INTRODUZIONE AI DIBATTITI DELLA FIERA
(translations below)
VENERDI’
Sulla necessità di (ri)costruire: tra etica, affinità e fiducia
Presentazione del libro Le nichiliste russe. Collana: La vita non attende
“Il principio fondamentale del nichilismo propriamente detto, fu l’individualismo assoluto. Era la negazione, in nome della libertà individuale, di tutti gli obblighi imposti all’individuo dalla società, dalla famiglia, dalla religione. Il nichilismo fu una reazione appassionata e potente, non contro il dispotismo politico, ma contro il dispotismo morale, che pesa sopra la vita privata ed intima dell’individuo”.
da La Russia sotteranea, Syepniak S. (1882)
“Potete perseguitarci fin quando avrete la forza materiale, ma noi abbiamo la forza morale, la forza del progresso storico, la forza delle idee, e le idee non possono essere fermate dalle baionette. […] Se quella società ideale che noi sogniamo si potesse realizzare senza alcun rivolgimento violento, ne saremmo felici con tutta l’anima. Penso unicamente che in determinate circostanze la rivoluzione violenta è un male inevitabile…”.
Dichiarazione di Sof’ja Bardina al Processo dei Cinquanta (1877)
Nelle nostre intenzioni questo libro vuole essere il primo contributo di una ricerca più ampia, che ci ha appassionate, sulle vicende delle rivoluzionarie russe tra la seconda metà dell’Ottocentoe i primi del Novecento.
Affinché la memoria dei loro gesti non rimanga una mera opera celebrativa ma possa fornire validi spunti di riflessione per chi ancora oggi sceglie di agire, animata da una sincera idea di libertà. Sono storie di donne, centinaia, che hanno scelto tanto di non piegarsi al modello che la società aveva stabilito per loro – prima di signorine esemplari poi di mogli devote ed infine di madri diligenti – quanto di rifiutare il privilegio derivante dalla loro classe di appartenenza in nome di un’idea pagata in alcuni casi anche con la vita.
Non vogliamo dipingerle come eroine né martirizzarle ma solo restituire il posto che spetta loro.
***
Presentazione del libro
Ore 15.30 (Capannone)
Presentazione del libro Assopirsi, di Giacomo Cortesi
INTRODUCTION TO DEBATES
Bookfair presentation and confrontation based on the positioning text
Anarchists, publishing and gender violence
On the need to (re)build: between ethics, affinity and trust
The anarchist press is under attack. For a long time we have been witnessing repressive operations aimed at suppressing the spread of anarchist ideas, in Italy as elsewhere. We thought it necessary to organize a fair, to meet, to exchange perspectives, analyses, or simply to (re)get to know each other. In view of the unpleasant incidents of gender violence linked to some components of publishing projects, and the difficulty of finding satisfactory ways of responding to them, we would like to open a space for discussion on how to continue our tensions without falling into mere sides and a priori positions. We believe that the polarizations we have witnessed in recent years only distract attention from the problem that created them: gender-based violence in our circles and, by extension, in editorial contexts. We are not interested in creating more rifts and divisions, nor in arguing the merits of specific issues. We want to construct a moment of open and sincere confrontation, outside the chatter and gossip of the movement, to try to unravel those power dynamics that have recently made it difficult, if not impossible, to share the methods and tensions that still drive us to write and spread revolutionary ideas and practices today.
***
Presentation of
(Rocks, Papers, Scissors. Challenges from and against prisons and patriarchy)A series of voices of comrades who can contribute, from their personal interests and experiences, to the narrative of what women’s prison is concretely today, and what it means specifically for anarchist comrades. We want to create a tool of knowledge that can break the isolation and make us stronger and better prepared. We know that there are no recipes or absolute truths, so we think it is interesting to see the women’s prison through the eyes of the comrades. Because they have all resisted its coercive power in different ways, and that is where we understand what it is, not by describing it in itself, but by looking at it in the forms of its restructuring in the face of resistance.
The sharing of experiences around the prison universe is even more urgent when we think about women’s imprisonment. The prison imaginary to which we have had the easiest access – through valuable oral histories, autobiographies, analyses, and artistic forms – concerns its male side. But our experiences in total institutions have specificities that need to be named in order not to fall into a flattening around the male subject understood as universal. We also want to go beyond understanding the feminine as a mere specificity, as if it were a subcategory of the prison genre.
