Remembering the Impossible Tomorrow: Italian Political Thought
and the Recent Crisis in Capitalism
The British Society for Phenomenology 2013 Annual Conference
5th- 7th April, 2013
St Hilda’s College Oxford
During Marx’s time radical thought was formed from a convergence of
three sources: German philosophy, English economics, and French
politics. In the introduction to Radical Thought in Italy: A
Potential Politics (1996) Michael Hardt argued that these tides had
shifted, with radical movements drawing from French philosophy, US
economics, and Italian politics. More recently, Matteo Pasquinelli
has argued that ‘Italian theory’ has attained an academic hegemony
comparable to that held by French philosophy in the 1980s.
But despite the proliferation of analysis and organizing drawing
from and inspired by the history of autonomous politics in Italy,
where are these voices today? In 2012, if you listened to the
mainstream politicians and economic experts and no one else, you
would hardly know that there was any financial crisis in 2008. You
might have a faint recollection that for a brief moment alternative
voices were heard in the media, but now it as if nothing at all had
happened. The waters that once had parted have now engulfed us
again. It is the same voices articulating the same tired ideas as
the whole of Europe slides into the nightmare of austerity, despite
the fact they do not appear to have any relation to reality, and
even those who speak them seem exhausted and worn out.
For some time now, many of us have noticed that there have been
different voices, and they began speaking many years before 2008
warning us of an impending disaster. These voices were coming from
Italy. Perhaps because of their own experience, the radical Italian
thinkers never believed the logic of the market could solve its own
problems or that life and capital were one and the same. Our hope
is to draw from this history as well as listen to some of the new
generation of Italian political thinkers, to share their ideas,
offer an alternative diagnosis of the present, and perhaps even a
suggestion of what different future might look like.
Confirmed Speakers:
Dario Gentili, Paolo Do, Federico Chicchi, Christian Marazzi, Anna
Simone, Franco Berardi, Tony O’Connor, Sinead Murphy, Franco
Barchiesi
To register: please contact Dr Patrick O’Connor:
[log in to unmask].
Further details, including registration forms can be found at the
BSP website:
http://britishphenomenology.org.uk/