MAPPS

2009-11-25T02:14:00.000-08:00

Una scheda bibliografica per La Straniera (...our booklet on racism and sexism is out!)

La straniera. Informazioni, sito-bibliografie e ragionamenti su razzismo e sessismo, (a cura di C. Bonfiglioli, L. Corradi, L. Cirillo, B. De Vivo, S. R. Farris, V. Perilli).

Come il primo, anche il secondo numero dei Quaderni Viola si propone di fornire dati elementari di conoscenza, bibliograﬁe e sitograﬁe per chi desideri poi approfondire, spiegazioni brevi ma capaci di orientare un lavoro politico. Il tema del razzismo è esaminato nelle sue intersezioni con il genere e la classe, così come nel primo numero il tema del lavoro è stato analizzato nelle intersezioni con il genere e con la condizione migrante. Le intersezioni tra vari rapporti di oppressione hanno assunto un’importanza crescente nella ricerca femminista internazionale. In questo quaderno vengono offerti esempi concreti di come genere-classe-razza/etnia/cultura-generazione contribuiscano a determinare posizioni di oppressione nella gerarchia sociale, ma anche nuove possibilità di presa di parola. Allo scopo di indagare alcune delle forme storiche in cui il concetto di razza è stato creato e impiegato, la prima parte del quaderno ne analizza alcuni momenti centrali: l’antisemitismo e la scientizzazione della categoria di razza, il razzismo anti-Rom, il colonialismo e, in particolare, il periodo coloniale italiano e il razzismo anti-meridionale. Il dibattito sul concetto di intersezionalità, sul ruolo da attribuire a ciascuna componente della triade “razza- genere-classe” si è arricchito negli anni di contributi e riﬂessioni sempre più numerose. La seconda parte perciò offre le coordinate teoriche e bibliograﬁche per orientarsi in tale dibattito e per affrontare, con una prospettiva più avveduta, l’intera trama problematica che è oggetto del quaderno. La terza e ultima parte inﬁne si concentra sulle forme assunte dal razzismo contemporaneo in Italia, in particolare nelle loro declinazioni di genere. Gli immigrati e le immigrate sono divenuti/e il bersaglio principale di retoriche e pratiche xenofobe. Tuttavia, oltre che discorso esplicito, il razzismo contemporaneo si camuffa principalmente dietro narrative “difensive” che sempre più per affermarsi strumentalizzano le donne, italiane e non. Sono soprattutto tali narrative oggi ad insidiarsi nelle coscienze ed è, pertanto, dalla decostruzione di esse che dobbiamo partire per smascherare la propaganda razzista e misogina.

Per l'indice del numero e brevi schede sulle autrici rinviamo al sito delle Edizioni Alegre. Sui Quaderni Viola e La straniera si veda anche: Quaderni Viola sito e blog, marginalia, femminismo a sud, zeroviolenzadonne, incidenze, diserzioni sensibili, controstorie

2009-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

Sixth Historical Materialism Annual Conference

‘Another World is Necessary: Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives’

27–29 November 2009

The annual Historical Materialism conference is organised by the editorial board of Historical Materialism in association with the Deutscher Memorial Prize committee and the Socialist Register. The conference has become an important event on the Left, providing an annual forum to discuss recent developments on the agenda of historical-materialist research and has attracted an increasingly high attendance over the past four years. The Editorial Board of Historical Materialism welcomes attendance and active engagement in discussion with panellists from new as well as prior participants with an interest in critical-Marxist thought.

One of the principal objectives of the conference has been to build bridges among the various Marxist communities, including the breaking down some of the linguistic and intellectual barriers which continue to hamper the circulation and expansion of critical-Marxist thought. The sixth annual Historical Materialism Conference, under the banner of ‘Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives’, promises to continue and take forward this objective.

The conference is organised around three plenary sessions (the Deutscher lecture, the launch of the Socialist Register 2010, and Historical Materialism’s plenary) and a host of workshops dedicated to specific themes.

THE FULL TIMETABLE IS NOW AVAILABLE AND YOU CAN BOOK/ REGISTER ONLINE NOW

For more details, please contact: historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

Attendance is free, but participants must register in advance online (if this is not possible, please contact historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk). However, the conference is largely self-funded and we will depend on voluntary donations by attendants and participants to support the organisation and running of the event. The suggested advanced online donation is £40 for waged and £15 for unwaged, and the suggested donation on the door is £50 for waged and £20 for unwaged.

For logistical and other support, Historical Materialism would like to thank the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Centre for International Security and Diplomacy. For sponsorship, thanks to the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at SOAS, SOAS Student Union, Brill Academic Publishers, the Deutscher Memorial Prize committee, Socialist Register, Journal of Agrarian Change, the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy and Bookmarks.

THEMES FOR THIS YEAR’S CONFERENCE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

A LEFT PROJECT: TRANSFORMING THE STATE? * AGENCY * AGRARIAN CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM: TECHNICAL DYNAMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRAJECTORIES * ALTHUSSER AND PHILOSOPHY * APOCALYPSE MARXISM * ART AGAINST CAPITALISM * ART AND CRITIQUE IN GERMANY BETWEEN THE WARS * BOOK LAUNCH: ALEX CALLINICOS'S IMPERIALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY * BOOK LAUNCH: KARL MARX AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY * CAPITALISM, CITIZENSHIP AND CRISIS * CLASS AND CONFLICT IN ANCIENT GREECE * CLASS AND POLITICS IN THE ‘GLOBAL SOUTH’ * CLASS, CRISIS, DISTRIBUTION * COGNITIVE MAPPING, TOTALITY AND THE REALIST TURN * COMMODIFYING HEALTH CARE IN THE UK * CUBAN REVOLUTION AND CUBAN SOCIETY * DERIVATIVES * DEVELOPMENTALISM, THE STATE AND CLASS FORMATION * DIMENSIONS OF THE FOOD CRISIS * EASTERN CENTRAL EUROPE FROM TRANSITION TO EU ENLARGEMENT: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY * ECOLOGICAL CRISIS * EMPIRE AND IMPERIALISM * ENERGY AND GEOPOLITICS * ENERGY, WASTE AND CAPITALISM * EPISTEMOLOGY, DIALECTICS AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM * EXTENDING THE MINERALS-ENERGY-COMPLEX * FEMINISM AND SOCIALIST STRATEGY * FINANCE, THE HOUSING QUESTION AND URBAN POLITICS * GLOBAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS: MARXIST REFLECTIONS * GRAMSCI RELOADED * GREEN CAPITALISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS * HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND LATE CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT * HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND SOCIAL RESEARCH * HISTORICISING HISTORICAL MATERIALISM * HM BOOK SERIES LAUNCH: MIKKO LAHTINEN ON ALTHUSSER AND MACHIAVELLI * HM BOOK SERIES LAUNCH: PETER THOMAS’S THE GRAMSCIAN MOMENT * IN MEMORY OF PETER GOWAN * INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE CRISIS * INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CRISIS * ISAAC AND TAMARA DEUTSCHER MEMORIAL PRIZE LECTURE: KEES VAN DER PIJL, NOMADS, EMPIRES, STATES * KNOWLEDGE, NATURE, PROPERTY * LABOUR * LABOUR AND THE ECONOMIC SUBJECT IN CONTEMPORARY ART * LABOUR BEYOND THE FACTORY * LATIN AMERICAN WORKING CLASSES * LEARNING FROM PAST CRISES * LINEAGES OF NEOLIBERALISM * LISTEN TO VENEZUELA SCREENING AND DISCUSSION * MARXISM AND LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY * MARXISM AND NATIONALISM TODAY * MARXISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE * MARXISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS * MARXISM AND TIME * MARXISM BETWEEN ETHICS AND UTOPIA * MARXISM, DEMOCRACY AND CLASSICAL POLITICAL THEORY * MIGRATION * MONEY * MORBID SYMPTOMS: HEALTH UNDER CAPITALISM * NEOLIBERALISM, AESTHETICS AND THE RECUPERATION OF DISSENT * ON THE OBJECTS OF COMMUNISM: A HACKING PANEL * PHILOSOPHY AND COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY MARX * PLANNING, LOCALISM AND THE LEFT * POSTNEOLIBERALISM * PRESENTATION OF THE JOURNAL CHTO DELAT/WHAT IS TO BE DONE? * RACE, NATION AND ORIENTALISM * RED PLANETS: MARXISM AND SCIENCE FICTION * RE-EMBEDDING MARXISM: COERCION AND POLITICAL ECONOMY * REGISTERING THE CRISIS: A SOCIALIST REGISTER ROUNDTABLE * RESEARCH ON MARX * RESTRUCTURING, OUTSOURCING, DISTRIBUTION: DIMENSIONS OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS * REVOLUTIONARY THEORY, AUTONOMIST MARXISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY * SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM IN THE US SOUTH * SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA: THE CURRENT CONJUNCTURE * STUDENT MOVEMENTS AND YOUTH REVOLTS * THE ARTS AND CAPITALIST CRISIS: THE NEW DEAL EXPERIENCE * THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM * THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF REALISM * THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WORK * THE POLITICS OF FINANCE * THE POLITICS OF THE WILL * THE POLITICS OF VALUE * THE RIGHT: RACE, NATION, IDENTITY * THE TURN TO ETHICS AND THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM * 'TURBULENCE: IDEAS FOR MOVEMENT', NEW ISSUE LAUNCH * UNION STRUGGLES * UNOISM, ECOLOGY AND CRISIS * UTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS AND SOCIALIST BIOPOLITICS * WEBLOGS AND THE OPPOSITIONAL PUBLIC SPHERE: A DISCUSSION * WHAT IS ABSTRACTION? * WORKERS AND STRUGGLE TODAY * ZIONISM, ANTISEMITISM AND THE LEFT - A DEBATE