Rather, it seems to us that precisely because the patriarchal face of power is more evident in the women’s prison, understanding it can also shed light on this aspect of domination that also permeates the men’s prison and all of Western society.
It has not been easy for any of us to write these words; to sit at the table and think, to relive, to wonder what of all this experiential magma might be useful, what counterproductive, what too intimate, what too trivial. These texts are autobiographical and speak of moments in everyone’s life that are also difficult and painful; several of the texts we present do not hide this. For us, this is all the more reason to find inspiration in the words of those who have lived through fear and have been able to transform it: we find these stories doubly valid because they know how to not minimize the emotions that are difficult to live with, those that make us feel weak, and at the same time share them to remind us that we can be strong. The very fact that these comrades decided to write these texts for us means that even through the experience of prison, it is possible to find within ourselves the strength to face it with our own ideas and our love of freedom.
***
h15.30 (main hall)
Presentation of “Le nichiliste russe. Collana: La vita non attende” (The Russian Nihilists. Life Does Not Wait series)
“The basic principle of nihilism itself was absolute individualism. It was the denial, in the name of individual freedom, of all obligations imposed on the individual by society, family, religion. Nihilism was a passionate and powerful reaction, not against political despotism, but against the moral despotism that weighs on the private and intimate life of the individual.”
from The Underground Russia, Syepniak S. (1882)
“You can persecute us as long as you have material strength, but we have moral strength, the strength of historical progress, the strength of ideas, and ideas cannot be stopped by bayonets. […] If the ideal society we dream of could be realized without any violent upheaval, we would be happy with all our souls. I only think that under certain circumstances violent revolution is an inevitable evil….”
Statement by Sof’ja Bardina at the Trial of the Fifty (1877)
We intend this book to be the first contribution to a broader research, which we are passionately engaged in, on the events of Russian women revolutionaries between the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.
So that the memory of their deeds will not remain a mere celebratory work, but will provide valuable food for thought for those who still choose to act, animated by a sincere idea of freedom.
These are stories of women, hundreds of them, who chose as much not to bend to the model that society had established for them-first as exemplary young ladies then as devoted wives and finally as diligent mothers-as to reject the privilege arising from their class in the name of an idea paid in some cases even with their lives.
We do not wish to portray them as heroines or martyrs, but only to restore them to their rightful place.
***
h15.30 (Pub)
Presentation of No fuimos nosotros quienes asesinamos a Puig Antich, (It wasn’t us that murdered Puig Antich) by Prometeo Ediciones.
Fifty years ago, on March 2, the Francoist justice murdered Salvador Puig Antich with the hideous garrote in Barcelona’s “La Modelo” prison. He was twenty-six years old.
We insist that it is not enough to remember murdered comrades without giving them life, because they are the ones who make us continue to confront the system that killed them. It is no use paying tribute to them if they are deprived of their actions and thoughts, because they must go with living memory; it is no use parading Puig Antich like a saint every March, surrounded by the spectacle of a crowded procession. This book has been produced with the intention of making known the experiences made within the framework of the coordination of the Autonomous Revolutionary Internationalist Groups (GARI), and to delve into their intervention aimed at neutralizing the death sentences that the Francoist state had promised to carry out against Oriol Solé Sugranyes and Josep Lluís Pons Llobet, former militants of the Iberian Liberation Movement (MIL). The GARI waited for nothing and no one to fight for imprisoned comrades. Just as they mobilized, they dispersed, among the struggles, leaving behind a large number of actions in different countries (France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain) and many reflections on their actions and ideas.
***
H 18 (main hall)
Extractivism: Cornerstone of European Capitalism at War
Plenary discussion with the contribution of the editors of the anarchist journal Lahar
There are many points of view from which to approach the issue of extractivism, and they are all closely intertwined. Raw materials, as the name implies, are of primary importance for the material maintenance of the capitalist order, which is why the most macroscopic economic and power interests, the world geopolitical balances, are played out on them; it is for the supremacy over their supply that commercial and military wars are waged. For this reason, talking about resource extraction can be a good lens through which to read the epochal economic and socio-political transformations that are taking place, an elementary starting point from which we will try to analyze global phenomena which are difficult to grasp comprehensively.
The aspect on which the analytical part of this discussion will focus is the relationship between extractivism and war, a burning issue of current concern.
Indeed, in many ways, the European green-washed rhetoric about the need for post-pandemic economic revitalization through electrification and digitalization has now receded into the background, just as there is now no doubt that dominance over the control of rare earths is on the negotiating table of an armed peace.
