From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social

Renzi, Alessandra Doctoral Thesis From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social Provided in Cooperation with: The Bichler & Nitzan Archives Suggested Citation: Renzi, Alessandra (2011) : From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social, University of Toronto, Toronto, https://hdl.handle.net/1807/29845 , http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/635/ This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/214894 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social by Alessandra Renzi A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Equity Studies Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Alessandra Renzi 2011 2 From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social Alessandra Renzi Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Equity Studies Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2010 Abstract The dissertation develops the concept of repurposing as a means for thinking with activists and the issues they confront. It moves alongside pirate television collective insu^tv as they draw on a variety of histories, traditions and technological resources for their practices. Repurposing functions on multiple levels and at multiple scales, from the recycling of materials and spaces to the harnessing and relaying of encounters and events within an ever-expanding field of social relations. When seen as a way of connecting activist groups and communities, the repurposing of media contributes to strengthening an often fragmented and conflicted activist field. Indeed, insu^tv’s use of information and technology brings to the fore the value of media activism for the creation of social assemblages in which the “media” literally mediates between individuals and among individuals and their environment, instituting and developing an ontogenetic relation (Simondon, 1989). Yet, rather than simply making sense of insu^tv’s practices, the concept of repurposing also provokes a discussion regarding the ethics of connection. For insu^tv, this connective ethics can be understood as a set of rules and principles that facilitate the 3 evaluation of actions, communication, and thought according to an immanent mode of collective existence (Deleuze, 1988; Simondon, 1989). For the author, herself a member of insu^tv and an academic researcher, this immanent position helps challenge traditional models of knowing and envisioning social change and instead proposes alternatives that attend to the singularity and relation among new political movements, and to the political potential of research methods that focus on process and fold activism into academia. The methodology is inspired by the militant research methods of the Italian Autonomia movement (conricerca or inchiesta), as developed and performed by activists themselves. While attending to the complexity of social struggles, the concept of repurposing enables an approach to research and experimentation as modes of sociability, where these modes are themselves repurposed through an ethics of connection. This line informs the relation between ethics and subjectivation, as well as between ethics and micropolitics, facilitating the emergence of new modes of political action through the repurposing of the social field itself. 4 Acknowledgments This research project, spanning over six years of activity, owes less to my perseverance and much more to the inspiration, trust, encouragement and collaboration of the many, many wonderful people I have encountered along the way. Their generosity, friendship and wisdom have affected and sustained me all along––and will stay with me during future projects. Monica Heller, Kari Dehli, Sue Ruddick, Etienne Turpin, Nicol Angrisano, Alessandro Verna, Alfonso De Vito, Luca Manunza, Michela Porcelli, Piero Di Iorio, Raffele Aspide, Raffele Romano, Sara Cotugno, Simone Veneroso, Francesco Festa, Gennaro Navarra, the compagni from Telestreet, Annaliza Pelizza, Ciro D'Aniello, Franco Bifo Berardi, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Troy Cochrane, Nasrin Himada, A.K. Thompson, Christine Shaw, Lucas Freeman, Laura Kane, and all the others: Each will know their own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied (Deleuze and Guattari). 5 Table of Contents 1. Introduction Contemporary manifestations of political movements and Telestreet Political research, collaboration and the struggle against representation Methodology and data collection Chapter summaries 2. Six propositions on Telestreet Proposition One: Telestreet is a social movement Proposition Two: Telestreet is a tactical media practice Proposition Three: Telestreet is a counter-public Proposition Four: Teelstreet/Insutv is a discursive formation Proposition Five: Telestreet is a terrorist organization Proposition Six: Telestreet is a form of political subjectivity Conclusions 3. Books, Radios and D.I.Y. Factories of Desire The madness of creativity: a brief history of the seventies Radio Alice’s techno-social wonderland Exodus, autonomy and composition: Autonomia L’absence d’oeuvre 4. Differential Accumulation: Berlusconi and political-economic power From rags to riches: undoing the Berlusconi myth Folding topology: from business to politics 5. Squats, Guerrilla Communication and the Information Glut: Contemporary Italian media activism The Panther and the fax Translocal assemblages: the Zapatistas of Chiapas Politics beyond counter-information 6. Hacking the Sensorium: Telestreet and communication in Italy Television unpacked Television repacked Not an Obituary 7. Frantz Fanon in Southern Italy: Neapolitan activism Minor histories of struggles in the streets Porosity and collective individuation 8. From Collectives to “Connectives” Domenica Aut and other productions Repurposing 6 9. Conclusions An ethics of connection Appendix Data, Tables, DVD 7 List of Appendices Appendix 1 Berlusconi’s firm, Mediaset accumulation from 2003-2008 Appendix 2 Naples Global Forum Symbol 8 List of Acronyms CD Cristian Democrats CSOA Centro Sociale Occupato Autogestito Autonomous social centre MDo Movimento Disoccupati Organizzati Organised unemployed movement ICP Italian Communist Party 15 of resistance also consciously avoid a reification of the subjectivity of the actors in question by shifting the focus of attention from the economic aspect of labour to the activities involved in defining and fixing social norms and subject positions through daily work. To substantiate this approach, theorists like Antonio Negri have incorporated a Spinozist conceptualization of potentia as a power to affect other bodies, and be affected by them, into the theorization and development of experiments with the composition of collective bodies (Hardt and Negri, 2000, Negri, 1998). These collective bodies, far from being static entities, cannot be separated by the spontaneity and productivity that allow their emergence in first place and that forge them as consituent, rather than constituted assemblages (Deleuze in Negri, 1998: 6). They are consituent because they are immanent to processes of socialization (in opposition to any imperative to be constituted according to pre-established logics), and like processes of individual subjectivation of which they are composed, they are ongoing and never complete. In this light, it is necessary to expand both concepts of political action and militant research, which now also involve the invention of alternative forms of struggle extending beyond national borders and direct forms of confrontation, but also a re-theorisation of subject formation and subject producing practices as foci of control and resistance (Foucault, 1978b). Like the activists they wish to support, researchers who wish to keep alive the field of activist scholarship need to constantly re-evaluate the conceptual