Autonomous research. (organizers: Megafoni and Tutkijaliitto) Sat. 1.4. at 13:00-15:00

As a part of the on-going “Map to Post-Fordist Life” Series: http://www.m2hz.net Finnish Social
Forun: http://www.sosiaalifoorumi.fi
Dagmarinkatu 3, Helsinki

Web magazine Megafoni and Tutkijaliitto ("Researcher's alliance") organize in the Finnish Social
Forum a workshop on "Autonomous research". The purpose of the workshop is to discuss the
possibilities of autonomous and radical research. With "autonomous research" we mean research that
is capable of intervening into social conflicts in a productive manner. The main speakers of the
workshop, Carlos Fernandez, Brian Holmes, Ned Rossiter, and Stevphen Shukaitis will tell about the
theoretical perspectives and practical experiences of international networks doing research
independently from the University and in connection with social conflicts. Some existing Finnish
projects are also presented.

As everybody knows, the University is in crisis. What we are facing is the formation of an
"Entrepreneurial University". Various forms of control are rupturing the former institutional
independence of the University in a process in which science is becoming an immediate servant of
the capital. There is less and less space for scientific activity - in the serious sense of the
word - in the University nowadays. As a matter of fact it seems that scientific activity actually
escapes the University in which it meets only more and more controlling regulations.

Eventually the challenges of autonomous research are connected to the position of the production
of knowledge in the contemporary capitalist model of production. The production of knowledge is a
common demand of our times. From enterprises to activist networks, every organization meets a
challenge to handle information and to produce it as its key activity. In the new economy
knowledge is a new "natural resource" that is in the center of capitalist production of value.
Thus a demand to produce knowledge autonomously, independently from capitalist demands and control
raises up as a core issue in contemporary situation. It should also be acknowledged that the
success of such movements as the feminist movement and the environmental movement cannot be
explained without referring to their capacity to produce counter-knowledge (from propaganda to
theory and empirical studies) in an independent and challenging way.

As the production of knowledge has become the center of all production it has to be seen also as
the center of the production of conflicts. Thus the challenge of autonomous research is to become
an immediate participant in the social conflicts. This is how we should turn upside down the
so-called "Third task of the University", its servantile relationship to the demands of the
enterprises. Research has to be interventionist in its attitude. We must update the proletarian or
workerist research traditions in the context of contemporary information society. Research must
become "open", which means that modern institutional roles and hierarchic relations between the
researched and the researchers must be subverted. Research becomes a network process that is
always open to new assemblages.

In this context the production of knowledge has to be seen eventually as an independent space of
conflict: a space in which the conflict concerns first of all the production of knowledge in
itself, not only knowledge as knowledge about something, be it social or any other issue. The
possibility of autonomous knowledge is immediately in the center of social conflicts. This raises
up new demands for new kinds of research projects.

In Finland there exist already some networks and initiatives connected to the ideas of autonomous
research: web magazine Megafoni (http://megafoni.kulma.net),  student network Autonomiset
opiskelijat ("Autonomous students", http://autop.tk),  the new "Polemos" book series of the
Researcher's Alliance, and Tutkimusasema General Intellect ("Research Center General Intellect",
http://megafoni.kulma.net/index.php?mcat=15). The workshop also aims to build new practical
networks between people interested in the idea of autonomous research.