The importance of the security of supply of energy and of those materials defined as critical and strategic (to use the precise warfare terminology) becomes even more crucial when the neoliberal dream of globalization and its “peace” of free markets has shattered, in a world that is rearming itself to redefine the division of spheres of influence and global alliances.
The second part of the discussion, after outlining an analysis of what is going on and why the extraction of certain goods has become more important than ever, will instead focus on how we, as anarchists, can position ourselves as obstacles to the advance of the so-called mega-machine. We will look at proposals, actions and campaigns of struggle that have recently taken place in different places and contexts, with the aim of putting them into dialogue with each other, with a view to a mutual support that is borderless and that helps us to orient our actions.
Fighting against extractivism may mean trying to block the first tangible cog of the exploitation of living beings, the destruction of ecosystems, technological control… It could mean undermining the pillar on which a world at war rests.
***
SUNDAY
From H 10
Breakout Postcards
“Workshop” on writing to prisoners, engraving and printing postcards with recycled materials and linocuts.
We think it is important to dedicate time and space during the fair to creating contributions and letters to send to prisoners.
The idea is to have an open station with materials available where everyone can take a moment to share discussions, thoughts and images to break through the isolation to which they would like to condemn us.
Writing is a subversive practice that is easily censored and whose rules are subject to the arbitrary control of the prison administration; therefore, we feel that we should take responsibility for spreading and collectivizing the ever-changing information about prison correspondence.
The need is to get every activity involving us beyond the bars, through letters as a weapon of solidarity and moments of evasion.
***
H 10.30 (main hall)
Deserting human domination, anthropocentrism and the commodification of the living: anti-speciesism is part of anarchic action and life
With these words, we would like to initiate a discussion, not a lecture, but rather possibly assembly-based, on why systemic species oppression has almost disappeared from the coordinates of total liberation, which we believe is the goal of anarchist tension.
Certainly, in our latitudes, the anti-speciesist struggle seems at least shelved, if not forgotten: we hope that this will be a moment to resume a necessary debate on anarcho-anti-speciesist theory and practice.
***
H11.30 (Pub)
Always by our side
A death in action is an eternal call to struggle
Conversation with comrades from the Solidarity Fund (Tameio) in Athens about Kyriakos Xymitiris, a comrade who lost his life in an apartment explosion in the Athens neighborhood of Ambelokipoi on the night of October 31st, 2024..
Updates on prisoners and on the case triggered by the incident.
Second part: stories and analysis with comrades from Greece on the current situation of social conflict in the Hellenic country following the Tempi 2023 train disaster: history of a massacre, the cover-up of investigations on institutional and corporate responsibility for the accident, and the rage erupting in the Greek squares.
***
H15.30 (main hall)
Transphobia and anti-gender campaigns: what are their origins?
What is the genealogy of the transphobic and anti-gender discourses that have become more and more widespread in the public debate in recent years, sometimes even appearing in circles close to our own, especially those that pursue a sectarian critique of technology while losing sight of the perspective of total liberation?
In this talk, we will try to trace the complex web that has led to the current “anti-gender” and transphobic discourses and policies, from their origins in a minority sector of radical feminists in the U.S., through the invectives of the Vatican and the colonizing policies of evangelical churches in Africa, to the cauldron of misinformation of post-Covid conspiracy circles and the current political agendas of the far right around the world. Without forgetting that a certain ecologism, if it does not equip itself with a critical analysis of concepts such as “life” or “nature”, has always carried within itself the danger of being confused with sacralizing and religious positions or, on the contrary, with biological and scientific positions.
***
h16.30 (Pub)
Presentation of the novel Assopirsi (Falling Asleep), by Giacomo Cortesi
Stories need to be told
Stories are the bark of imagination wrestling with the chimney that devours our dreams, the chimney of reality. A character who crosses the dream like the morning and the morning like the dreams, turning everything upside down, starting from a province, not only geographical but also existential, and ending up in a metropolis from Sironi’s paintings.
And why should an anarchist be interested in such a book? Why should an anarchist write such a novel?
Because for me, anarchy, beyond and before being a theory, is the impulse to climb over the sky, and words can become ladders to climb the imaginary and overcome it.
Yes, stories have to be told.