and practical tools available to them and rethink the concept of resistance as a creative search for new strategies and forms of struggle that repurpose previously developed practices while combining them with new ones. This operation is necessary in the field of research, as much as it is fundamental in that of activism if the two are to enter into new productive compositions (Colectivo Situaciones, 2007). The Telestreet phenomenon enables us to map and understand how activist practices migrate and mutate across social fields, as groups like the one in question draw on a variety of histories, traditions and resources––and combine them in a way that shifts the ground for politics from simple confrontation to autonomous cultural production and social organisation. In particular, insu^tv’s shifting character and connective capacity emerge and mutate simultaneously with the forms of control it faces and the communities 16 it supports. Insu^tv members constantly connect, disconnect, incorporate, synthesise and assemble together every element available that can sustain their work as media producers investigating the surrounding territory. Such practices range from ad hoc or temporary alliances with other Telestreet nodes, activist groups and civil society institutions to the recycling of material for broadcasting hardware. In particular, and most important of all, with insu^tv the repurposing of information and technology is shown to open up a field of potential for the material restructuring of social relations and their attendant structures, having effects that reach far beyond the circulation of messages. Looking at Telestreet/insu^tv’s practices of home-made television provides important evidence of the ongoing re-composition of the social, while forcing us to focus on the network’s dynamism, contradictions and relations with other groups when considering the potential of present and future forms of organising. By focussing on the spaces of connections between the dots on the map being drawn we start discerning a general tendency in the processes of emergence of social practices and formations. This direction, far from being a teleology, is a mode of being in the social––a mode of being social––in which the elements that compose the social field are repurposed to engender new forms of interaction and sociability. Similarly, studies about non-oppositional political movements like Telestreet prompt us to interrogate traditional models and modes of knowing, and to search for options for knowing and acting that attend not only to their singularity but also to their relation to broader social, historical and politico-economic contexts. They prompt us to produce alternative narratives and subjectivities derived from political action and social change, through the act of embodying more practices that open up our collective imaginary to the potential for change obscured by dominant perspectives. Political Research, Collaboration and the Struggle against Representation Traditionally, knowledge production has been viewed as a representational interpretive process that privileges the forces of recognition guiding our thoughts. This presupposition 17 is rooted in what Gilles Deleuze calls the “Image of Thought” (1994), an image underlying most western philosophical traditions and impacting their modes of thinking, as well as their practical, political and ethical implications. For Deleuze, thought has so far been subordinated to externally imposed directives, to commonsensical notions about the good nature of thought, to the priority of the model of recognition as the means of thought, to the sovereignty of representation over supposed elements in nature and thought, and to the subordination of culture to method, or learning to knowledge (1994: 131–133). Common sense underlies the assumption that there is an original reality to discover, and that recognising and describing this reality objectively are the purposes of thought. Consequently, this taken-for-granted predisposition of the subject towards recognition and description becomes established as a natural mode of thinking and knowing via preestablished models and pre-formed categories. That is, models for recognition and representation come to constitute the unquestioned ontological basis for epistemological practices (Deleuze, 1994: 131–133). This epistemological approach, in turn, legitimises regulatory practices within academia by constructing and classifying any object of inquiry as a static entity to evaluate according to general or universal categories. It is common for scholars to construct political movements as objects of study in a way that extracts and reifies them, leaving aside many of the connections and continuities proper to the field in which they operate. Above all, this operation requires a freeze-framing of the movement in a way that unavoidably obscures the dynamic processes that underlie its presence to provide a consistent description of its functions. Reducing thought to the realm of representation also has the consequence of creating a split between theory and practice, in favour of a speculative, explanatory approach to social analysis. Sociological studies of activism are often conceived of as tools to “understand” social phenomena —they imply a “neutral” stance for the researcher, whose role is to explain the world around us. This positioning of the researcher outside of social dynamics brackets practical necessity, using instruments of thought against practice to 18 produce scientific knowledge (Bourdieu 1990). It poses knowledge production as detached from social change, denying any responsibility of the researcher in shaping official narratives about the relationship between resistance and change. Research that questions the dominant representational paradigms and acknowledges a researcher’s agency in the social field have come from sociologists (Frampton and al., 2006, Smith, 1987, 2002), as well as from geographers (Kitchin and Hubbardt, 1999, Ruddick, 2004, Staeheli and Mitchell, 2007, Wakefield, 2007) and anthropologists (Lyon-Callo and Hyatt, 2003, Messer, 1993, Speed, 2006). In these fields, many researchers recognise that knowledge production is never objective or neutral but always situated within the specific contexts and points of view of those involved. In particular, researchers whose ethnographic studies directly pertain to local issues and subjects feel particularly well placed to make strategic use of their symbolic and social capital to think through research questions that could trigger direct shifts in the fields of intervention. Building upon Deleuze’s idea of thought as “experimentation in contact with the real” (1987: 12), and from the research practices of the minor tradition of activist scholarship, I use research as an encounter that forces us to think creatively while engaging the dynamism of the social field within which we act: a practice of/as thought. This stance emphasises the importance of the process of thinking and knowing as indissoluble elements of social agency. As I will explain in the following sections, a practice of/as thought shifts the focus of thinking from the production of knowledge to the practice of learning through action. Here, learning refers to both the willingness to constantly challenge the assumptions and frameworks we use to make sense of reality and to the ability to experiment with newly acquired knowledge. Ultimately, the present work aims to show that it is by seeing research as a medium of social relations, which affects our perspective of reality (and that of others) that the political and ethical potential of creative academic work becomes full-fledged. Research practice as/of thought can lead to a “superproduction” (Lotringer and Cohen, 2001: 5) of concepts and connections that constantly generate new ideas, thereby opposing the regimes of discourses that reinforce “common” sense and habitual thinking. 