Future in the Present: Occupying the Social Factory

May 2-3, 2006 - Leicester, UK
http://www.refusingstructures.net/future.html

Sponsored by the University of Leicester Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy and Autonomedia

From everyday insurgencies to global antagonisms, recent decades have borne witness to multiple
and overlapping cycles of social struggle, as well as attempts to incorporate these sources of
social wealth and creativity. From transformations in the circuits of global capital to the
morphing of state structures, border controls and forms of sovereignty, the development of
neoliberal governmentality has constantly run to catch up with our multiplicitous desires to
create new forms of self-determining community and sociality. Multidirectional lines of command
attempt to recuperate innovations at the level of everyday life, while myriad microrevolutions
branch out, weave together new possibilities, and sometimes directly attack the networks of
control.

What is the meaning of autonomy today, both as a theoretical category and as a practice? And what
can the thought of refusal contribute to the organization of refusals in our daily lives? How can
we create forms of antagonism directed against the lines of command that cut across the economic
and social fabric, and which seek to incorporate affective, biological, and symbolic processes
into forms of production? How can we prevent our antagonism being subsumed into the working of
power and turned them against us? Rather than to creating overarching concepts that describe a new
historical epoch, what would it mean to look at the specific modulations of how productive forces
and regimes of command are changing in response to the social creativity and struggles of
political actors? And what possibilities for political and social change are contained within
these transformations? This is to start from the multiple inscriptions of power and resistance:
from the bare life and bodies of the migrant worker to the precarious temp employee, from the
unwaged to laborers in export processing zone archipelagos.

This gathering will attempt to break down the format and constraints of the traditional academic
conference as well as forms of theorizing divorced from on-going social struggles and organizing.
It will seek to create a living dialogue and encuentro, a series of collisions of bodies and
minds, drawing from the history of autonomist politics and organizing, to draw out possible
directions for the future buried beneath the weight of the present. Rather than fixing autonomous
practices as objects of study it will draw together theorists, organizers, and activists
considering questions of what class composition, insurgent sociality, and autonomous political
practice could mean today.

Schedule

Tuesday 2 May
12noon-1pm: Registration (with tea and coffee)

1-4pm Session One: Class Composition, Workers’ Inquiry and Struggle
- ‘Mapping the Burrow: From Worker’s Inquiry to Militant Investigation’ – Nate Holdren and Steve
Wright
- ‘Inchiesta and Global Social Movements: A Renewing?’ – Emiliana Armano and Raffaele Scortino
- ‘Faredodge.now: Organising Refusal?’ – Tadzio Mueller
- ‘Tomorrow Women: Practical Resistance and Multiple Insurgencies in the Hybrid Spaces and Border
Zones of Globalization’ – J. Zoe Wilson

4-5pm Refreshments

6-7.30pm Session Two: Roundtable on Autonomous/Autonomist Publishing

7.30 Dinner

Wednesday 3 May
9.30-10am: Registration for late-comers (with tea and coffee)

10am-1pm Session Three: Exodus and Non-State Democracy
- ‘Terror and Utopia: Apocalyptic Desire, Resistance and the War on Terror’ – Stefan Skrimshire
- ‘“Democracy Must Be Defended”: States of Emergency and the World Tribunal’ – Ayça Çubukçu
- ‘Nations of the Multitude: Antagonistic Struggles and the Political Basis for a Non-State
Democracy’ – Gemma Ubasart i Gonzàlez and Raimundo Viejo Vinãs
- ‘Movements across the US-Mexico Border: the Sixth, the Other Campaign, the Border Social Forum
and the March against the Wall of Shame’ – Patrick Cuninghame

1-2.30pm Lunch

2.30-5.30pm Session Four: Weaving Machines of Resistance (The Warp and Woof of Refusal)
- ‘The Myth of Immaterial Labour’ – George Dafermos
- ‘Craft-Work and Fabriculture: Gender, Technology and Autonomism’ – Heidi Brush and Jack Bratich
- ‘The Conversation’ – Kirsten Forkert

Registration
The registration form can be obtained from
http://www.refusingstructures.net/futureregistration.html. Space is limited so individuals are
encouraged to register early.

Individuals interested in Future in the Present are encouraged to check out the Immaterial Labour,
Multitudes and New Social Subjects: Class Composition in Cognitive Capitalism
(http://www.geocities.com/ImmaterialLabour) conference that will be held in Cambridge on April
28th-30th (the weekend before FITP).

For more information and directions:
http://www.refusingstructures.net/future.html or e-mail [log in to unmask]

University of Leicester Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy: http://www.le.ac.uk/ulmc/cppe
Autonomedia: http://www.autonomedia.org