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

Gilbert Achcar * Ozgun Akduran * Gregory Albo * Robert Albritton * Peter Alexander * Noaman Ali * Kevin B. Anderson * Ricardo Antunes * Caroline Arscott * Sam Ashman * John Ashworth * Ilker Atac * Jairus Banaji * Fletcher Baragar * Banu Bargu * Colin Barker * Tom Barnes * Luca Basso * Matthew Beaumont * Pinar Bedirhanoglu * Dimitris Belantis * John Bell * Aaron Benanav * Halil Berktay * Alain Bihr * Robin Blackburn * Paul Blackledge * Max Blechman * Derek Boothman * Giacomo Borbone * Mark Bould * Stephen Bouquin * Bill Bowring * Ulrich Brand * Craig Brandist * Michael Brie * Simon Bromley * Wendy Brown * Dick Bryan * Adrian Budd * Verity Burgmann * Damien Cahill * Alex Callinicos * Ricardo Camargo * Mauro Farnesi Camellone * Bob Cannon * Thomas Carmichael * Warren Carter * Giorgio Cesarale * Maria Elisa Cevasco * Dae-op Chang * François Chesnais * Vivek Chibber * Andrew Chitty * Christopher Chitty * Joseph Choonara * Sheila Cohen * Alex Colas * Tim Cooper * Stipe Curkovic * Steve Cushion * Gareth Dale * Neil Davidson * Gail Day * Tim Dayton * Kathryn Dean * Alex Demirovic * Angela Dimitrakaki * Demet Dinler * Kevin Doogan * Elizabeth Dore * Nick Dyer-Witheford * Juliane Edler * Aram Eisenschitz * Hester Eisenstein * Fuat Ercan * Adam Fabry * Daniel Fairfax * Mariano Feliz * Ben Fine * Robert Fine * Peter Fleming * Gregory C. Flemming * Keith Flett * John Foran * Vassillis Fouskas * Carl Freedman * James Furner * Alexander Gallas * Andreia Galvao * Ferruccio Gambino * Earl Gammon * Lindsey German * Frantz Gheller * Lesley Gill * John Glenn * Jesse Goldstein * Maya Gonzalez * Jeff Goodwin * Jamie Gough * Nick Gray * Juan Grigera * Laam Hae * Peter Hallward * Ayeesha Hameed * Carrie Hamilton * Bue Hansen * Jane Hardy * Chris Harman * David Harvie * Owen Hatherley * Mike Haynes * Andrew Hemingway * Lesley Henderson * Christoph Henning * Rob Heynen * Andy Higginbottom * Sarah Hines * John Holloway * Patricia Howard * Peter Hudis * Liz Humphries * Robert Jackson * Dhruv Jain * Fredric Jameson * Elinor Jean * Seongjin Jeong * Bob Jessop * Bonn Juego * Anush Kapadia * Brian Kelly * Sami Khatib * Jeff Kinkle * Kelvin Knight * Meri Koivusalo * Ahmet Hasim Kose * Conor Kostick * Primoz Krasovec * Maria Kyriakidou * Xavier Lafrance * Mikko Lahtinen * Alex Levant * Les Levidow * Iren Levina * William Lewis * Nicola Livingstone * Jean-Guy Loranger * Monica Clua Losada * David Mabb * Andreas Malm * Gonzo Poso Martin * Randy Martin * Jonathan Martineau * Meade McCloughan * David McNally * Andrew Milner * Simon Mohun * Peter P. Mollinga * Kim Moody * Colin Mooers * Jason W. Moore * Adam Morton * Sara Motta * Tadzio Müller * Munoz-Martinez * Ozgur Narin * Jonathan Neale * Mike Newman * Susan Newman * Benjamin Noys * Blair Ogden * Koichi Ohara * Ozlem Onaran * Deidre O'Neill * Ebru Deniz Ozan * Melda Ozturk * Leo Panitch * Giorgos Papafragkou * David Parker * Jaime Pastor * Jody Patterson * Knox Peden * Alexei Penzin * Nicole Pepperell * Simon Pirani * Iain Pirie * Amedeo Policante * Nicolas Pons-Vignon * Charles Post * Moishe Postone * Nina Power * Lucia Pradella * Toni Prug * Ozren Pupovac * Thomas Purcell * Hugo Radice * Ravi Raman * Akbar Rasulov * Gene Ray * John Rees * Tobias Reichardt * Paul Reynolds * Sébastien Rioux * John Roberts * Ed Rooksby * Ellen Rosen * Christina Rousseau * Sheila Rowbotham * Sally Ruane * Frank Ruda * Alfredo Saad-Filho * Spyros Sakellaropoulos * Birgit Sauer * Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt * Alan Sears * Thomas Sekine * Ben Selwyn * Greg Sharzer * Stuart Shields * Subir Sinha * Gary Slater * John Smith * Johan Soderberg * Clare Solomon * Panagiotis Sotiris * Dimitris Sotiropoulos * Susan Spronk * Kerstin Stakemeier * Julian Stallbrass * Engelbert Stockhammer * Erik Swyngedouw * Lotta Takala-Greenish * Daniel Tanuro * Jean Baptiste Thomas * Peter Thomas * Vidar Thorsteinsson * Hillel Ticktin * Bruno Tinel * Massimiliano Tomba * Jonathon Tomlinson * Alberto Toscano * Enzo Traverso * Ben Trott * Julian Tudor-Hart * Mehmet Ufuk Tutan * Nilay Tutan Tutan * Emily van der Meulen * Marco Vanzulli * Leandro Vergara-Camus * Zaira Rodrigues Vieira * Dmitry Vilensky * Marina Vishmidt * Andriana Vlachou * Hilary Wainright * Mike Wayne * Xiaoping Wei * Duncan Wigan * Evan Williams * Michaek Wood * Phil Woodhouse * Galip Yalman * Karel Yon * Christian Zeller * Alexander Zevin * Mislav Žitko

2009-11-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

Peter's book is out!!!

The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism

Peter D. Thomas

http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=29354

Publication year: 2009

Series: Historical Materialism Book Series, 24

ISBN-13 (i): 978 90 04 16771 1

ISBN-10: 90 04 16771 4

Cover: Hardback

Number of pages: xxv, 477 pp.

List price: € 115.00 / US$ 170.00

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic

of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The

influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only

exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has

been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'.

This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological

studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's

thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the

Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's

theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The Gramscian Moment

argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of

developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the

contemporary revitalisation of Marxism.

Peter D. Thomas (Ph.D, 2008) studied at the University of Queensland,

Freie Universität Berlin, L’Università “Federico II”, Naples, and the

Universiteit van Amsterdam. He has published widely on Marxist

political theory and philosophy. He is a member of the editorial board

of the journal Historical Materialism: research in critical Marxist

theory.

REVIEWS

Peter Thomas' book should become the standard text in English on

Gramsci's thought. Acquainted as he is with the latest wrinkle in the

Italian debate on Gramsci, Thomas combines an unmatched philological

research into the sources and a mastery of the ongoing debates about

the sense we should make of key ideas like hegemony. He deftly

overturns the received orthodoxy and the various abuses of the ideas

of the marxist militant by theorists of cultural studies, both

restoring Gramsci's work to its true status and opening up fruitful

possibilities for understanding his contribution to political theory

more generally. The best book on Gramsci's political theory for three

decades.

Alastair Davidson, Author of Antonio Gramsci. the Man, his Ideas and

Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography

Peter Thomas's Gramsci is the one we need in an era of economic and

geopolitical crises that bears some resemblances to Gramsci's own

time. This Gramsci is no embarrassed culturalist, confused strategist,

or incipient post-Marxist. Thomas's Gramsci, developed from rigorous

critical study of the Prison Notebooks and of the now extensive

scholarly literature, is a deeply consequent thinker intent on

reconstructing revolutionary Marxism in opposition to the most

advanced bourgeois thought of his day. This is also a Gramsci for whom

political economy is of central methodological and substantive

significance. Not content with scholarly interpretation, Thomas draws

his Gramsci into dialogue with contemporary radical thought,

illuminating both sides of the conversation. This is a book that will

recast the understanding of Gramsci, especially but not exclusively in

the Anglophone world.

Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, Social Theory and

International Political Economy, King's College, London

What superlatives can I use to describe this book? Terms like

‘outstanding,’ ‘superb’ and ‘tour-de-force’ suggest themselves, but

even these do not fully capture the extraordinary power of The

Gramscian Moment. Peter Thomas’s erudite, wide-ranging, and

staggeringly sophisticated reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

completely overturns the dominant interpretations including those of

Louis Althusser and Perry Anderson. Never again will we be able to

read Gramsci solely through their lenses. Henceforth, Thomas’s

magisterial exploration of Gramsci’s thought will become the critical

point of reference for all serious work in the field. But Thomas does

more than meticulous exegesis. He also insists on the actuality of

Gramsci’s work, urging that we approach it in the spirit of “both

continuation and transformation, fidelity and renewal.” He succeeds

brilliantly on all counts.

David McNally, Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto

Peter Thomas's The Gramscian Moment demonstrates the extent to which

Gramsci’s thought represents a singular synthesis of virtually the

entire tradition of Western political thought. The richness of his

interpretative frameworks allows him both to integrate partial

approaches and contributions and to throw new light on the central

questions inherited by this tradition. This work succeeds in

presenting Gramsci as a "living classic", an author absolutely central

to our understanding of modernity. Given its scope, richness and

originality, I have no doubt that this work will represent a milestone

in Gramscian scholarship and an important contribution to contemporary

debates in political theory and philosophy.

Stathis Kouvelakis, Author of Philosophy and Revolution and Co-editor

of a Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism

The Gramscian Moment is the most thorough and illuminating

philosophical study of Gramsci yet to appear in English. It sets a new

standard for work not only on Gramsci himself but on the whole complex

of issues associated with his legacy – on the mechanics and dimensions

of hegemony, on the role and nature of the subject of political

action, on the relation between theory and practice, and between civil

society and the state. Thomas does more than any previous reader of

Gramsci to demonstrate how his philosophy can fairly claim to meet

Marx's famous prescription – not merely "to interpret the world but to

change it".

Peter Hallward, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex

University, London

2009-11-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

E' uscito il secondo numero dei Quaderni Viola!

C. Bonfiglioli, L. Cirillo, L. Corradi, B.D. Vivo, S. R. Farris, V. Perilli (a c. di), La Straniera: informazioni, sito-bibliografie e ragionamenti su razzismo e sessismo, Alegre, 2009

Habemus QV!!

2009-09-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Conference: Encountering Althusser

Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, 9-11 October 2009

International Conference organised by Katja Diefenbach, Sara Farris, Gal Kirn and Peter Thomas

www.after1968.org/encounteringalthusser

The work of Louis Althusser and his associates constituted an important attempt to rethink the political and philosophical potential of Marx’s thought, in tension with its ‘orthodox’ reading in Stalinism. In his work in the 1960s and 1970s, Althusser proposed to negate the metaphysical categories of subject, substance, telos, and end. He further explored these themes in the late 1970s and 1980s in terms of the event, the encounter and contingency. The late Althusser’s “materialism of the encounter” both provides many points of contact for a productive dialogue with thinkers associated with post-structuralism, while at the same time seeming to maintain a stronger connection to the Marxist tradition, particularly in terms of his continuing affirmation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. One of the purposes of this conference will be to attempt to gain an overview of the development of Althusser’s thought and to pose the question of its legacy for contemporary debates in radical political thought.