19 The gap between thinking and acting, between theory and practice can be filled insofar as theory is always put to the task to reflect on reality, to formulate and solve practical problems. In What is Philosophy (1991), Deleuze and Guattari define philosophy as the act of creating concepts through the construction of a problem field––what they call the “plane of immanence” (1991). The problem field is rooted in an immanent relationship of philosophy with the world and provides a diagram of the features and elements of reality that can contribute to the formulation of a specific problem. It is a map of directions that are fractal in nature (Deleuze and Guattari, 1991: 40) and which sets the grounds for experimenting with concepts and possible solutions: “the concept is the beginning of philosophy, but the plane is its instituting. The plane […] constitutes the absolute ground of philosophy […] it is pre-philosophical […] it implies a sort of groping experimentation” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1991: 41). Hence, concepts are not created to abstractly describe or understand phenomena, rather, they derive from reality and must enable us to think of new moves: “a solution has no meaning independently of a problem to be determined in its conditions and unknowns; but these conditions and unknowns have no meaning independently of solutions determinable” (1991: 81). Thinking and action are not two separate processes but two coexisting aspects of the same process. The act of posing problems directly related to a specific context and devising solutions accordingly is creative rather than representational. When taking into consideration the processual aspect of social relations, it means to sustain truly creative processes that are not rooted in analytical thinking and recognition because there is no reality to recognise but only to create; it means to learn from movement how to constantly undo what has been thought so far and make room for new thoughts and practices (Deleuze, 1994). The pedagogical value of this learning process is not limited to its by-product–– knowledge–– but lies in the very practice of thinking and acting upon a problem field. In this sense, learning by posing and solving problems consists of actualising the virtual connections between elements––i.e. thinking their relation––while at the same time performing a reflection on this very act, so that the operation remains evident and open- 20 ended. Returning to the idea of instituent practices, adopting this position within academia engenders learning during the process of assembling knowledge, where learning requires the act of moving away from pre-coded meanings. It is this pedagogical aspect that becomes key in research practices oriented towards a self-conscious use of theory for practice by all actors involved. Philosopher of science Gilbert Simondon’s work on ontogenesis enables me to investigate the complex dynamics characterising the field of activism and its broader contexts, from which individuals and groups can be said to emerge. Importantly, for Simondon, the study of ontogenesis does not simply refer to an investigation into the emergence of social paradigms or codings, with their attendant subject positions; nor is this process interpreted through the lens of human cognition (Massumi et al., 2009: 37). Instead, human subjectivity is seen as only one process of embodiment of reality, or of experience through practices (or processes). From an ontogenesis-centred perspective, other ‘entities’, ranging from crystals or bacteria, to DNA and animals, also partake in these processes and are co-constitutive of the world we experience. Furthermore, Simondon’s philosophy does not consider the emergence of new realities by focussing on the conceptual relation between two pre-existing terms, but sees every relation as a mode of being itself; as simultaneous with the two terms it engenders (2006: 38). Taking the reality of groups as a given misses the processes that engender the collective (and individuals, simultaneously); whereas moving away from a study of social morphology makes it possible to ask questions about how societies and their groups change along certain conditions of quasi-stability. Not unlike individuals, these formations are always examined from the perspective of their relationship with their environment, which continuously affects their structure. Importantly, the focus here is not on how social formations retain their stability but precisely on how they are not able to do so, passing thresholds after which they cease to be or take on different structures (Simondon, 2006: 73). This is a particularly useful angle to talk about activist practices because its sheds light on aspects that otherwise remain hidden behind the screen of representation. 21 More precisely, Simondon’s non-anthropocentric approach identifies the signs that trigger the immanent and material processes underlying Telestreet/insu^tv, and considers their relations with and impact on different elements and levels of the system. The focus on process and relation, rather than on the products of the latter, functions outside of established binaries like subject/object; nature/society; science/politics or knowledge/actions. Most importantly, it stays away from representational paradigms in which knowing and acting are considered separate, and knowledge production must come first to enable action (Combes in: Simondon, 2006: 9–10). The epistemology of processes of becoming is seen here as a function of ontogenesis itself because the processes of emergence that pertain to thought are similar to the processes of emergence that pertain to matter, and to individual and collective subjectivities. In more practical terms, because it is based on processes that involve affects and perception, thought is seen as what enables human actors to orient ourselves in our environment through action (Ch. 5–7). In this context, technological innovation becomes a site in which thought is folded into other processes of emergence, thus affecting the transformation of life (Massumi et al., 2009: 37). Both Deleuze and Guattari’s and Simondon’s philosophy rely on a vision of the world, which unfolds as the expression1 of a material, immanent process on multiple levels. As Brian Massumi explains: each stratum has its own rules of content formation to feed its level-specific functioning, as well as unique forms of expression to transmit the generative impulse to other levels… upon impact on each level it catalyzes a self-organising of the stratum. […] a transduction: a self-propagating movement seeding serial self-organizations, each differing in nature from the last but connected by a shared generative impulse (2002a: xxx).2 1 Here, the concept of expression rests on the assumption that “there is not a substance that then expresses itself in different styles” (Parr, 2005: 94), rather it is a force immanent to every term and relation that make up reality and the subject. The concept of expression has nothing to do with that of the communication of information but with the emergence of something new (Massumi, 2002a: xxxii). 