Franco “Bifo” Berardi at e-flux book co-op at MoMA PS1

Franco “Bifo” Berardi at e-flux book co-op at MoMA PS1

Franco “Bifo” Berardi at e-flux book co-op at MoMA PS1
Date
December 17, 2011

The concept of insolvency as it has been applied in the US and especially in the EU has to do with economic debt, but also with the symbolic debt implied in the capitalist process of exploitation. In the EU, this symbolic debt is bound to tensions that haunted European modernity—between Calvinist and Catholic, Baroque and Gothic, good German laborers and bad lazy Mediterraneans. It is a subject often avoided for being politically incorrect, because no one wants to see the religious, anthropological, and aesthetic implications of the crisis. But the concept of symbolic debt may also provide a way out: What if debt as semiotization and insolvency could actually provide autonomy from capitalist semiotization—a direct move from insolvency to emancipation? What is the meaning of the word “revolution” anyhow? Let us consider how the concept of emancipation will replace of the concept of revolution.

Franco Berardi, aka “Bifo,” founder of the famous “Radio Alice” in Bologna and an important figure of the Italian Autonomia Movement, is a writer, media theorist, and media activist. He currently teaches Social History of the Media at the Accademia di Brera, Milan. His last book titled After the Future is published AKpress.

This is the second in a season of talks and discussions presented by e-flux book co-op at MoMA PS1. Hito Steyerl was the first to present in the series, which will continue throughout the season with presentations by artists, writers, and theorists such as AA Bronson, Paul Chan, Sven Lütticken, Elizabeth Povinelli, and others considering the recent intensification of political life.

Subject
Debt

Franco Berardi, aka “Bifo,” founder of the famous Radio Alice in Bologna and an important figure in the Italian Autonomia movement, is a writer, media theorist, and social activist.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. Her books include Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016), Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (2011), and The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (2002). She is also a founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective.

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