It is not only the legacy of Louis Althusser that will be of our interest here, however, but rather how to encounter and deal with the more unrecognised or suppressed points in his thought that remain enigmatic, and at the same time productive for further research in politics, economy, philosophy (and ideology). Many contemporary discussions ranging from Badiou and Zizek to Balibar, Laclau and Butler revolve around some topics that were traced or started by Louis Althusser, mainly on ideology, linking Althusser to Lacan or politics. In this conference, we would like to focus on some points that have not yet been discussed or have not yet been given the attention they deserve.

In the Althusserian spirit of philosophy working by attacking established positions on an occupied Kampfplatz, we outline four different fields of investigation to which panels will be dedicated: ruptures in philosophy, politics, political economy and politics and philosophy in the late Althusser. In each field, we intend to subject established interpretations of Althusser’s thought to critique and to attempt to determine productive areas for future research. Beyond such scholarly and philological debates, however, our guiding concern will be to pose the question of the extent to which an encounter with Althusser today has the potential to promote critical energies and perspectives that are capable of intervening effectively in the contemporary conjuncture.

Friday 9|10 Ruptures in philosophy: dis/continuities in Althusser's thought – Chair: Peter Thomas

16:00 – 16:15 Introduction

16:15 – 17:15 G. Michael Goshgarian | The early "late Althusser"

Break

17:30 – 18:30 Caroline Williams | Althusser and Spinoza

18:30 – 19.30 Giorgos Fourtounis | The "absolute beginning" and its duration: the continuity of rupture in Althusser

19:30 Discussion

Saturday 10|10 The primacy of politics: singularity, dictatorship of proletariat, class struggle – Chair: Gal Kirn

10:00 – 10:15 Introduction

10:15 – 11:15 Rastko Močnik

Break

11:30 – 12:30 Ozren Pupovac | At this side of interpellation: Althusser’s critique of the subject

12:30 – 13:30 Slobodan Karamanić | Three uses of topography: theory, politics, state

Lunch

14:30 – 15:30 Mikko Lahtinen | Althusser, Machiavelli and us: from Marxist philosophy to materialist politics

15:30 – 16:00 Discussion

Break

The critique of political economy and the legacy of Louis Althusser – Chair: Sara Farris

16:30 - 16:45 Introduction

16:45 – 17:45 Maria Turchetto

17:45 – 18:45 Marko Kržan | Should there be a Marxian perspective on contemporary capitalism

Break

19:00 – 20:00 Frieder Otto Wolf | Dialectic and contingency in thinking reproduction: looking back at a line of Althusser’s theoretical initiatives

20:00 Discussion

Sunday 11|10 Politics and philosophy in the late Althusser: the philosophy of the encounter and aleatory materialism – Chair: Katja Diefenbach

10:00 – 10:15 Introduction

10:15 – 11.15 Vittorio Morfino | History as the "permanent revocation of the accomplished fact": on Machiavelli in the late Althusser.

11:15 – 12.15 Katja Kolšek | Some reflections on the conception of reading of Althusser's aleatory materialism

Break

12:45 – 13:45 Panagiotis Sotiris | Rethinking aleatory materialism

13:45 - 14:45 Jason Read | Primitive accumulation: between contingency and constitution

14.45 - 15:15 Discussion

2009-08-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

I VERI COLPEVOLI

di Annamaria Rivera

Abbiamo provato a gridarlo in ogni modo che il mostruoso reato d'immigrazione clandestina avrebbe generato crimini «umanitari». Così è stato, purtroppo. L'abbandono e poi la morte dei settantatre profughi eritrei è la prima strage prodotta dal «pacchetto-sicurezza». È, certo, il frutto maturo del trattato con la Libia, siglato dal ministro Amato, rafforzato e reso operativo, cioè criminale, dall'attuale governo. È il frutto, più largamente, dell'Europa-fortezza e dell'adeguamento alla sua politica anche da parte del governo maltese.

Ma inedito è il cinismo di Stato per cui una tale strage non trovi come risposta né l'indignazione corale, né l'incriminazione per strage, appunto, bensì per favoreggiamento dell'immigrazione clandestina. «Senza escludere un'eventuale ipotesi di omissione di soccorso», dicono gli inquirenti. Immigrazione clandestina di cui potrebbero essere imputati i cinque poveri spettri che il fato - lui solo compassionevole - ha voluto sottrarre alla morte. Questo «dettaglio», con l'annuncio della parata che Berlusconi sta per fare il 30 agosto con Gheddafi per festeggiare a Tripoli l'anniversario del trattato, restituisce in modo perfetto il senso del crollo dell'elementarmente umano consumato con le politiche di questo governo.

Politiche disumane generano comportamenti disumani: se nessuno ha sentito il dovere morale di soccorrerli è anche perché leggi criminali producono condotte sociali criminali. Ma non tutto è inedito in questo dramma. Non è vero che con esso «abbiamo toccato il fondo», come si è scritto. Se così fosse, si potrebbe coltivare la fragile speranza che un futuro governo non reazionario e non razzista potrebbe ripristinare forme di rispetto per l'elementarmente umano. Purtroppo non è così. Ce lo dice la strage di 108 profughi albanesi della Kater I Rades, provocata nel 1997 dalla pretesa di un governo di centrosinistra di bloccare manu militari l'esodo albanese. Ce lo ricorda un'altra strage del proibizionismo, quella del 25 dicembre 1996, in cui annegarono 233 migranti: a lungo ignorata dai media - il manifesto fu l'unico giornale ad aprire subito con la tragedia -, sempre negata dal governo di centrosinistra e occultata da una parte dei pescatori di Portopalo. Alla fine fu grazie all'ostinazione di qualche giornalista e di antirazzisti come Dino Frisullo, che il silenzio fu spezzato. Non vogliamo sostenere che il trattamento crudele riservato ai de-umanizzati - coloro che anche da cadaveri sono detti clandestini - sia una lunga notte oscura in cui tutte le vacche sono nere. Ma che per produrre i frutti marci che coltiva il governo in carica, di fatto guidato dall'ideologia post-nazionalsocialista della Lega nord, altri hanno provveduto a spargere i semi avvelenati: quelli del proibizionismo crudele e ad ogni costo. La condizione per tornare a coltivare la speranza sta nella costruzione di una volontà collettiva di superamento del paradigma proibizionista.

da Il Manifesto, 23 Agosto 2009

2009-07-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

On Italian Marxisms by Peter Thomas in the last number of 'New Left Review'

As this blog happens to be particularly sensitive to the Anglo-Italian dialogue and to Marxist and leftist issues more in general, I recommend the reading of the first review essay on Italian Marxisms in the last number of New Left Review. The entire number is worth reading by the way!

New Left Review 58, July-August 2009

Kenneth Pomeranz: The Great Himalayan Watershed

From Asia’s mountainous heart flow rivers on which half the world’s population depends. Pomeranz examines the complex interaction between human water needs, fragile ecology and vast infrastructural projects—and the far-reaching consequences of their conjugation.

Miroslav Hroch: Learning from Small Nations

Leading scholar of national questions discusses his personal trajectory and theoretical development, against the backdrop of the Czech experience. Sociological and historical roots of national feeling, and comparative perspectives on their European destinies.

R. W. Johnson: False Start in South Africa

Disappointments of post-apartheid rule, marred by mass unemployment and corruption, amid the enrichment of a new black elite. Does the arrival of Zuma, and new salience of the SACP within the ruling alliance, portend a lurch to ethnic conflict and capital flight?

Patrick Bond: In Power in Pretoria?

Responding to Johnson, Patrick Bond locates the origins of the ANC’s neoliberal record since 1994 in the compromises of the transition era. Rhetoric versus reality, and the subordination of trade unions and SACP alike to capital’s prerogatives.

Etienne Balibar: Althusser and the Rue d'Ulm

Retrospective look at the life and work of Althusser, seen within the structures—personal, political, institutional—of the École Normale Supérieure. Teaching, thinking and writing at the intersection of private and public realms.

Fredric Jameson: Marx and Montage

The author of Archaeologies of the Future unearths fragments from ‘ideological antiquity’ in Alexander Kluge’s recent film on Capital. Encounters with Eisenstein’s unrealized equivalent, seeking a cinematic transposition of the commodity fetish.

BOOK REVIEWS

Peter Thomas on Cristina Corradi, Storia dei marxismi in Italia. Multiple inheritances of Labriola, Gramsci, operaismo and other currents. Can a pluralized theoretical tradition aspire to outrun reverses in praxis?.

Tony Wood on Michael Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul. A revised neoliberal gospel for the region, courtesy of the Economist.

Max Gasner on Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The 21st century as re-run of the 19th, shaped by the ambitions of ascendant autocratic powers.

2009-07-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

For f...'s sake. Leave us alone! Part II

This is one example of the new marketing strategy that the University Alma Mater of Bologna (Italy) has chosen in order to attract more students. I am still collecting some materials. More soon!

2009-07-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

Rethinking Marxism Conference

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Call for Papers

New Marxian Times will be held over four days, beginning on Thursday evening, 5 November 2009 and ending on Sunday afternoon, 8 November 2009. In addition to two plenary sessions and an art exhibition, there will be concurrent panels, workshops, and art/cultural events. We invite the submission of organized sessions that follow traditional or non-traditional formats (such as workshops, roundtables, and dialogue among and between presenters and audience) as well as individual presentations. Since Marxism covers a wide variety of fields, from literature to public health and forms of political practice, from environmental organizing to opposing global inequality and envisioning new economic and social practice, anyone engaging with Marxism in any discipline or form of activism is encouraged to submit paper and panel proposals. We encourage those working in areas that intersect with Marxism, such as critical race theory, feminism, political economy, anarchist studies, cultural and literary studies, queer theory, working-class and labor studies, postcolonial studies, geography and urban studies, psychoanalysis, social and natural sciences, philosophy, and around issues of class, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and disability, to submit proposals. We also welcome video, poetry, performance, and all other modes of presentation and cultural expression.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Proposals for papers, films, or other formats should include:

Paper title
Presenter's name and contact information (mail, email, phone, affiliations)
Brief abstract (no more than 200 words)
Technology needs for presentation

Proposals for panels should include:

Panel title
Name, contact information, and paper title for each presenter
Brief abstract (no more than 200 words) explaining the panel's focus
Brief abstract for each paper (no more than 200 words)
Names and contact information for any discussant(s) or respondent(s)
Technology needs of presenters
Title, contact, and address for any sponsoring organization or journal

The appropriate preregistration fee must accompany all proposal submissions. Unfortunately, any proposal not accompanied by the appropriate preregistration fee cannot be considered. Proposals that are not accepted will have their preregistration fees returned in full. If you are submitting a proposal for an entire panel, please make sure you include the preregistration fee for all members of the panel.