2 It is worth noting how Simondon’s concept of transduction reflects his attempt to account for the non linearity of processes of emergence, while still finding a common denominator for different processes of individuation. The term refers both to the actual emergence of structures and to the method uses to understand them. As opposed to induction and deduction, transduction brings on the same plane what is 22 While these ideas are instrumental in investigating the contemporary field of Italian activism, a clarification about the use of scientific analogies is necessary. Deleuze and Guattari, and Simondon draw on complexity theory, quantum physics and cybernetics, among other sciences, to articulate a vision that explains a series of processes of emergence ––individuation––at multiple levels. My interest in philosophy that is heavily inspired by science lies in its attention to non-linear dynamics and in the kind of questions it enables me to ask and answer, rather than in using this system of thought as a scientific tool. Following Muriel Combes, I recognise the value of these theories in breaking away from dichotomies that so strongly affect social research, and focus on what is between the terms that we usually consider without a middle (in Simondon, 2006: 11). Thus, I see here one possibility to think about the relationships, processes and intersections that are co-constitutive of what are usually considered unities, such as nature, society, or even the individual. It is at this point of intersection between epistemological practices and an ontology of processes that is possible for me to conceptualise new ways of thinking and acting, and to engage with both research and politics from multiple perspectives, ranging from subjectivity and desire below the subject, and from the individual to the social above. Methodology and Data collection The problems that I pose are always concerned with local and particular issues [...] because it seems to me that none of the major discourses that can be produced about society is so convincing that it may be trusted; and if one really wants to construct something new and different, or in any case if one wants the great systems to be open to certain real problems, it is necessary to look for the data and the questions in which they are hidden. And then I’m not convinced that intellectuals [...] can point to the essential problems of the society in which they live. On the contrary, one of the main opportunities for collaboration with “nonintellectuals” is in listening to their problems, and in working with them to formulate these problems (Foucault, 1991: 151). being investigated and the actual change in the ‘object’ of investigation, cutting across distinctions between subject and object, or science and nature (Simondon, 2006) P. 10. 23 Methodologically, the act of constructing a problem field consists of mapping the potential relations among various terms constituting social entities and the processes of actualisation through which they come together (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 12). Deleuze draws from the language of differential calculus to conceptualise the relation between these elements. In Difference and Repetition he illustrates how the derivative of a function dy / dx can help us think through a relation without having to fix a value for its elements x and y: “In relation to x, dx is completely undetermined, as dy is to y, but they are perfectly determinable in relation to one another. [...] Each term exists absolutely only in its relation to the other” (Deleuze, 1994: 172). A problem field maps how these undetermined elements are ideally connected and reciprocally determine each other (Deleuze, 1994: 173–174). At the same time it also maps the distribution of its singular points in a field of vectors (social forces) without having to determine their value or form ––each differential equation remains a concrete manifestation of more potential differentiations (Bogue, 2004: 334). The terms establishing differential relations can be isolated and analysed through ethnographic research and then re-connected in an open series, showing the ways in which they affect each other. It is only in the act of making such connections, without using pre-determined analytic categories, that it is possible to determine the coordinates of each specific element (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 15). Rather than simply reporting on the political theories or economic context that characterise a given space-time, a map emerges while interlinking the behaviours, struggles, conflicts, decisions, and tactics of political actors. The body of political knowledge thus produced does not simply theorise about practice, or just apply theory but it is inscribed from the start in a field of different practices that harness its specificity, its functions, and its network of dependencies (Foucault, 1972: 194). As mentioned above, I situate myself within a tradition of cooperative, practice-based research that has its points of departure and reference in the reality in which it is conceived. In the spirit of a ‘creative knowledge production,’ I recuperated and recontextualised data collection and analysis methodologies already available, as well as 24 developed ad hoc ways of interacting with the people involved in the research. More specifically, in order to pragmatically attend to the specific ways in which the singularities of Telestreet––and of insu^tv in particular––emerge from various contexts, engender each other and interact with the outside, I draw my main lines of action from the cartographic, non human-centred approach described above and from Autonomist/Workerist social research. The Autonomia operaia [Workers autonomy] is a political and cultural movement that cultivated a minor tradition of militant collaborative research methods in Italy, from the 60s onwards. Conricerca [co-research], or simply inchiesta [inquiry], is an independent case study method used by autonomist activists to understand the field in which their interventions unfold. These case studies were particularly influential in organizing factory workers until the late 70s, enabling the analysis of a new composition of the working class, and thereby facilitating the emergence of new practices of resistance against labour exploitation. To a lesser extent, they are still being used as organising tools by contemporary militant social researchers (e.g: Conti, 2001a, b, Lazzarato, 1993, 2001). Briefly, co-research uses traditional research methods like interviews, questionnaires and self-narratives, but has different implications because it is also carried out by the actors themselves, doing away with the separation between interviewer and interviewee. For coresearch, the groups taking part in the analysis actively participate in the construction of the tools for the study. The advantage of such an approach is that the group itself defines the relevant issues and constructs the questions. At the same time, because of their coinvolvement, for both activists and researcher the production of knowledge is immediately a mode of subjectivation and development of political organization (Conti and al., 2007: 80). Originally, co-researchers investigated the shifts in the subjective structure of the needs, behaviours and practices of resistance of a social formation, the working class, as well as the sedimentation of apparently spontaneous and unorganized antagonist cooperation. The latter was thought to leave a sort of ‘political residue’ in the subject positions of the groups and could become the basis for following struggles. Moreover, for researchers like 31 analysis also shows how their ideas about creativity and the production of new modes of sociability inform my own approach to research and creation, trying to operate outside of dominant institutional power dynamics and discourses. Chapter four performs a political economic study of the rise to power of Italian Prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. Drawing on theories of differential accumulation of power through capital (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009), this analysis brings to the fore the connections between political power, the economy, and organized crime, that mark a historical shift in Italian politics and economy of which Berlusconi is an emblem, rather than a trigger. This excursus in the form of a rag-to-riches story sets the stage on which Italian contemporary