***
H18 (main hall)
Breaking the black thread of fascism
Weaving ideas, practices and complicity
Faced with today’s reality of an undoubtedly dormant class consciousness, we note the conquest of a significant margin of consensus by new right-wing speakers with clear fascist connotations. The new anti-systemic instincts of dissatisfied European citizens, frustrated by the neo-liberal policies of governments of all stripes, are being satisfied by figures who speculate on the fear of diversity and impoverishment, and who embody the crisis of a democratic model that seems to be finally running out of cards, or rather dusting off the old axes of the authoritarian drive. Fascism, with its foolish exaltation of the hero, its concepts of blood, people, and nation, its empty willingness to live in obedience to orders but in a sham rebelliousness, today risks sublimating what is left of the desire for liberation.
We will try to disentangle ourselves through time and assonances, with a multivoiced dialogue, in order to bring back to the present an analysis that sees delineated the elements that appear, in the past as well as today, within the variegated substratum of the extreme right. Its relationship with the emotional and sentimental aspects left unsatisfied by capitalist consumerism and the dominance of reason/technology, the emptiness, the lack, the unfulfilled need for identity, which has been filled by the characteristics peculiar to its rhetoric, such as nationalism; a complex phenomenon with multiple developments that we will discuss with some members of the editorial collective “Antipolitika”, who will offer an analysis on the subject.
The approaches of old-fashioned antifascism, which for a long time have ignored the above-mentioned aspects by focusing only on the economic conditions and the repressive function of fascism, do not seem to us sufficient to understand the phenomenon of the fascist rise in its entirety and, consequently, to ask how to bring anarchism back to the agenda as a perspective for subversion. If we can agree to recognize this historical moment as possibly propitious, how is it that we see the presence and memory of the anarchist movement dying out in favor of the forces of reaction? How do we address the rise of the new right in our projectualities?
*********************************************************************************************************************
Introducción a los debates
VIERNES
A las 17:00 (Nave)
Presentación de la feria y debate a partir del texto de posicionamiento
Anarquistas, editoriales y violencia de género
Sobre la necesidad de (re)construir: entre ética, afinidad y confianza
***
Presentación del libro Carte, Forbici Sassi. Sfide da e contro le prigioni e il patriarcato (Papeles, tijeras, piedras. Desafío de y contra las prisiones y el patriarcado)
(Las Nihilistas Rusas. Colección: La vida no atiende) por Tremende Edizioni
Extractivismo: piedra angular del capitalismo europeo en guerra
Desertar la supremacía humana, el antropocentrismo y la mercantilización del vivo: el antiespecismo es parte de un actuar y un vivir anarquista.
Transfobia y campañas anti-gender: ¿cuál origen?
Assopirsi (Adormilarse) por l’autor Giacomo Cortesi
Las historias hay que contarlas
ROMPIENDO EL HILO NEGRO DEL FASCISMO
tejiendo ideas, pràcticas y complicidades
EINFÜHRUNG IN DIE DEBATTEN
INTRODUCTIONS AUX DÉBATS
Présentation du livre No fuimos nosotros quien asesinamos a Puig Antich (Ce n’est pas nous qui avons assassiné Puig Antich) par Prometeo Ediciones.
Nous insistons sur le fait qu’il ne suffit pas de se souvenir des camarades assassiné.e.s sans leur donner vie, car ce sont eux/elles qui nous poussent à continuer d’affronter le système qui les a tués. Les hommages ne servent à rien s’ils sont dépouillés de leurs actions et de leurs pensées, car ils doivent être accompagnés d’une mémoire vivante ; il ne sert à rien de faire défiler Puig Antich comme un saint tous les mois de mars, entouré du spectacle d’une procession remplie de spectateurs. Ce livre a été réalisé dans le but de faire connaître les expériences menées dans le cadre de la coordination des Groupes Autonomes Révolutionnaires Internationalistes (GARI), et d’approfondir leur intervention, qui visait à neutraliser les condamnations à mort que l’État franquiste promettait d’exécuter contre Oriol Solé Sugranyes et Josep Lluís Pons Llobet, anciens militants du Mouvement Ibérique de Libération (MIL). Le GARI n’a attendu rien ni personne pour se battre pour les camarades emprisonné.e.s. Au fur et à mesure de leur mobilisation, ils se sont dissipés, au sein des luttes, laissant derrière eux/elles un bon nombre d’actions dans différents pays (France, Italie, Suisse, Espagne) et de nombreuses réflexions sur leurs actions et leurs idées.