In the 1960’s and
early 1970’s Berardi expressed his affinity to anarcho-syndacalism by
participating in the Potere Operaio (PO) movement, the nationally-based Italian
revolutionary extraparliamentary organization. He exited after the faction supporting
a more highly centralized organizational model gained the upper hand within
the group. After PO’s remnants broke up into an archipelago of autonomous
groups across Italy (often referred to as “Autonomia Diffusa”) between
1973 and 1974, Bifo was a part of the autonomist movement’s more “creative”wing,
which experimented with media and cultural production. In 1976 he was amongst
the founders of Radio Alice in Bologna, the first Italian pirate radio station,
which chronicled the insurrectional events of 1977 in that city and was shut
down with the support of the Italian Communist Party. Between 1976 and 1981
Berardi was one of the editors of the A/traverso journal, which combined Maoism
and Surrealism in its anti-authoritarian cultural critique. Subsequent to the
repression of the autonomist movement in Italy in the late seventies, Bifo fled
to Paris where he worked with Felix Guattari. During this time he wrote for
the Chimeres journal in Paris, the Semiotext[e] journal in New York, and the
Musica 80 journal in Milan. In 1985 he founded Topia, a centre for mental ecology.
In the 1990’s, subsequent to his return to Italy, he focused more closely
on the changing nature of capitalism and its utilization of communication technology
and culture within a new regime of production. He has published one of the few
books to reflect on the experience of Potere Operaio (La Nefasta Utopia di Potere
Operaio), and more recently has given sustained attention to the shift from
the New Economy to the war economy. In 2002 he was an integral part of setting
up the telestreet movement the www.rekombinant.org
website.
Maurizio Lazzarato
Toni Negri
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
Gilles Deleuze
Felix
Guattari
Autonomist Marxism
Pirate Radio
Telestreet
Social Centres
Disobbedienti
Bifo’s work has typified
the concern of a significant segment of the autonomist Marxism with the relationship
between labour and communication. Within his theory the rejection of labour
has always played an important role as an emancipatory strategy, a quality which,
when conjoined with his increasing attention to French poststructuralism, affected
his theory and politics increasingly in the late seventies. As such he has always
been particularly attentive to creative communicative activity occurring outside
or against capitalist structures, whether this be pirate radio, internet-based,
or most recently local television. Foremost amongst his concerns in the last
decade has been the role labour takes under digital capitalism, including the
emergence of a “cognitariat” characterized by precarious labour
and increasing psycho-physical stress.
(1970) Contro il Lavoro. Milano: Feltrinelli
(1978) Enfin le ciel est tombé sur la terre. Paris: Seuil
(1980) “Anatomy of Autonomy”. In Eds. Lotringer, Sylvere, and Marazzi,
Christian, Italy, Autonomia: Post-Political Politics. Semiotexte III (Special
Edition), 1980.
(1985) Infovirus. Topia
(1990) Più Cyber Che Punk. Bologna: A/traverso
(1993) Mutazione e Ciberpunk. Genova: Costa e Nolan
(1995) Cibernauti. Roma: Castelvecchi
(1998) La nefasta utopia di Potere operaio. Lavoro tecnica movimento nel laboratorio
politico del Sessantotto italiano. Rome: Castelvecchi.
(2001) Felix. Roma: Luca Sossella
(2002) La Fabbrica dell’Infelicità. Roma: DeriveApprodi
(2004) Il sapiente il mercante il guerriero: Assolutismo del capitale e autonomia
sociale dal rifiuto del lavoro all’emergere del cognitariato. Roma: DeriveApprodi
Rekombinant
Discussion site dedicated to the self-organization of cognitive labour and media
activism
http://www.rekombinant.org/
Telestreet
The homepage of the telestreet network in Italy
http://www.radioalice.org/nuovatelestreet/index.php