The deadline for proposal submission is 1 August 2009.

The deadline for proposal submission is 1 August 2009.

2009-07-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Subversive sideburns!

We know how Italians are concerned with appearance, to the extent that 'fare una bella figura' marks the sharpest distinction between a gentleman and a lout, a refined and an uncouth lady. On the occasion of the G8 in Abruzzo, therefore, the authorities of L'Aquila encouraged the earth-quacked population of the region - still living in tents and caravans - to show the Vips of the world that a 'bella figura' is a precious concern for the descendants of Dante and the countrymates of Dolce&Gabbana.

Thus they enacted a special ordinance for which "the population (...) must respect precise behavioral and hygienic norms" (see the image above - unfortunately it is not a joke...).

The third 'article' states: "Female citizens must avoid wearing mini-skirts, flip-flops and scanty clothes". Now, the prohibition of flip-flops might appear bizarre. In reality, upon careful consideration, it is perfectly consistent with the ban of mini-skirts and scanty clothes as flip-flops expose the feet to unnecessary male sight and might inelegantly recall a G-string, a thong, and the like. But now I am just wondering why they are not banning dental floss...

The second 'article' urges men "to avoid wearing undershirts, short pants and overalls". Well, at first sight it is not clear why wearing overalls is not decorous. But again, with a surplus of reflection and without losing faith in the rationale governing the intentions of the authors of the ordinance it is possible to find the answer. I think that the ban of overalls in front of Obama, Sarkozy and so on had been dictated by the fear that showing Italian men in working clothes in a country with 30% rate of unemployment and one of the highest rates of workplace deaths would have looked a bit ironical; and the authorities (who happen to have a clown as a commander in chief) want to avoid irony above all things. Well done then! Stop overalls!

However, the third article (listed as first in the ordinance in the picture) is particularly amusing. Here "male citizens" are required "to shave the beard with accuracy on the days of the 8th, 9th and 10th July, as well as sideburns and other decorations".

In front of this, I must admit I am speachless. Are sideburns forbidden because hair is regarded as anti-hygienic? So why did Berlusconi want a hair transplant? Or perhaps they are forbidden because body hair is not sexy? And ok, the malevolent gnome - as my friend Savonarola suggests calling him - prefers women who have not yet developed too much body hair...So, I can get it again. Nonetheless, the matter needs more investigation (try here).

In the meantime, I like thinking of 'subversive sideburns' as a new fashion to be promoted again. Here are some examples:

The example above is very minimalist but immediately usable by the anti-G8 movement on the leaf-lets.

This is also very nice. Perhaps more appropriate for a pluralist movement where each current would like to express its own position on the best way to grow subversive sideburns.

But this is my favourite one. Not only does it give more room for expression of political differences, but it also combines a subversive project with a scientific presentation of the different options available. Terrific!

2009-07-07T02:21:00.000-07:00

The essence of Caesarism!

Really worth watching from the beginning to the end. Hysterically funny!

2009-07-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

For f...'s sake, leave us alone!!

Advertising of any kind, of any commodity is always addressed to those who should get it. In the 1950s and 1960s, male bread-winner families were the target; long-time consumption commodities kept industries going and helped the post-war economic boom to grow undisturbed for a while. Men, mostly, were those being exploited outside the household and earning the income, while women inside were the ones busy working for the daily reproduction of their men's labour power; commodity-marketing thus accomodated the division of labour by asking men to make their women happy but running ... in the end, it was not that difficult to do it ... a blender, a new dishwasher and everything was fine.

Despite its obvious gender bias, an advertisement like the one above looks almost cute and innocent compared to the level of sexism that has been reached nowadays. The latter is true especially in Dwarf-land, brought recently to renewed international attention thanks to its prime minister's regular use of public money to visit prostitutes, to host lolita-like private parties in his villas with promises of short TV appearances and, especially, to spend a one-night-stand with young women looking to start up their own enterprises.

Thus, more than anything, the Dwarf Era in Italy has amounted to a dramatic increase of sexism and disrespect for women, which is not only testified by an incredibly widespread soubrette-culture, for which young women's primary aspiration is to become a velina in one of the Dwarf's TV. More than this, the Dwarf's sexist era is progressively marked by a widespread wave of extreme violence, sexual abuses and rapes against women, the nature and role of which are publicly depicted as sexual satisfaction of men appetites. The increasing sexism of the advertising campaigns that can be seen on the walls of the streets are a very eloquent sign of this anti-feminist surge.

"We have the most famous sterns of Italy", is stated in the image on the left, where stern (poppa) in Italian also has the meaning of boob. Thus we see a regiment of young female bums entering the new ferry that promises to sweeten the holidays of all those going from Naples to Catania with a nice stock of young pretty girls.

Female sterns-boobs are used by the same company in the image below, and the advertising strategy does not fail to reassert how sexy it could be to go from Campania to Sicily, which are personified by their respective boobs-volcanos.

Travelling around the country, it is completely normal to run into huge posters - hung up on the most crowded streets of the cities - in which not only women's bodies are used to sell all sorts of commodities, but in which the sexual message becomes increasingly starker.

"Trust me! I will give it to you for free" comes out of the voluptuous woman's mouth in block capitals in the image below ... yet, it is not her sexual services, but the glasses' frame (la montatura) that will be given gratis to the lucky customers - as the undertitle clarifies - though 'montatura', in Italian language, is both the glasses' frame and the sexual position of riding.

It could be thought that what all these double-meaning, schlock-taste advertisements produce is just a smarmy smile on people's face, a bit of arousal to keep up the daily routine. However, instead of innocent excitement, today in Italy there is a daily count of violence and rapes against women. A dramatic growth of male brutality that is certainly not discouraged by an every day platitude that women are nothing but sexual objects waiting for their consumption... even with the brute force. In the image below, for example, a quasi-rape scene is used to promote a new clothes-brand. Yet, the company does not seem to be happy merely to use the image of brutally taking off woman's clothes for this commercial purpose. It aims to do it by also employing the evergreen stereotype of the black raper. The potential rapers, in fact, are blackmen, seemingly police, just to add a fashionable flavour of harsh racism to extreme sexism.

The list of sexist-advertising could go on indefinitely, perhaps even risking to fetishise this miserable southern-European culture as a red-blooded paradise.

Instead of always self-portraying themselves as latin lovers, super-machos and virile horses, Italian men would be better off realising that what the sexy advertising speaks of is their sexual impotence, pathetic insecurity and clumsy incapability of getting laid without a bit of brutality.

It is not by chance that instead of the blender for devoted house-wives, today's marketing strategists sell Italian repressed mummy-boys what they think they cannot easily get for free: thus companies sell them a quick glimpse into the décolleté of a perfect-fake breast, the sexual fantasy of a naked-female-army willing to excite them during terrible trips on rotten non-functioning ferries, the forbidden dream of playing the stereotype of the well-endowed black man trying to abuse a pretty white women.

Fortunately enough, it seems to me that more and more often Italian women (but also many men) are denouncing such barbarism and making it visible in all its shame.

Here is a short list of my Italian girl-friends who fight everyday against sexism and violence. Go, girls, go!

la fikasicula

la fatina viola

la vince

2009-07-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

Marx in Amsterdam...this Friday!

Friday, 3 July 2009
20.00 hrs. (Doors open at 19.30)
Venue: IIRE, Timorplein, Lombokstraat 40, Amsterdam

Directed by Michael Fox Kennedy with Jerry Levy as Karl Marx

Read more!

2009-06-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Spinoza mon amour

Some time ago on this blog I wrote I wanted to develop some notes on what I feel are Amsterdam's most intriguing aspects. Among them I listed Spinoza - as this happens to be the city where Spinoza was born in 1632. Quite fortunately a 'spinozian festival' was held until very recently, thus providing the possibility to go back to the previous inspiration and to collect some materials that I share here. First of all, the Spinoza Car (see below):

This is truly a piece of work! The car is completely covered in glasses with the stamp of Spinoza's face, different editions of Spinoza's work and, above all, tributes of love and passionate messages addressed to Spinoza's images.

The kitsch-effect is consciously and tenaciously pursued so the viewer sees the ironic and almost surreal intent. But more than this, I think the excessive-love messages that frame the smiley-sweety face of Spinoza especially infuse a feeling of mirth, which Old Spinoza, defender of the virtue of happiness, not as a reward, would certainly like. In one of the most insightful passages I have ever read, Spinoza defined "true happiness" as "the enjoyment of what is good, not in the pride that" somebody "alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of others."

He who thinks himself the more blessed because he is enjoying benefits which others are not, or because he is more blessed or more fortunate than his fellows, is ignorant of true happiness and blessedness, and the joy which he feels is either childish or envious and malicious. For instance, a man's true happiness consists only in wisdom, and the knowledge of the truth, not at all in the fact that he is wiser than others, or that others lack such knowledge: such considerations do not increase his wisdom or true happiness. Whoever, therefore, rejoices for such reasons, rejoices in another's misfortune, and is, so far, malicious and bad, knowing neither true happiness nor the peace of the true life. (from the Theologico-Political Treatise).

Spinozian spirit is also fulfilled in one of the funniest installations presented in the Spinoza Exhibition. Here artist Thomas Hirschhorn explains how to dance Spinoza. Like lambada, or tango or salsa, spinoza is a love couple-dance, fully faithful to Spinoza's idea that "love is pleasure" that "may be excessive"... (Book IV, Prop XLIV, Ethics).

One of the greatest moments of the Spinoza Festival, however, was the participation of Toni Negri, the author - among other things - of a book that is considered to be one of the most insightful ever written on Spinoza, i.e. The Savage Anomaly. With his renowned passionate style, Negri presents the "revolutionary force of Spinozian utopia" as follows:

The festival was organised in South-east Amsterdam, finally outside the white-glacé fakely peaceful centre of the city ... I think Spinoza would have felt at home.

The festival ends today but the website with all materials and contacts will be available till mid july (here). Enjoy!

2009-06-27T03:02:00.001-07:00

Michael Jackson R.I.P.

This is probably my favourite video, both musically and content-wise (Lyrics here) (info on this controversial clip here). I like remembering him this way.

2009-06-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN?

Slavoj Zizek

I have just received this article apparently written by Zizek. Rumors say that it was turned down by the NY Times.

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down… In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now? There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq. Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% - can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough - they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left. Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests. The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.

And, last but not least, what this means is that there is a genuine liberating potential in Islam – to find a “good” Islam, one doesn’t have to go back to the 10th century, we have it right here, in front of our eyes.

