Call for Papers Autonomism, Class Composition, and Cultural Studies
2010 Cultural Studies Association Conference Berkeley, CA March
18th 20th, 2010
Coordinators: Stevphen Shukaitis (Autonomedia / University of Essex) &
Jack Z. Bratich (Rutgers University)
The publication of Hardt and Negri?s Empire (2000) brought new
attention to a previously ignored current of revolutionary theory and
practice, namely that of autonomist Marxism, or more broadly,
autonomism. While the work of Hardt and Negri have receive quite a
deal of attention within cultural studies research and writing since
then, this have tended to neglect the vast wealth of engaged
theoretical reflection contained within the history of autonomist
thought and organizing, reducing it to the work of a few recent works
by particular authors. For instance, the concept of class composition,
or the ways in which class formations emerge from contestation and the
primacy and determining role of social resistance, shares much in
common with various strains of thought in cultural studies. Similarly,
workers? inquiry as a method of inquiring into the conditions of
working class life to rethinking its ongoing subversive political
potentiality, functions in similar ways to how early cultural studies
shifted to an analysis of the everyday based on renewing and deepening
radical politics.
Autonomist political analysis involves something very much like a form
of cultural studies, exploring how the grounds for radical politics
are constantly shifting in response to how capital and the state
utilize social insurgencies and movements against themselves. How do
cultural studies and autonomism converge and diverge over matters of
power, the state, and subjectivity? The panel will explore the future
behind our backs, focusing on how autonomist politics and analysis can
inform cultural analysis and vice versa. Possible topics for
consideration could include:
- Autonomy through and against enclosures
- Class composition and the creative class
- Immaterial labor and cultural production
- Libidinal parasites and desiring production
- Escape and the imperceptible politics of the undercommons
- The multitude and its dark side
- Affective labor and social reproduction
- Work drawing from/on particular autonomist theorists (Tronti, Virno,
Fortunati, etc.)
- Precarity and the autonomy of migration
- Post-hegemonic & post-dialectical interventions
- Schizoanalysis & class formation
- Autonomism and the political
Send proposals of 500 words to Stevphen Shukaitis ((stevphen /at/ autonomedia.org) ).
The deadline for submissions is September 7th, 2009.
Stevphen Shukaitis is an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the
University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David
Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations //
Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the
emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the
changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor. For more on his
work and writing, see http://stevphen.mahost.org.
Jack Z. Bratich is assistant professor of Journalism and Media Studies
at Rutgers University. He is the author of Conspiracy Panics:
Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008) and co-editor of
Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality (2003), and has written
articles that apply autonomist thought to such topics as audience
studies, reality TV, secession, and popular secrecy.
--
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://info.interactivist.net
"Autonomy is not a fixed, essential state. Like gender, autonomy is
created through its performance, by doing/becoming; it is a political
practice. To become autonomous is to refuse authoritarian and
compulsory cultures of separation and hierarchy through embodied
practices of welcoming difference... Becoming autonomous is a
political position for it thwarts the exclusions of proprietary
knowledge and jealous hoarding of resources, and replaces the social
and economic hierarchies on which these depend with a politics of
skill exchange, welcome, and collaboration. Freely sharing these with
others creates a common wealth of knowledge and power that subverts
the domination and hegemony of the master?s rule." - subRosa Collective