activist struggles unfold. As it becomes clearer in chapters six and seven, the concept of differential accumulation is also key to make sense of social struggle in Naples, where these connections between crime, politics and business are clearly visible and yet incredibly hard to break. Chapter five builds on the concept of societies of control and on cultural analyses that use information theory (Simondon, 2006, Terranova, 2004a, b) to discuss new activist formations that are actively affected by technology during their ontogenesis. In this discussion, the use of information theory opens up the space to discuss the effects of information dynamics that exceed the creation and circulation of messages and signs to materially affect the production of social relations. While focusing on Italian activism, this chapter also draws links with indigenous activism in Mexico and with the global social justice movement as an example of how practices of resistance resonate with each other and mutate through contact and experimentation. These two examples resurface in chapter six as fundamental lines informing Neapolitan activism––and insu^tv. Chapter six further engages information theory to analyse the role of affect and perception in the emergence of subject positions mediated by television. More precisely, I use Simondon’s theories about the emergence of individual subjectivities to unpack the relationship between mainstream television and the Italian social imaginary. This relationship is contrasted with an analysis of Telestreet’s practices of autonomous production used to self-fashion meaning (and meaning-making), thereby subverting the 32 role of mainstream television as a template for social relations. The main conclusion of the comparison is that these practices partake in the process of emergence of new communities and of their members. Chapter seven looks at the history of Neapolitan activism and the emergence of insu^tv in the field of tension among various activist groups and practices. While drawing on Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the struggles between colonizer and colonized, this section attempts to make sense of the recomposition of the field of antagonistic practices that make up contemporary modes of dissent in the city and its outskirts. At the same time, through Simondon’s theories about the ontogenesis of individual and collective subjects, my analysis reveals some of the tensions and forces that periodically fragment and restructure activism in Naples. It is at this point that a map starts taking form on which the challenges faced by groups like insu^tv can be articulated, not merely in terms of power struggles between dominant and dominated actors, but especially in terms of a synergy (or lack thereof) among the very groups that compose the Neapolitan activist assemblage. Chapter eight develops with greater detail the concept of repurposing in relation to the ‘connective’ work carried out by insu^tv to address the problem outlined at the end of chapter six. In developing the concept of repurposing, special emphasis is laid on the role of technology to facilitate the transformation and strengthen the constitution of activist assemblages. However, as the concept unfolds, rather than simply making sense of the actual practices of the group––and of me as a researcher–– provokes a discussion regarding the ethics of connection as a mode of repurposing social relations and collectivity/connectivity as forms of politics. For insu^tv, this connective ethics can be understood as a set of rules and principles that facilitate the evaluation of actions, communication, and thought according to an immanent mode of collective existence (Deleuze, 1988; Simondon, 1989). In this context, the lenses of repurposing can be extended to looking at thought and research as modes of sociability that can be themselves repurposed for politics through ethics. The conclusions discuss the open-ended character of my experiment, calling for a reengagement with my research to keep exploring both insu^tv’s potential and that of 33 activist social research in different contexts. At the same time, I try to confront the messiness characterising the relationship between theory and practice, between making sense of the past and gauging the present. This is done by considering the new challenges that face insu^tv while !" develop new projects and suffer of burnout; while !" attempt to feed the joyful passion that has fostered #$% work so far and are caught between cathexis and the intensity of new individuations. 34 Chapter 2 Six propositions on Telestreet The aim is not to make something understood to us, but to make us understand our power of knowing (Deleuze, 1988c: 83) The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was also a lens-grinder, his life divided between philosophical treaties and hunching over glass, polishing his lenses time and again (Borges, 1981: 285). What was the effect of repeating this same gesture over and over? And what did he see, every time he looked through the lens, before grinding some more? If the process of optical lathing were to be taken as a method for thinking and analysing, what would my “eyes of the mind” (Spinoza, Ethics, 5P23) see at each step of crafting my own viewing tools? The following discussion is an attempt to make my own lenses to view the subject matter of my dissertation. As homage to the Dutch philosopher, my attempt is divided in propositions. Each of the following six propositions corresponds to a new exercise that examines the media activist projects Telestreet and insu^tv––of which I am a member. Each proposition uses frameworks of analysis derived from dominant approaches to studies of activism, or it unpacks the categories that have been used in public discourse to look at these two projects. The studies of grassroots activism engaged in the following propositions are by no means the only ones available. As chapter one emphasises, I locate myself within a minor tradition of activist research that engages social issues and phenomena without objectifying the groups studied with the aim of contributing to social justice struggles. The present discussion aims to contribute to this line of scholarship by arguing for a need to focus on the processual aspect of change. Indeed, while the approaches reviewed in this exercise turn out to be useful to make sense of some aspects of Telestreet/insu^tv, they also reveal the limits of the analysis they enable because they cannot address the processual aspect of the change triggered by the 35 activist practices in question. In some cases, these approaches also jettison a processbased element of research itself in favour of pre-determined categories of analysis, thereby limiting the possibility of understanding the phenomena under investigation. As a participant to the Telestreet/insu^tv project, my intention is to relay and strengthen our work. The operation of lens lathing is a gesture that speaks to the fact that for anyone interested in activist research the process of fashioning new lenses to look at the world is simultaneously a practical exercise and a theoretical one. This exercise needs to be repeated every time in order to engage the changing context in which we act. It is only in the actual practice of hands-on experimentation that the use value of ideas can be judged; and the value judgment itself lies in the usefulness of what the new tools enable us to see and do. Proposition One: Telestreet is a social movement From the “culture jamming” magazine Adbusters (Bronson, 2004), to the International Herald Tribune (Monico, 2002), the media project Telestreet has been celebrated as the forerunner of a new movement for communication democracy: “Street TVs have an extremely limited broadcasting range, covering just a block or two. But a blazing-fast growth rate combined