The future is uncertain – in all probability, those in power will contain the popular explosion, and the cat will not fall into the precipice, but regain ground. However, it will no longer be the same regime, but just one corrupted authoritarian rule among others. Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

2009-06-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

Spinozists united:

Toni Negri in Amsterdam on Friday

Great festival in Amsterdam (programme here) until the 28th of June as part of the project "Open Source Amsterdam". In the next days:

- Wednesday 24th June - 15h

Sebastian Egenhofer / "Hercules Segers: A Spinozian view"

- Friday 26th June - 15h

Toni Negri / "Politiques de l'immanence, politiques de la transcendence: l'enseignement de Spinoza"

- And every day at 17h30:

Lecture by Marcus Steinweg

2009-06-22T04:56:00.001-07:00

R.I.P. Giovanni Arrighi

Symposium on Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing (2008) - Here!

2009-06-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

Invertebrate left... but with a nice bum!

New! Free! Mini! Generous! Essential! Surprising! These and other adjectives surround the young female bum portrayed in the image above, but they are not referring to it, no no, do not fall into the trap! The trick is bold and refined, it uses the noble art of rhetorical allegory to alert the reader that the referent is not in the foreground but in the pocket, not on the surface of immediate, uncouth mental connections but in the depth of the audacious association between sensuous femininity and ... an old, communist newspaper. The epithets, indeed, are referring to "L'Unità" (see the pocket), the journal founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 and, from then onwards, official mouthpiece of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and, after its end, of its inheritors.

In its incomparable synthesis, the Unità-bum tells us of two major historical defeats: 1) the defeat of the feminist movement (unable to become 'senso-comune') reduced to a bum, as if there was the need to sell even the ex-communist newspaper by means of women's bodies (is there anybody in Italy who does not use boobs and bums to sell a commodity?) 2) and the defeat of the left, swept away from the parliament and, more importantly and despairingly, from the streets and the civil society.

In his article (here), Anderson claims that the snobbish intellectual posturing of the PCI apparatus and intelligentsia towards popular culture, increasingly saturated "with a tidal wave of the crassest idiocies and fantasies" diffused by Berlusconi's mediatic counter-revolution, had been one of the reasons for the left's progressive defeats ... Is the Unità retreating to Berlusconi's bum-marketing style in order to obtain the lost connection? Well, if this is the opinion l'Unità has of popular culture and if Berlusconi's consent is 'threatened' using the same schlock-lobomotising tools, we cannot really hope for a change anytime soon...

2009-03-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

La retorica dell’integrazione

Di seguito, la prima parte di un testo che ho scritto per il secondo numero dei Quaderni Viola, Alegre, 2009.

È dall’epoca dell’approvazione della legge Turco/Napolitano (Legge n. 40, 1998) – primo testo organico in Italia in materia di immigrazione – che il termine “integrazione” ha iniziato ad essere impiegato estesamente, sia nel senso comune, che nel dibattito accademico. Con la legge Turco-Napolitano, infatti, l’Italia dismetteva i panni di paese di emigrazione ed entrava ufficialmente nel novero dei paesi di immigrazione; toccava, pertanto, mostrare una certa apprensione per l’inserimento sociale e culturale degli immigrati (e non solo per la resistenza delle loro braccia nella raccolte stagionali e nell’arte della lavatura dei piatti) ed elaborare delle politiche volte, appunto, alla loro “integrazione”. Ma come fare?

Nell’era Prodiana l’illuminazione non poteva che venire dall’Europa. Fu così che l’allora Governò Prodi istituì una commissione ad hoc, la imbottì di esperti, la incaricò di spiegarci cosa dovessimo intendere per integrazione e di elaborare delle strategie politiche per la sua implementazione. La commissione fece questo, e ancora di più: non solo produsse (meritoriamente) il primo rapporto approfondito sullo stato dell’arte dell’immigrazione in Italia, ma riuscì anche nell’impresa (meno meritoria) di dimostrare che l’integrazione è donna, o meglio il suo cliché, ossia “retorica dei buoni sentimenti”. A presiedere la commissione, non a caso, fu chiamata una donna, la sociologa Giovanna Zincone, la quale partorì un concetto di integrazione di sesso femminile: essendo il ruolo atteso della donna, in famiglia come in politica, quello di favorire il dialogo e portare la pace, l’integrazione non poteva che essere pacifica, anzi meglio, “ragionevole”. Questa doveva essere promossa dal “buon governo” e andava intesa come “buona vita”, “interazione positiva” e “pacifica convivenza” (cfr. Zincone, 2001).

La terminologia era caramellosa e impacciato il suo equilibrismo incerto tra assimilazionismo e pluralismo. Tuttavia, nella sua vita breve e nel suo impatto tutt’altro che limitato (almeno nel dibattito accademico), la nozione di “integrazione ragionevole” schivò la questione dei diritti e delle condizioni materiali di vita della popolazione immigrata e contribuì a mantenere il dibattito sull’integrazione in termini puramente retorici, culturalisti e femminei. In un dibattito siffatto, come vedremo nel prosieguo del testo, le donne immigrate infatti hanno assunto una funzione centrale e il destino dell’integrazione sembra essere letteralmente nelle loro mani.

Aggiungi un posto a tavola...che c’è una serva in più.

Per comprendere fino in fondo la retorica dell’integrazione risulterà utile condurne la pars destruens attraverso il rivelamento della logica sessista e razzista implicita nella declinazione femminile del concetto di integrazione.

Nella sua accezione di senso comune il termine integrazione designa un inserimento sociale riuscito, in termini sia economici che culturali. Le statistiche sull’immigrazione in Italia mostrano tassi di attività piuttosto elevati nel caso delle donne immigrate e buoni tassi di occupazione. Inoltre, a differenza dell’occupazione che coinvolge gli uomini immigrati, percepita in termini di minaccia economica e di concorrenza sul mercato del lavoro, l’occupazione femminile viene avvertita diversamente. Le immigrate, infatti, non attentano al lavoro delle donne ‘native’, al contrario: lo rendono possibile. Esse risultano, perciò, più integrate dei compagni maschi – almeno in termini socio-economici – e sono le benvenute nell’arena lavorativa. La ragione è presto detta. Come è noto, la stragrande maggioranza delle donne immigrate in Italia lavora come domestica e/o badante. L’aumento dei tassi di attività e di occupazione delle donne italiane, infatti, per quanto contenuto non ha condotto ad un aumento dei servizi pubblici di cura (per bambini e anziani) ma alla rinuncia alla maternità o al ricorso ai servizi offerti dalle donne straniere da parte delle donne italiane.

In questo modo le donne immigrate non hanno fatto altro che sostituire le italiane nel loro ruolo di cura, a partire dal presupposto che quest’ultimo costituisca una vocazione tipicamente femminile. Il paradosso dell’integrazione declinata secondo il genere, pertanto, consiste nel fatto che il suo successo è una sconfitta per le donne. L’astrazione vuota dell’integrazione come capacità economica e scambio culturale, quando riempita del suo contenuto concreto si rivela essere la realtà della cristallizzazione dei ruoli tra i sessi, della monotonia del lavoro recluso e non qualificato, dello sfruttamento e dello svilimento della donna in quanto serva di un altro colore. La condizione della donna immigrata che si suppone “integrata”, così, riflette la condizione di subalternità della donna in generale.

2009-02-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

Dutch mysteries...

Walking around Amsterdam to buy a printer today I realised how little I understand of Dutch culture and people. Coming from an under-developed (according to Western criteria) European country more than an year ago, the first thing that strucked me was the 'apparent' efficiency of the city. Trams are on time, car drivers are disciplined, people are not too loud, banks and public services are not too crowded. Excitement! Moreover, the city is truly beautiful. Its little houses, stuck one to the other to the level of exploding, appear as chocolate cakes decorated with cream on top (my sister described them like this). Parks, green spaces, bikes and ducks.

The centre of Amsterdam is really gorgeous and I have been lucky enough to live always there.
Yet, things start appearing less clear when one goes to the supermarket (Albert Heijn - the only brand in town, a sort of huge omnivorous octopus that has bought really every corner) or to the local 'soaps shop' (Kruidvaat).

Everything appears immediately less 'rational' than one could expect. The criterion that organises the allocation of commodities on the shelves of these places is still unclear to me, so you find biscuits and toilet paper in the same sector; though some biscuits have certainly a laxative effect to justify this choice. The pharmacy (apotheek) is also a mystery to me. Whenever you go there you have the strange experience of waiting at least 45 minutes while watching 20 people working on the back room and only one in the cash desk. I used to think that people get days off when they need an aspirin, but then I realised that most common medicins here can be found in a normal shop, near the vegetables and the kitchen cleaning sponges.
After these startling experiences I have decided to track records of them and to investigate further into the main bizarre aspects of Legoland (having lived for years in the monumental Rome, Amsterdam's buildings and monuments appear to me like cute constructions made of Lego).

So, here are the aspects:

1) Water (quite a dominant element in the landscape);

2) Food (interesting subject: like the English one, Dutch food is not famous for being great but it also seems to play a less important role in life);

3) Spinoza (this is the city of Spinoza!!! Yet, I cannot see signs of him left...)

4) Calvinism (I started to understand truly Max Weber when I came here)

5) Money (more important than food)

6) Politics (this is the city where Anton Pannekoek taught!!!! No traces left of him, whatsoever!!)

7) Tolerance (have a trip with the metro and you start doubting of it...)

And let's see what else develops out of it.

2009-02-13T03:06:00.000-08:00

Cornel West and Mos Def - Great and Hilarious!!

2009-02-08T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Heimat of bio-power

I guess you follow a bit what happens in Italy at the moment. The baleful dwarf (alias Berlusconi) is not satisfied to have finally shown the farcical security of the Rechtsstaat, to have brought into light the smarmy level of decadence of more than a half of the Italian people and the criminal hypocrisy of Vatican land. These are quite important achievements, but he is not happy yet. What the dwarf seems to desire more than anything is the Foucaldian nightmare of bio-power. A law has just been made according to which only the Pope and the State (i.e. Berlusconi-Bonaparte) have the right to decide over the life and death of a young woman, who is in a vegetative state since 1992 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/08/eluana-englaro-assisted-suicide). Yet, this is not the bottom line. In the same week, the Italian Senate approved a law that obliges doctors to denounce “illegal” migrants if they ask for medical help. In other words, migrants have the choice either to die on the streets or in a jail.

