the future of urban policy.

According to the conference’s website, these are exciting, new boundary blurring partnerships because…

“The new imperative to collaborate is rooted in the need to solve persistent multi-dimensional problems and a growing appreciation of how collaboration fuels innovation. It is blurring boundaries between audience and creator, hgdksl anoi ksdjhf….”

Aaack! We’re lost!

Let’s step back and ask:

Whose success are these stakeholders discussing?

Is everyone invited to the table to collaborate?

As people ‘break down’ barriers to create ‘new platforms’ for dialogue about cities in these workshops – what kind of cities are they envisioning?

Isn’t education underfunded? Aren’t governments slashing library budgets? Are these the education transformations they mean?

Isn’t work becoming increasingly precarious or unavailable? Isn’t housing increasingly unaffordable for most people? Aren’t social services for the poor increasingly underfunded and overburdened? Is this the “collaboration for collective interest” that conference planners envision?

What is the city for? Who gets to live here? Who decides?

Creative Class Struggle urges you to question the Creative Cities phenomenon routinely celebrated at Creative Places and Spaces and in cities across the world.

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

In Germany we have published now the first magazine for working-class-students. It's published in German language on paper and in the blog: http://dishwasher.blogsport.de Publisher is a department for working-class-students in the students-self-organisation called AStA Muenster. This department is elected each year by a working-class-students meeting. Andreas Kemper http://www.klassismus.de

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

the Counter-Cartographies Collective just put out their awesome new disOrientation Guide 2.0: (y)our guide the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

UNC is a space of multiple and unseen kinds of labor made precarious under the pressures of the economic crisis; UNC is a site where borders and migration policy are put into effect; UNC is a site of historical struggles; UNC is competing in adminstrative ranking games; UNC is an increasingly bureaucratic machine; UNC is part of a growing, worldwide wave of social mobilizations...

Check out their first disOrientation Guide here.

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Carrotworkers' Collective (London)

We are a London-based group of current or ex interns, mainly from the creative and cultural sectors, who regularly meets to think together around the conditions of free labour in contemporary societies.

We are currently undertaking a participatory action research around voluntary work, internship, job placements and compulsory free work in order to understand thier impact they have on material conditions of existence, life expectations and sense of self, together with their implications in relation to education, life long training, exploitation, and class interest.

Please contact us at   [email protected] if you would like to get involved. It would be great to hear form you.

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

SourceMap: open supply chains -- a collective tool for transparency and sustainability.

This open source website could be very useful for militant research projects on mapping how you are situated within local/global flows of consumption and production.

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

Helpful background on militant research

The following essays describe how current practices of militant research emerge from a combination of several traditions: marxist workers' inquiry, co-research, feminist consciousness-raising, Felix Guattari's institutional analysis, and participatory action research.

Marta Malo, “Common Notions, part 1: Workers’ inquiry, Co-research, Consciousness Raising” (Written for the preface of Common Notions: Experiences and Essays at the Intersection of Research and Militancy, Madrid, Spain, 2004) (9 pages)

Marta Malo, “Common Notions, part 2: Institutional Analysis, Participatory Action-Research, Militant Research” (2006)  (9 pages)

[fuckyeahmilitantresearch]

This seminar on militant research at the NYC free school, This is Forever, has an awesome reading list on militant research.  For a quick intro to this complex concept, read the intro to the seminar here:

This self-organized seminar will introduce major themes and concepts of the history of political inquiry as they take shape in movements contexts.  Whether they have been described as movement research, research militancy, co-research, consciousness-raising, or worker’s inquiry, the tradition is long and varied.  Thus the focus of the seminar will be to explore the meaning, methods and examples of militant research and inquiry as political activity in a variety of instances.

What is this unique tradition and what are its contributions to the many ways we might conceive of our own research?  How does inquiry understand the politics and practices of the production of knowledge?  How are these politics and practices linked to the production of subjectivity?  In what ways does ‘militancy’ conceive of the relatedness of research and political self-organization and struggle?

With Engel’s “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” (1844) and Marx’s “Worker’s Inquiry” (1880) into the conditions of the French working class, we begin to see the trace of this tradition.  We can follow instances of worker’s self-research in labor struggles in the US in the 1950s (CLR James, Martin Glaberman, Johnson-Forest Tendency), and the Italian inquiries of the 1960s and 1970s Operisti and Autonomia movements (Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna, etc.) as well as its counterparts in the US, referred to by Harry Cleaver as Autonomist Marxism (Zerowork, Midnight Notes) since the late 70s.  Recent inquiries include research collectives such as Kolinko (Germany), Colectivo Situacciones (Argentina), Precarias a la Deriva (Spain), Edu-Factory (Italy), as well as more local examples such as Counter-Cartography Collective (US), Midnight Notes (US) and Team Colors (US).

The seminar will survey both historical examples of this type of research and contemporary practices across many parts of the world.  We will explore the use of writing as a research instrument in this tradition but also point to methods that incorporate photography, film and audio recordings.

Along the way, we might explore various theoretical contributions to this line of thought from the intersections of political and philosophical writings from Italy and France (Guattari, Negri, Badiou, Ranciere, etc.) in the last few decades.