with a very ambitious plan indicate they may soon start contending with bigger TV networks for local viewers” claims the (worried?) Hollywood Reporter (Davidkhanian, 2004). The one above is only one of the countless enthusiastic messages about Telestreet by the national and international press. In many articles, “microtelevision” is posited as a neutraliser of mass media consolidation, not only in dystopian Italy where the government controls over 90% of the media, but everywhere such a television model could be needed in the future. With this model, television is also propelled out of the house to crash the heavily guarded gates of cultural production. From 2002, public and private broadcasters and print media from the UK, France, Germany, even Australia, celebrated the Italian battle of media David against Goliath. The journalists marvelled at the do-it-yourself street weapon Italians use to sling shots at communication giants. A few months later, public attention towards the project faded, 36 together with the international disdain for a Prime Minister who runs a G8 country, despite 17 impending trials in the court of criminal justice, 7 additional police investigations and a blatant conflict of interests on media ownership (Ch. 3). More precisely, Silvio Berlusconi has been under investigation 22 times. Out of these investigations, 7 were archived before the trial (in two cases thanks to a law he had just passed). He has been on trial 17 times and some cases are still open. He has been convicted three times, although the sentences were invalidated by prescription. Three trials ended with an amnesty. In the remaining 7 cases, he was either acquitted, the cases were invalidated by prescription prior to any convictions, or because the accusations were no longer valid due to a change in the legislation (Travaglio, 2008). “If things don’t change, they stay the same”: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with his media empire is still active, but so is Telestreet. Yet, while Berlusconi is photographed smiling, standing next to those who once felt good decrying the undemocratic turn of their European neighbour, Telestreet struggles and gasps for air in the grey underbellies of legal disputes and resource allocation (Ch. 5). Shutter speed and lens aperture have swiftly altered the ‘depth of field’ of Italian politics, leaving a slice of the photo in focus while the background is thrown into a beautiful blur. As I grapple with methodological questions through my lens grinding, I find it hard to rely on already available framings for this media phenomenon. So, what exactly is Telestreet, and why has it fascinated such a broad audience? And more importantly, how do we make sense of it in the context of current activism and Italian politics? Telestreet is the name of a network of low-cost, pirate micro-broadcasters that came to life in 2002 in the climate of Prime Minister Berlusconi’s control on the Italian media. Street television channels only transmit to households within the range of a neighbourhood or street-wide zone, using shadow-cones of frequencies granted to commercial networks that are unusable because of territorial obstacles like buildings or hills. Each TV channel constitutes a node in a net, offering technical assistance and sharing a web-archive of broadcasting material with other street TVs—thereby considerably reducing production and distribution costs. This tactic amplifies their 37 coverage at a national level, it provides a relatively sustainable infrastructure despite the scarce economic and technical resources available, and it allows each node to maintain a considerable degree of autonomy (Ch. 5). The Telestreet group of activists and citizens is described as defending freedom of expression and information with a bottom-up communication model that promises to take the broadcasting frequencies and media power distribution by storm. Many social scientists would say that Telestreet is a perfect example of how civil society works: if it is not the social capital of Telestreet that will lead the State to adjust its policies (Purdue, 2007: 11), certainly the network’s presence will at least be a symbolic gesture by Italian citizens claiming their right to free communication (Tarrow, 2004). Parallel to the birth of Telestreet, a series of other actions and interventions took place, in which a plurality of organisations from civil society coalesced around various forms of protests. For Alberto Melucci, this kind of “new social movements” experiment with cultural values often through the deployment of alternative practices that speak to broader audiences (Melucci, 1996). Indeed, the last decade in Italy has seen a resurfacing of creative and theatrical strategies with traditional forms of direct action in the attempt to involve new actors in social change (Ch. 2; 4). Many of the Italian interventions during the first and second terms of Berlusconi’s government were successful in transversally connecting different groups beyond traditional left-right political divisions. They did so partly because of the implementation of creative strategies, and partly because their discourses focussed on safeguarding basic civic rights, rather than pushing a specific political agenda. The strategies adopted to protest Berlusconi’s conflict of interests range from the so-called Girotondi to events denouncing the ‘purging’ of journalists and comedians from the mainstream media because they were critical of his government. The Girotondi are a practice adopted by various citizen movements in Italy, starting from 2002 to protest Berlusconi’s government and defend the principle of democracy. In Italian girotondo is the game of ring-a-ring-o'-roses, and it was played around the symbols of those rights that were considered endangered by Berlusconi’s rule. For 38 example, people gathered around the main studios of the Italian public service broadcaster RAI in 19 Italian cities to protest Berlusconi’s interventions in its functioning (Societacivile.it, 2003). More recently, starting in 2009, events like the No Berlusconi Day have seen thousands of people dressed in purple turn out in the streets (Il Popolo Viola, 2009). According to social movement theorists like McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, social change takes place during moments of contestation like the ones described above (2001). In other words, society changes and evolves through contentious, oppositional politics sustained by members of civil society that engage the state to negotiate power arrangements and social rules. While still taking into consideration the social and economic conditions of emergence and persistence of these groups, these scholars mainly see society and its institutions as the result of fully social processes in which actors shape the identity of the groups involved (McAdam et al., 2001). For this reason, many studies of social movements focus on particular moments of contestation when political claims are articulated through collective practices, often innovatively, like the Girotondi I referred to above. In a similar vein, Touraine (1981) and Melucci (1996) view social movements’ actions as the medium through which social change takes place. Thus, although everyday practices are the means by which movements can define themselves and reach their goals during specific events (Melucci, 1989: 71–3), the latter are considered the triggers of social change. In particular, much research on social movements and activism focusses on the negotiation of collective representations that account for unity and cohesion during specific events, as well as on the strategic articulation of political goals. Ultimately, for all these scholars, it is the very ability of civil society to plan and engender moments of dialogue or confrontation, like town hall meetings or rallies, that