The feeling of nausea is reaching unbearable levels. It is hard to comment on these events with a lucid analysis and without a profound distrust in humankind.
However, it is important to understand and bear in mind how strongly these epiphenomena are related to the present historical conjuncture, on the one hand, and to the intrinsic violence of capitalism on the other.
Foucault grasped well the ‘conjunctural’ level when, in The History of Sexuality, he described Biopower as the power over other bodies, “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations”. In Foucault’s account, the level of biopower is a step of sophistication of State power under the dominance of the capitalist mode of production (as I understand it).
Now, this level of ‘institutional’ violence over unarmed bodies, the constituent cruelty of capital, reminds me of what Marx writes at the very end of the second part of Capital Volume one. These words have always rumbled in my head as the most lucid portrayal of violence over a body, as the most tragic visual representation of De profundis.

“When we leave the sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which provides the “Free-trader vulgaris” with his views, his concepts and the standard by which he judges the society of capital and wage-labour, a certain change takes place, or so it appears, in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing to expect but — a tanning” (p. 280).

Capitalist society, in the end, is a tannery!!

Neither "ad hoc" nor "post factum"...

2009-01-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

"What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of studying the actual laws of the molecular changes in the composition and decomposition of matter, and on that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to regulate the composition and decomposition of matter by means of the “eternal ideas,” of “naturalité” and “affinité”? Do we really know any more about “usury,” when we say it contradicts “justice éternelle,” équité éternelle “mutualité éternelle,” and other vérités éternelles than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incompatible with “grâce éternelle,” “foi éternelle,” and “la volonté éternelle de Dieu”?" Kar Marx, Capital, Vol. I
I find this sentence quite spectacular, given the mainstream propaganda according to which Marx provided ad hoc explanations... sort of way to remind the Amsterdam Capital Reading Group - (sara@iire.org), tchuss

http://www.kcloccupation.blogspot.com/

2009-01-23T16:15:00.000-08:00

Solidarity with the student occupations pro-Gaza of British universities!!!

Open letter to the Italian Jews

2009-01-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

Franco Fortini was one of the leading intellectuals in Post-war Italy. He was a poet, a critic, a translator, a communist activist and a Jew. He translated and shared the view of Bertolt Brecht’s work. In the English speaking world Fortini is known for his poem on Communism (New Left Review, I/38, 1966) and the recent work of Thomas E. Peterson (1997, University Press of Florida. 1997).
This letter was first published in the Italian communist newspaper “Il Manifesto” on the 24th of May 1989. “Il Manifesto”, meritoriously, re-published it yesterday (18th January 2009). Fortini’s letter has not lost anything of its topicality. The reason why il Manifesto republished it is that, while Israel massacres hundreds of Palestinians, Italian representatives of the Jewish community in Rome protest against the huge demonstration that took place on Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

Franco Fortini

Every day we are informed of the Israeli repression against the Palestinian population. And every day we are more distracted by its significance, as is wanted by those who lead it. Every day there grows a siege that together with the lives, culture, houses, plantations and memory of that people – at the same time – destroys or deforms the honour of Israel. In a space which is as big as one of our regions, there corresponds to the hundreds of people killed, thousands of people injured, dozens of thousands of people imprisoned – and to the daily exploitation of Palestinian labour-force, seventy or one hundred thousand of people - dozens of thousands of young Israeli soldiers and settlers who all their life, night after day, with their wives, children ad friends, will have to repress what they did or what they allowed to be done.
Moreover, they will be induced to justify it. And they could do it only in the name of some Realpolitik cynicism and of some mystical or national delirium, different from those that have covered Europe with ossuaries and monuments only because it is displayed in the places of everyday life and with the evident complicity of many. For every Palestinian women who was arrested, boy who was killed or father who was hit and humiliated, there is a woman, a boy, a father of Israel who will have to say that they did not know; or, as they already do, they will have to ask, with an abominable wish, that the blood fall on their descendents. They already eat and drink polluted food and pretend that they do not know it. In the books of their and our prophets there are written words that it is not my task to recall.
This siege can win. Even Titus’s legions won. When the stones will fall from the hands of the Palestinians and – as the “eagles” of Israel wish – those Palestinians who are against the politics of detente of the PLO, caught between provocation and desperation, take up weapons, then the super-military power of Israel will be deployed to the applause of a part of international public opinion and the harmless silence of hate of the other, far larger side. The people of memory should not disregard other peoples to the extent of believing them incapable of remembering forever.
The Jews of the Diaspora know and feel that a new and bestial anti-Semitism has grown and keeps on increasing day after day among those who stupidly feel to be allowed to deride the feelings of equality and the persuasions of fraternity by the violence of Israeli politics (together with the powerful ideological machine of its propaganda, amplified by the Diaspora). For the new anti-Semites, the Jews of the Diaspora are nothing but agents of the Israeli State. And this is also the result of twenty years of Israeli politics. The usage that the latter has made of the Diaspora has overturned, at least in Italy, the relationship between supporters and adversaries of such a politics, in comparison with 1967. They believed they were more protected but instead they are more exposed to distrust and hostility. Thus, we honour those who resist with reason and continue to distinguish between Israeli politics and Judaism.
It must be said that the tradition of the Italian left (inconsiderately accused of encouraging racist feelings by some philo-Israelis) is precisely that tradition that has helped more to maintain that distinction during these years. There are many who are able to make a distinction, and I am amongst them. Yet, every day I ask myself more and more: how is so much silence or not a few equivocal words possible between the Italian Jews and the friends of Italian Jews? Those who, Jews or friends of Jews - many or a few, famous or not, it does not matter – believe that consciousness and truth are more important than faithfulness and tradition; even more, that the latter putrefy without the former – then, they should speak as long as there is time, they should speak clearly, choose a side, bring a sign. They should have the courage to wet their doorpost with Palestinian blood, hoping that the Angel doesn’t recognise it in the night; or instead they should find the strength to refuse complicity with those who wet the earth everyday with it, an earth that screams against them.
They should not lie to themselves, as they do, by equating the massacres of terrorism to those of an organised and disciplined army. Their children will know and will judge it. And if I was asked with what right and in the name of what mandate I allow myself to ask these questions, I won’t respond that I do it in order to give an account of my own existence or of the name of my father and of his jewish line of descent. Because I believe that the significance and value of human beings lies in what they make of themselves starting from their genetic and historical code and not in what they have received as fate with it. […] I write these words in a very different way from many recent, and improvised, friends of the Jews and of Judaism. I write these words at an extreme point of discouragement and hope, because I am convinced that the conflict between Israel and Palestine only seems, but is not, comparable to those many conflicts for national independence and freedom that our century knows all too well.
It seems that Israel is and acts today as a nation or as the armed limb of a nation, as France acted in Algeria, the US in Vietnam or the URSS in Hungary or in Afghanistan. Yet, as France was in the end – for our interior theatre – the people of Valmy and the Americans those of 1775, and the Soviets those of 1917, the Jews, before being soldiers of Sharon, were the bearers of a part of our holy vases, an anguished and ardent part of our intelligence, of our words and will. I can’t remember who is the Zionist who wished the condition of exceptionality to disappear and that the State of Israel could have its tithes and its prostitutes like any other state. Now it has them and that’s its business. But its Book has always been our Book as well and thus the countless books, alive and dead, that have come out of it.
The distinction between Judaism and the state of Israel, which until yesterday seemed to be a precious acquisition against fanaticism, has been questioned precisely thanks to the assent or silence of the Diaspora. And it allowed us to see better why it is not possible to consider what happens at the doors of Jerusalem as something that has only to do with political-military conflicts and the struggle of interests and power. At least in some part, this conflict puts at risk something that it is inside us. For each house that the Israelis destroy, every life that they kill daily and every day of school that the youth of Palestine misses because of them, a part of the immense deposit of truth and wisdom is lost that, in and for the culture of the West, has been accumulated by the generations of the Diaspora, from the glorious or infamous misfortune of ghettos and through the cruelty of ancient and recent persecutions.
A great Jewish Christian woman, Simone Weil, recalled that the sword hurts from two sides. Even from more than two, I dare to add. Every day of war against the Palestinians, namely of false consciousness for the Israelis, makes a building disappear or humiliates it, a memory, a parchment, a feeling, a line, moulding of our life and homeland. A poet spoke of the postscript and of its gaze “that condemns an entire people around a scaffold”: here, around the rooves of Gaza and Transjordan every day Israel risks a condemnation far worse than those of the UN, a trial that will be opened, but inside Israel, in itself […]. Our life is not only diminished by the blood and desperation of the Palestinians; it is, I repeat, diminished by the dissipation that Israel has made of a common treasure.
Over there, there is not a university or research institute, library or museum, auditorium or place of study and prayer that can compensate the accumulation of bad consciousness and repressed guilt that the praxis of oppression induces in the life and education of the Israelis. Even in the life of the Jews of the Diaspora and their friends. I am one of them. If every word of them takes a cartridge away from the submachine gun of the soldiers of Tsahal, it takes away another one also from those, now hidden, of the Palestinians.
So speak!

Translated into Italish by Mappelope; revised into English by Philommappus

http://www.alternativenews.org/component/option,com_news_portal/Itemid,471/

2009-01-18T04:26:00.000-08:00

The Crisis in Gaza: An Interview with Gilbert Achcar

2009-01-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Daniel Finn: What do you think are the chief goals of Israeli strategy at present in their assault on the Gaza strip?

Gilbert Achcar: Well that’s a complicated question actually, because there are different levels involved. Seen through a wide angle, it is part of an ongoing struggle between Israel on the one hand and both Hamas and Hezbollah on the other, a struggle which reached a previous peak in 2006, when during the summer Israel was simultaneously waging a war against Gaza and another one, a major onslaught, on Lebanon. That was related to the global strategy of the Bush administration in its confrontation with Iran, with the conception prevailing in Washington that Hamas and Hezbollah are tools of the Iranian state and therefore part of an alliance of forces that should be smashed if ever US hegemony in the region as well as Israeli security is to be stabilized. It is therefore a further stage in the same ongoing war that has been unfolding for the last few years.

Now if we narrow the focus, the fact that this has been launched at this very moment, starting on the 27 of December, is of course related to shorter term political considerations: on the one hand, the Bush Administration will soon be out of the scene and although the Israeli government have no real reason to fear a major change in US policy in the Middle East, if we judge from all the signs given by the Obama team, there remains the prospect that the new Administration will get into talks with Iran, as Obama said he would during the electoral campaign. In that case, US backing for a tough stance in the confrontation with Iran might be diluted. Taking that into consideration, one reason why the campaign is being launched right now is in order to spare the next administration the need to cope from the beginning with a major crisis in the Middle East, so there was relief in the Obama team that this is done under Bush.

