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CFP: The Ontology of Revolution: Negri and Geography (Re)considered

A proposed paper session and panel discussion at the 2010 Association of 
American Geographers meeting in Washington D.C., 4/14-18, 2010

Please forward widely.


The scholarship of the Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri has had
a considerable impact on the shape of social movements around the world as
well as on the fields of cultural studies and political theory. However,
despite a brief outpouring of (mostly critical) attention to his
collaborations with Michael Hardt, Negri's writings have received little
serious consideration within geography. Indeed, in the early 2000s, radical
geographers in the US--Marxists, post-colonial theorists and
feminists--panned /Empire/ and largely ignored /Multitude/. At the same
time, Negri's expansive collection of other works--as well as those of his
colleagues in the Autonomia movement--have continued to gain attention,
influence, and relevance within alter-globalization and anti-capitalist
activism.  In this session we propose a critical articulation between the
work of Antonio Negri, the broad trajectories of radical geography, and the
political movements with which they engage. We will explore whether and how
Negri's brand of marxism, which incorporates the insights of post-structural
analysis with a radical re-imagining of communist politics, might provide a
bridge between diverse theoretical positions in geographic thought and
practice. Through positing a new Marxian ontology based in the foundational
power of popular struggle his work offers a powerful set of analytics for
approaching many contemporary geographic problems.

We envision one paper session followed by a panel discussion. We welcome
theoretical or empirical explorations related to the work of Antio Negri and
its relation to radical geography. We would especially like to call
attention to Negri's many works that are less known in geography including
"Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State", "Marx beyond Marx:
Lessons on the Grundrisse","The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's
Metaphysics and Politics",
"The Porcelain Workshop: For a New Grammar of Politics", "Time for
Revolution", and "Goodbye Mr. Socialism" as well as the context of
Autonomous Marxism from within which they emerged.  Topics might include,
but are not limited to analyses and interventions on the following topics:

Post-modernity and real subsumption
The production of subjectivity // Subjectivity as a battleground of
capitalism
The general intellect
Negri and the political potentials (or lack there of) of Autonomia
Organization and immaterial labor // Organizing immaterial labor
Insurrection and the social factory
"Negriism" and social movements
Auto-valorization, auto-reduction, and the strategy of refusal
Geographies of Empire and Multitude
Biopolitics // The biopolitical
The relationship between neoliberalism, social capital, and shifting forms
of rebellion
Changing conceptions of the working class
The political salience of the concept of the common
Kairological time, geography, and revolution
The places and spaces within which all of these processes do, or no not,
operate

Please send abstracts or notice of interest to Nathan Clough
([log in to unmask]) and Elizabeth Johnson ([log in to unmask]) as soon as
possible and no later than October 15th.
-- 
Nathan L. Clough
Ph.D. candidate
Dept. of Geography
The University of Minnesota