makes social change possible. Again, with political economic conditions in the background, the focus of the analysis is on the presumed rational agency of individuals and groups. In the context of Italy’s climate of unrest against Berlusconi, Telestreet can easily be seen as functioning as a megaphone for the rights to free speech that groups articulate in “an 39 idiom that local audiences will recognise” (Tilly, 2004: 4)–– i.e. homemade television. Following research in social movement studies, we could say that Telestreet poses as a social movement––it assumes a particular attitude or stance. That is, it functions as a medium to articulate claims for a more democratic management of the Italian mass media and to formulate possible solutions to Berlusconi’s conflicts of interests (Purdue, 2007: 7). Finally, Telestreet’s identity functions as a ‘badge’ that institutional politicians and interest groups can wear as supporters of the freedom of communication and as critics of Prime Minister Berlusconi’s government. This is because social movements often possess ‘social capital’ that enables them to interact with other groups within civil society while they engage with the state (Purdue, 2007: 10–11). Due to the peculiarity of the Italian case (Berlusconi’s media monopoly), within a few months of existence, Telestreet quickly became a symbol of resistance and a medium to voice civil society’s concern about social justice. Yet, as is the case with many contemporary instances of social struggle, the actions organised by Italians to protest Berlusconi’s abuses of power––as well as the timid protests of neighbouring states at the European Union Parliament–– were ignored by the Italian institutions. This comes as no surprise when scholars like Touraine, Melucci and McAdam, for whom social movements are the carriers of social change, find it harder to conceive of a successful relationship between collective action and change in the present context of neoliberal governance (prop. 5). Broadly speaking, neoliberalism can be said two have two sides, a theoretical one and a geo-political one, which does not entirely mirror the ideas that gave origin to neoliberal practices in first place (Harvey, 2005). As an economic school of thought that already developed in the 40s and took hold in the 70s, neoliberalism proclaims that the best way to support efficient democratic rule and protect the economic health of nation states is by eliminating any control on the market and thus letting individual freedom unfold. In practice, the neoliberal doctrine is actualized as a general political-economic force that reorganizes societies by transferring control from public to the private sector. It functions 40 through privatization of government and infrastructural services, government deregulation and deep cuts to social spending that are enabled by strong alliances between a few very large corporations and a class of mostly wealthy politicians. This commitment to privatization, deregulation and cuts––what Naomi Klein dubs the freemarket trinity (Klein, 2008)––is also accompanied by policies that erode the public sphere, that free corporations of legal constraints and obligations of accountability to the public, and that justify governments’ distancing from a social welfare structure and tax system. Other features of neoliberalism include high unemployment rates and a tendency to rely on temp and flexible work. This is combined with a slow but steady dismantling of union and labour politics, by reliance on banks and the finance sector for the stabilization of government (and individual) deficits, by the substitution of public spending with programmes that are supposed to increase economic growth and productivity, by trade liberalization and by the elimination of tariffs to stimulate competition. Finally, the spread of neoliberalism cannot be separated from the financialization and free flow of capital across borders, without any oversight of financial institutions. As a consequence of these changes there has been growing social polarisation, where new small elites thrive as those in lower strata of society become more and more impoverished (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberal policies have been reconfiguring the geopolitical and economic face of the planet over the last thirty years through the patient and subtle work of think tanks, business schools and organizations that lobby or work together with political parties to influence public policy. With the help of international organizations for humanitarian relief and reconstruction like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as through foreign investment, neoliberal ideas and structures have taken root also in developing countries. In this context, the media also plays a fundamental role by contributing to a climate of fear in which specific forms of the economy thrive, by influencing public opinion, and overall by reinforcing a neoliberal world view (Harvey, 2005, Klein, 2008). Importantly, neoliberalism can be said to blur social and market values, celebrating the entrepreneurial potential of every person and re-routing any blame for the failure of the 47 massmediocritised communication flux” (AntTV et al., 2003) by hijacking the encrypted signal of the match. The use of a television transmitter and a rigged decoding card enables an inversion of the power relations organising the functions and qualities of the sport, thus returning football into a form of expression of which sociability and popular culture are the actual forms of content. This operation decrypts and breaks down the links among football, business and spectacle in which the form of content (capital) and the form of expression (sport) are seen as necessarily coupled. On Monday, February 2, 2004, I received an email from the Telestreet listserv passing on the news about a similar decryption action a day earlier in Scampia, one of the most degraded areas of the Neapolitan province. MA.GI.CA.TV, named after the three historical stars of the Napoli FC football team ––Maradona, Giordano, Careca––had delighted its audience with another free match, as well as with footage of local kids’ games. Although Napoli FC lost, “Sky must’ve had its grief too” the email joked. Match Score: Telestreet 2 – Sky 0. At another level of social formations, the one that harnesses broadcasting dynamics and cultural production, Telestreet effectuates a similar inversion, this time through the simple switching of two connectors in an antenna’s box. By switching cables, the device is changed from a receiver of signals to a sender–from passive to active medium. This practice of reverse engineering of tools, and of their attendant functions in the social field, for Candida TV, points at: “the intention to radically remould the perception of media, which means eliminating the prejudices about its non-interchangeability. Instead of one-way communication, from one to many, […] communication going from many to many” (Jankovi!, 2004). Temporary reversals of power are what characterises the practices by rebellious users’ who use tactical media “as a set of tactics by which the weak make use of the strong” (Garcia and Lovink, 1997). The ABC of Tactical Media, a manifesto for Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media tacticians is one of the many texts that call for creative resistance by groups and individuals who are excluded from the wider culture (Garcia and Lovink, 1997). Inspired by the work of the Situationist International, these media practitioners tap into 48 the practice of détournement and other tactics discussed in the French group’s writings. They aim to use the existing means of cultural expression to link a theoretical critique of modern society with an enacted critique, while maintaining a critical stance towards their own practices (McDonough, 2004: 