The problem is that the operation went on much longer than expected, as is now a recurrent pattern in Israel’s aggressions: bygone indeed are the days of the ‘Six-Day War’. Ideally for the Israeli government-and there were a lot of comments about this possibility some months ago-there should have been a strike against Iran itself before the Bush administration left the scene. However, that became impossible for a number of reasons related to the deep trouble in which the Bush administration finds itself: not only the general political weakness of a lame-duck president, but also the economic crisis, which makes any kind of military confrontation with Iran at this point something that would certainly be harmful to the interest of the global economy [this interview was conducted before the revelation by The New York Times of the rejection by the Bush administration of a recent request by Israel of a green light for airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities]. Instead of these strikes against Iran that it was wishing for, Israel is attacking Hamas which it sees as a proxy for Iran.

And then there are even narrower perspectives involved which are the electoral considerations in Israel. As you know, new Israeli elections are to be held soon, and parties represented in the Israeli coalition government-Olmert and Livni’s Kadima on the one hand and Ehud Barak’s Labour party on the other-are facing strong competition from Likud, the far right wing of the mainstream Zionist scene in Israel. In a sense this onslaught on Gaza is a way to preempt the outbidding on which Netanyahu would certainly have built his electoral campaign. So if you put all these issues into consideration you get an overdetermination, i.e. a multiplicity of reasons for this operation to be launched right now. All the rest, the rockets launched by Hamas and all that, are just pretexts, in the same way that the abduction of 2 soldiers by Hezbollah in July 2006 was but a pretext used by Israel to launch a premeditated full-scale aggression.

Daniel Finn: The last major round of confrontation between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah in 2006 ended in a major setback for the Israeli state and all kinds of recriminations among the political and military elites. Do you think Israel now has a realistic chance of overturning that setback and talking up a victory, or does it face another defeat?

Gilbert Achcar: Well, here lies the reason why the situation is extremely dangerous and worrying right now. Think about it: this onslaught has started on the 27th of Dec so that means we are some 2 weeks into the fighting and you have already a heavier death toll in absolute numbers than what you had in Lebanon after the first two weeks of intensive bombing. And if you take it in relative numbers, knowing that the Lebanese population is close to 3 times larger than the population of Gaza, then it is much, much more. What is very worrying and dangerous about the present situation is precisely that, because of the previous fiasco in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Israel cannot afford another fiasco of the same kind. They cannot afford a new one, for both strategic reasons and opportunistic or short-term ones, small fry political calculations, that is.

On the one hand the Israeli state stands to lose a lot of its so-called military credibility if it faces a new fiasco, all the more so that the enemy they are facing this time, i.e. Hamas in Gaza, is certainly much weaker than what Hezbollah is and was in Lebanon. Hezbollah is certainly stronger in the Lebanese Shiite community than Hamas is in Gaza where you have a bitter contest between Hamas and the PA/Fatah, and you have a few other groups competing for the same constituency. Beyond that, of course, for very obvious reasons, Hezbollah had many more weapons than Hamas has in Gaza, which is a small strip of land surrounded from all sides and under heavy surveillance. They can smuggle some light weapons, not major weapons into Gaza whereas in Lebanon, Hezbollah could build up an important arsenal - all the more easily that it was done with Syria’s backing.

So if Israel gets into a second fiasco even against Hamas which is quite weaker than Hezbollah, then this will be seen necessarily as a major disaster, worse than the 2006 one for Israel. Not to mention, and this is the second point, the petty consideration. If the ruling coalition in Israel comes out from the present war with another fiasco, its parties won’t even need to go to elections. Netanyahu would stand to smash them completely and they know that. So they cannot afford a fiasco for these two reasons combined and this is what makes the situation very, very worrying. They might develop the syndrome of the wounded beast, getting more ferocious than they are already. The level of Israeli atrocity is increasing war after war. The 33-Day War in 2006 was already the most brutal aggression in the long history of Israeli wars, the most brutal utilization of power by Israel, carpet-bombing whole regions of Lebanon, civilian areas.

The pretext then as now is that fighters are hiding among the population. This is the most hypocritical argument: what do they want them to do, to regroup in some wasteland with signposts saying ‘Bomb us here’? This is preposterous. The truth is that Israel is trying to crush mass political parties, which are armed, of course, but they have to be armed because they are permanently under threat. These are armed popular movements. Most of their armed members are not professional fighters living in barracks. When you take all these aspects of the problem into consideration, there are very, very serious grounds for the mounting, increasing worries that are expressed by international humanitarian agencies.

A lot of people now sense that the population of Gaza is really under threat of massive extermination. This is not the usual kind of exaggeration, it is a sober assessment when you face such a level of violence and brutality, day after day, with more and more so-called accidents in which concentrations of civilians are targeted with mass-murder as a result. The only alternative to a fiasco for Israel is to push forward its ground offensive in the populated areas. The worst-case scenario becomes therefore quite possible, and that would mean thousands and thousands of people killed, not to mention the maimed and wounded, and that is absolutely frightening.

Daniel Finn: If Hamas is going to be seen as a victor even a partial victor coming out of this latest confrontation with Israel, what does it have to do? Is it enough for Hamas to survive? Do they just have to keep standing?

Gilbert Achcar: If Hamas manages to come out of this war standing up, that is. The fact is that due to the geographical conditions, they have already suffered a certainly higher proportional rate of casualties in their ranks than Hezbollah did in 2006. The day when Israeli bombing started, the very first day, if you remember, it targeted buildings of the Hamas security force, and the death toll was immediately very heavy. But if at the level of leadership and basic structure they manage to come out preserving more or less their existence without giving any major concession or, let’s say, no major concession that is not reciprocated like, ‘We stop firing rockets but we get guarantees that you, Israel, stop shooting at us and stop embargoing us, strangulating us’-if they come out of this war with a deal of this kind, this would mean an Israeli fiasco and this would be seen for them as a political victory in the same way that Hezbollah achieved one in 2006.

But right now at the time we are speaking, this is purely hypothetical because we cannot predict how things will evolve. What is actually clear is that at the regional level, if not at the world level, this Israeli onslaught has increased tremendously the popularity of Hamas. We cannot take it for granted, however, that the same applies to the Palestinians in Gaza precisely because of this competition between Hamas and Fatah. On this there are mixed reports. Of course, Fatah supporters will say ‘Hamas have put us in this terrible situation, we are suffering because of them; of course Israel is the first to blame, but…’, this same ‘but’ that we have heard from some Arab regimes. This is what the Egyptian government, which is very obviously in collusion with this Israeli onslaught, expressed from the very start, and that is what we heard here and there from Arab allies of the United States, the same rhetoric we heard in 2006, the same blame that was put on Hezbollah for Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon. The final political outcome for Hamas remains to be seen. It is, I think, too early now to make any assessment for what it will be in the long run or even in the medium term. For the time being, as I said, the only certain thing is for Hamas at the regional level an increasing popularity, which is the almost automatic outcome that you get every time Israel singles out an Arab target and starts striking at it. The target becomes automatically popular because of the hatred for Israel and its permanent aggression in the region: any victim of Israel, and especially any force resisting Israel, is sure of achieving popularity in the region.

Daniel Finn: There has been talk over the last week of a certain amount of discontent among a younger generation of Fatah. There have been reports that Marwan Barghouti has sent messages from his prison cell critical of the statements made by Mahmoud Abbas. Do you think that is likely to take on any substantial form with the current leadership of Fatah being undermined; do you think there’s any chance of the Fatah leadership changing course?

Gilbert Achcar: Barghouti is in a sense a reserve card for Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas has already burnt his cards to a great degree. He doesn’t have any credibility anymore, but appears as a servile man, a secondary pawn in this regional game. He is not popular even within Fatah, so it is clear that Fatah will be in need of another leading figure immediately or very soon, and Barghouti would be an alternative. But since he is in jail, his fate much depends on Israel-and on Washington, to be sure. Now, to know how Barghouti would behave if ever he was liberated from jail is hard to tell. The main problem is what kind of relation he would have with the US and their number one Palestinian stooge Muhammad Dahlan. Dahlan and Barghouti were in electoral alliance in the January 2006 election. Does it mean that they will maintain a collaboration and form a cohesive dominant team in the post-Abbas Fatah, or will they be in competition? It remains to be seen.

Daniel Finn: As you said the Egyptian regime in particular and to a greater or lesser extent also all of the pro-US Arab regimes, have been seen as complicit with Israel particularly the Mubarak government. If there is further escalation, if Israel behaves, as you described it, like a wounded animal, using more and more brutal methods against the Palestinians living in Gaza, how difficult is it going to prove for the Egyptian government to be able to contain anger among its own people, which already seems to be very substantial.

Gilbert Achcar: Well, they are not only seen as complicit. They are actually complicit with Israel: They were told about the onslaught before it started and this was reported in the press. The day the onslaught started, the Arabic daily published in London, Al-Quds al-Arabi, ran an article by their correspondent in the West Bank explaining that Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who had been in Cairo the day before, had told the Egyptian authorities that Israel was going to launch an operation against Hamas. General Suleiman, the head of Egyptian intelligence, asked her that Israel target specifically Hamas fighters and take care to spare civilians. Well on the same day the article came out the onslaught started, and it started by targeting police barracks in Gaza. So on the face of it, it was an onslaught sparing civilians and specifically targeting armed forces. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were told that this would happen and they did not even tell Hamas, which was taken by surprise when the onslaught started, hence the initial heavy death toll in the ranks of its armed forces.

The Egyptian government and other pro-US Arab regimes wish very much for a weakened Hamas. They are not for wiping out Hamas, as they know that it would entail a huge and traumatizing human cost, if it were possible at all. They would like a weakened Hamas that would have no choice then but to sever its links with Iran and be obliged to depend on them for its survival: This is what they wish. They want a tamed Hamas and therefore look for Israel to do the taming. So Israel has to teach Hamas a lesson and then Egypt and, behind Egypt, the Saudis and the Jordanians will say to Hamas: ‘Look, you have no other choice but to cooperate with us; either you join the game under our conditions and sever all links with Iran and Syria, or you will have to face Israel alone and the possibility that it crushes you’.

Now if the Israeli operation backfires, they will turn coats immediately, of course, by pure opportunism. They will turn coats and start bashing Israel and multiply statements of condemnation, which don’t go very far. The Egyptian regime could upgrade its disagreement with Israel on the issue of international troops on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, which Cairo is rejecting and Israel is demanding. There are issues of this kind which could be blown out of proportion, allowing Cairo and fellow Arab regimes to pretend that they do confront Israel, but in a responsible way because they know Israeli military strength and care for the welfare of the people and therefore they are not like those crazy guys of Hamas, etc. This is their kind of hypocritical discourse.

