Course ‘Autonomy in Crisis’

Fifth session. January 23 to 25. 10am to 4pm

The next session will offer course participants an opportunity to explore in more depth the ideas and general themes touched on during the Autonomy in Crisis course. Together we will pick the debate up where it was left after Openhagen’s preparatory sessions and Bifo’s recent visit to Copenhagen in December 2012.

In order to complement and extend this debate we would like to now welcome our guests from the US, Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis and Peter Linebaugh. Over the next days we hope to continue the search for tools to navigate and reflect upon capitalist crisis at home and abroad, noting current modes of resistance and lines of flight. As such, our organisational framework covers three broad themes – Commons, Enclosures and Resistance – which the schedule hopes to expand upon and transgress as the discussion develops.

The schedule below offers time for our guests to present and elaborate on their work over the last four decades with space for discussion and a collective sharing of thoughts. At the end of the three days, all will come together to initiate a concluding summary and evaluation before the discussion moves on to London the following week. In London, Silvia, George and Peter will, along with others, continue the process by opening up the various histories which feed into and out of The Midnight Notes Collective. See http://www.maydayrooms.org

PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY AS WE WILL BEGIN AS PROMPTLY AS WE CAN

Day 1

10am-12am

Moderator: (Nils Norman)

General Introductions (15 mins) :

-Openhagen

-Mayday Rooms

-Walls and Space

-Midnight Notes

General discussion in response to introductions.

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-3pm

Moderator (Sidsel Meineche Hansen)

-Silvia Federici on Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle

General discussion in response to the above.

6pm: Welcome dinner at Walls and Space

Day 2

10am-12pm

Moderator (Anthony Davies)

Anna Davin on the History of Education and Anarchist Education

Anna will take the impact of the 1870 Education Act as a starting point for examining (1) why compulsory education brought in and how that affected (a) educational content; (b) who was compelled (2) impact on working class families (3) gender, ideas of childhood and work, etc. (4) limited alternatives and resistance.

General discussion in response to the above

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-2.30pm & 3pm-4.30pm

Moderator (Iain Boal)

Peter Linebaugh on the New England Prisoners Association (NEPA), a powerful yet little known organisation of the period 1973-1975, and the role prisons played in the enclosures of the counter-revolutionary period of the 1790s-1820s.

-George Caffentzis on ‘Strike Debt; the history of Debt resistance with an emphasis on Education and the new enclosures.

General discussion in response to the above

Day 3

10am-12pm

Moderator (Nils Norman)

Presentations (15 min.)

-Søren Rafn on Trampolin Huset

-Jaya Brekke from the Occupied London collective (occupiedlondon.org) on recent research in Athens, Greece

-Ana Mendez de Andes from Traficantes de Suenos on Madrid

-Hannah, Mia and Andreas on the Magic Struggle Camp

-Joen P-Vedel onCrisis Mirror

-Grace Harrison on the UK enclosures

General discussion in response to the above

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-4pm

Summary by the speakers and moderators

Moderator (Jaya Brekke and Grace Harrison)

Evaluation and general discussion

Themes carried forward to London. See www.maydayrooms.org

END

Autonomy in Crisis. Fifth Session has been developed in collaboration with Mayday Rooms where, later in the month, discussions between participants from Walls and Space, MayDay Rooms and Midnight Notes will continue

Selected publications by the participants

Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a present yet to pass and a future still to come. Dalakoglou, D., Vradis, A. eds., 2011. Athens, Baltimore, Edinburgh, London: AK press and Occupied London

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle.

Silvia Federici. 2012. PM Press

West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California. Edited by Iain Boal, Janferie Stone, Michael Watts, and Cal Winslow. 2012. PM Press

Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: Machine-Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811-12. Peter Linebaugh. 2012. PM Press

In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism. George Caffentzis. 2013. PM Press

Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street 1870-1914. Anna Davin. Rivers Oram, 1996

The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All. Peter Linebaugh Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008