Daniel Finn: Hezbollah organized some very substantial rallies in Lebanon in solidarity with Hamas and in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Is their support likely to remain political or is there any prospect, as some people have speculated in rather alarmist terms, that Hezbollah might open a second front against Israel on the Northern border.

Gilbert Achcar: I don’t think there is any prospect of this kind. It seems that the 3 rockets fired from Lebanon into Northern Israel yesterday were launched by one of the small Palestinian groups linked to Damascus. Hezbollah immediately denied any responsibility and the Lebanese coalition government where Hezbollah is represented condemned unanimously the firing of these rockets. The reality, at this stage, is that you have huge demonstrations and manifestations of political solidarity, but Hezbollah have also drawn the lesson from 2006. If you remember after the 33-Day War in 2006, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview that had he known that Israel would react the way it reacted to the abduction of its two soldiers on the 12th of July, Hezbollah wouldn’t have done it. He was meaning: ‘Had I known that they would destroy my country and kill 1500 of my people, I wouldn’t have given them a pretext for that’. This is what he meant, addressing human feelings.

At the same time we know that for Israel the abduction was but a pretext: had no soldiers been abducted Israel would have found-or created-whatever pretext in order to do what they tried to do at that time. Hezbollah accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which meant deployment not only of Lebanese troops to Southern Lebanon but also international forces, the UNIFIL, although this is not exactly in the interest of Hezbollah since these forces are heavily composed of NATO forces and are therefore a potential threat to Hezbollah itself. They had to accept them nevertheless because the alternative was to carry on with that horrible war and there were human limits on that level. Hezbollah cannot therefore take what would appear to be a completely irresponsible initiative in opening a second front-especially if it gets no green light for that from both Damascus and Tehran.

On the other hand, how can one expect the Lebanese to open a second front, when the Palestinians on the West Bank themselves, including Hamas, are not opening one: Hamas did not fire rockets from the West Bank. This by the way shows how serious an error was Hamas’s decision to seize full power in Gaza alone, thus separating the two Palestinian territories. Not that they should not have preempted the coup that Dahlan was busy organizing against them with US and Israeli backing, but they should not have wiped out all Fatah presence in PA institutions as they did. Whereas the strategic need is for the struggle to be built on a pan-regional level, the Palestinian scene itself has been fragmented into two segments. This is a pity.

These events also bring into discussion the whole issue of the strategic choices of weapons. Hamas is resisting heroically, no doubt, but we cannot compare the conditions in Lebanon with the conditions in Palestine. During the years when you had the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah was waging a war of attrition against the occupation, concentrating mainly in Lebanese areas against occupying forces. It even reached with the occupier in April 1996, through US mediation, an agreement which stipulated that: ‘Armed groups in Lebanon will not carry out attacks by Katyusha rockets or by any kind of weapon into Israel. Israel and those cooperating with it will not fire any kind of weapon at civilians or civilian targets in Lebanon. Beyond this, the two parties commit to ensuring that under no circumstances will civilians be the target of attack and that civilian populated areas and industrial and electrical installations will not be used as launching grounds for attacks’. The geographical nature of the Lebanese terrain and the presence of Israeli forces in Lebanese populated areas made a strategy of popular resistance possible, and this triumphed eventually with Israel evacuating Southern Lebanon in what looked like a debacle in 2000.

In the case of Gaza however, Israeli troops had withdrawn from the interior of the Strip and were encircling it. It doesn’t make much sense strategically to confront them militarily by launching rockets into populated areas in Southern Israel. The point is that from the point of view of the Palestinian occupied territories, if you drew up a balance-sheet of the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli state since 1967, it is very clear that the peak efficiency of the Palestinian struggle was reached in 1988 with the so-called Revolution of the Stones, the first Intifada, without firearms, suicide bombing, rockets, anything of the kind- just mass mobilization. This is what was most terrible for Israel: it put the Israelis in terrible political difficulty.

There is a lesson to be drawn here. These are matters of strategic understanding which not all forces in the region are sufficiently taking into consideration. There is today a lot of religious-inspired maximalism in the Palestinian struggle, as there was yesterday nationalist-inspired maximalism, but hardly any realistic assessment of the conditions in designing a strategy. Not a strategy of capitulation in the name of ‘realism’, of course, like that of the PLO-I mean the PA, Arafat and now Mahmoud Abbas-but a strategy of resistance and liberation, of popular resistance to impose on Israel whatever strategic goal is feasible in the present condition. And what remains possible in the prevailing objective conditions is to get Israel to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories, with the possibility for these territories to organize their own government democratically, to enjoy at least political sovereignty-which is not the case presently when you see how Israel and its Western backers reacted to Hamas’s electoral victory.

Beyond this immediate goal, the only sensible long term strategy has to involve a disruption in the Israeli society itself. It cannot be designed as purely from without Israeli society as have been both the PLO’s strategy and that of Hamas. There is no possibility to defeat Israel militarily from without: no possibility in conventional terms because its weaponry is much stronger than all surrounding Arab states, not to mention the fact that no part of this environment is willing to confront Israel-not only Egypt and Jordan, but Syria too. A ‘popular war’ for the liberation of the whole of historical Palestine does not make sense, because Israelis are the overwhelming majority in the pre-1967 territory. This is not like an occupying army, whether the US in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq, or Israel in Lebanon. Beyond that, everyone knows that Israel is a nuclear power since the late 1960s. Any thinking built on destroying the Israeli state from without is therefore irrational, in all senses of the term.

So aside from the requisites of internationalism, i.e. the kind of victory over the Zionist state that is desirable, there is no sensible strategy to defeat it anyway that does not take in account the necessity for a major disruption within Israeli society itself, with a major faction of Israeli society actively opposing the bellicose policies of the Israeli government and fighting for a lasting peaceful settlement based on justice, self-determination and an end to all kinds of discrimination. This is a major, hugely important prerequisite. That is why the Intifada in 1988 was so important: It created a real, deep crisis within Israeli society.

But what we are seeing now is a very high degree of cohesion and unanimity among the Israelis in the most ferocious, severe and brutal aggression of their history and that is something which bodes ill. In such conditions even when you get fiascos like the one in 2006, what do they produce? Not a break of major chunks of the Israeli population away from its government’s policy, let alone with Zionism, and their turning antiwar like major portions of the German population in the First World War or the US population during the Vietnam War, but what you get are rather further shifts to the right. That is why the whole picture is very gloomy in the region because, as I said, if this offensive ends in a fiasco, which is what we wish, we know in advance that this means Netanyahu, who is even worse than the present guys. Where all this will end is very difficult to see.

Daniel Finn: It does appear to be a very dangerous time for the Palestinians and perhaps as dangerous a time that it has faced since 1967. There’s talk in Israel media circles, in establishment circles, about handing over the Gaza strip to Egyptian authority, handing over populated areas of the West Bank to Jordan. And if that plan or something similar was put into practice, that would surely be fatal for Palestinian national aspirations for many years to come. What steps do you think could be taken by forces within Palestinian society to improve the prospects of the national movement?

Gilbert Achcar: I don’t really see things as you described them. First of all, the Jordanian monarchy itself would be rather scared today if it had to resume control of the West Bank. When this was a real prospect, it had already taken into account the rising militancy of the Palestinians, which is why the plans designed by previous King Hussein were federative in nature, that is, plans giving the West Bank, or the West Bank and Gaza, some degree of self-government. But the problem now is that the Jordanian monarchy cannot rely on the likes of Mahmoud Abbas to tame the Palestinian population. They know that they are facing a very radicalized population and that a new junction, a new merge between the Palestinians on the West Bank and Palestinians in Jordan, where they already constitute a majority of the population, would be very dangerous for the Jordanian monarchy. That’s the problem.

A renewed merge of the West bank with Jordan would definitely be in the interest of the Palestinians because the so-called independent state in the West Bank and Gaza does not make sense. This is where I fully agree with those who criticize the two-state solution: A so-called independent state does not make sense in the West Bank, if it is to be held hostage between Israel and Jordan as vice and hammer. Therefore the Palestinian people need the necessary breathing space and outlet provided by Jordan, not to mention the human and familial continuities between the two banks of the River Jordan. There is a natural historical unity of human community between the two banks and for that community to be able to exert self-determination you need a different kind of government in Jordan, a really democratic one and not one where the majority of the population are oppressed by a regime that stirs up ethnical divisions of a tribal nature, as is the case right now.

This is why I don’t think that the prospect of a renewed merging of the two banks is one that the Jordanian government is enthusiastic for, or even actively considering. In 1988 King Hussein officially severed the links between his kingdom and the West Bank: Why did he do so? Very simply because in 1988 you had the Intifada in full swing and he understood that the kind of West Bank that the monarchy ruled over since the deal that his father cut with the Zionists in 1948-the West Bank that his monarchy was able to rule more or less without major trouble until 1967 and that came under Israeli occupation afterwards-had become unmanageable in light of the Intifada. It became a hot potato: too dangerous to handle, and that is why he severed the links officially and abandoned any claims for the West Bank.

Daniel Finn: Do you think the Palestinian political stage is likely to remain the property of Hamas and Fatah for the foreseeable future, or do you think that some of the marginal forces at present have any chance of establishing themselves to a greater extent?

Gilbert Achcar: Well I don’t really see any such prospect presently. I mean, there are no real challengers for the time being to the two major actors, which are Fatah and Hamas. Other existing forces, especially the Palestinian left, lost credibility throughout the years, after having lost so many opportunities. So one cannot expect a sudden miraculous development, unless some new force arises, which we haven’t heard of yet and which would take some time to mature anyway. What you will have under the present conditions are further evolutions from within the two polar forces in Palestinian society-a struggle between different factions within Fatah, and the same for Hamas. Neither of these two forces, because they are big forces and have mass constituencies and memberships, is monolithic. Changes from within them are presently more likely than any unexpected rise of new forces from without.

Now that being said, I wish very strongly that a third force could rise, one which would be a progressive movement based on the left wing tradition that exists among the Palestinians and that is far from being negligible, even in Gaza, although it is not strong enough to be a counterweight to Fatah or Hamas. I wish very much that some Palestinian left-wing force could emerge as a real major player on the scene. But to be frank, for the time being, aside from hope or wish, this is not a realistic prospect, we don’t see any premise for that.

Gilbert Achcar lived in Lebanon for many years before moving to France, Germany and the UK, where he is now Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. He is the author and co-author of several books, among which The Clash of Barbarisms (2nd ed, 2006) and, with Noam Chomsky, Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy (2nd ed, 2008). His next book, The Arabs and the Holocaust, will come out in the autumn of 2009.