164; 181). For tactical media practitioners, as well as for the Situationists, there is no separation between critique and action. Both are made manifest in the appropriation of elements of the spectacle on which contemporary social interaction is based. Tactical media engender hit-and-run, ad hoc stunts, pranks and other practices rooted in a fleeting moment that can cause a shift in the perception about dominant forces. This is a form of activism based on aesthetics and experimentation: a temporary grouping of actors, who come together around an action, only to disperse again, and maybe regroup under different formations for future undertakings. Temporary groupings, and temporary reversals of power: “just a few individuals who get together on the occasion, can improvise on and improve the formulas tested elsewhere by others. This type of uncoordinated action […] may usefully punctuate the dawning consciousness of the time” (Viénet in: McDonough, 2004: 183). What the Situationists wrote in the 60s reached its climax in the 90s, when activism manifested a new consciousness in tactical media, recombining old school political work, art and new technologies (Lovink and Schneider, 2003). The development and accessibility of consumer electronics and DIY technology enabled artists, hackers and activists to come together and rethink the role of media as tools whose parameters are “permanently under construction” (Lovink and Schneider, 2003) and that address emerging configurations of dominant powers in novel ways. The dawning consciousness of the time, summoned by René Viénet and his colleagues of the Internationale situationniste in 1967, was later articulated and incorporated into political analyses and micro-political practices after 1968. This consciousness is grounded in the realisation of living in a so-called society of control, first described by the American writer William Burroughs, and taken up by French philosophers like Gilles Deleuze. Control societies refer to the diagram describing the fluid power relations of 49 contemporary western capitalism that followed a (partial) shift from disciplinary societies. Disciplinary societies developed in the 18th and 19th century and were characterised by the organisation of major sites of confinement, for instance the family, school, hospitals and so on. After WWII we witness a breakdown of such sites of confinement and a decline of institutions in favour of “ultrarapid forms of apparently free-floating control that are taking over from the old disciplines at work within the time scales of closed systems” (Deleuze, 1995: 178). These new forms of control became increasingly predominant starting from the 1970s. Unlike disciplinary societies, control societies offer a new degree of freedom while contributing to indirect yet equally powerful forms of control. They are characterised by the use of computers and other information technologies and by a shift from production (of goods) to meta-production, selling services and buying activities (Deleuze, 1995: 181). It is this shift of waged labour from factories to immaterial labour that blurs the boundaries between work and leisure (Deleuze, 1995: 179), and sets the ground for the new arrangements of power and control, pervading society like a gas. In particular, marketing strategies function as a template for social activities ––ranging from life styles and politics to health care––and increasingly isolate individuals. For Maurizio Lazzarato, production here is directly the production of social relations for capitalist accumulation, and the “raw material” of immaterial labour is subjectivity itself, as well as the environment in which subjectivities are reproduced. Importantly, the production of subjectivities is no longer predominantly an instrument of governmental social control that functions through self-discipline and the creation of docile bodies, as in disciplinary societies. In control societies, dominant processes of subjectivation also become productive of active consumers/communicators whose agency seems limitless when functioning within consumption-based social dynamics, which they sustain and relay: “Immaterial workers (those who work in advertising, fashion, marketing, television, cybernetics, and so forth) satisfy a demand by the consumer and at the same time establish that demand” (1996: 132). This is why so many current practices of resistance focus on the construction of networks of solidarity and on alternative forms of socialization and cooperation. They redefine the body and the subject as crucial sites of 50 resistance against modulated control and aim to develop alternative collective values and practices that engender subjectivities that thrive outside of logics of consumption. These practices range from looking back to past histories of social struggle and community structures to developing new ways of making strategic use of available resources like DIY technology (Ch. 2–8). They are hardly noticeable if observed through more traditional lenses of oppositional strategies and ‘civil society vs. state’ power dynamics. In a society of control, the commodification of information and life styles is inextricably connected with the development of cybernetics––“a theory of messages and their control” (Crary, 1984: 292). It is at this intersection between information technology and information as commodity that we also find a shift in the social functions of television, increasingly overlapping and networked with other forms of consumer electronics, especially computers. Television’s content does no longer merely constitute a simulacrum of life but reduces all signs to free flowing elements that can be made compatible and sold with the rest of the available information flows (Crary, 1984: 287– 289). More precisely, the increased connectedness among different information distribution media, and the content transmitted have effects that range from the boom of the entertainment industry thriving on these flows to the creation of mass mediated social imaginaries based on consumer identities (Ch. 3; 5). The circulation of information itself has an impact that goes beyond signification to affect new social arrangements (Ch. 4). It is in this context we understand that tactical media’s attempt to tackle control societies’ expanding grid of control by constantly intervening in these semiotic flows and the power relations they sustain. Here, capture and co-option of symbols and practices for market purposes become the main reasons to opt for ephemeral and nomadic structures. So, then, tactical media’s purpose, if there is one, is nomadic, mobility, always opening up new spaces, platforms and channels for rebellion and questioning: “once the enemy has been named and vanquished it is the tactical practitioner whose turn it is to fall into crisis” (Garcia and Lovink, 1997). Movement seems to be the purpose for tactical media, not simply because it allows on-going renewal of the tactics and of self-critique but 51 especially because it is fundamental in finding cracks and empty spaces in the media; to intervene in the system; to find new targets; to unsettle; to keep up with technological innovations and newly developed forms of control––to effect reversals. In their words, tactical media practitioners study “the techniques by which the weak become stronger than the oppressors by scattering, by becoming centreless, by moving fast across the physical or media and virtual landscapes. The hunted must discover the ways to become the hunter” (Garcia and Lovink, 1997). Telestreet’s second national meeting, Eterea II, was held in Senigallia in March 2004, in support of Discovolante TV, closed by the authorities a few months earlier. Aside for discussing the future orientation of the network, the meeting was also marked by the participation of some of the founding members of the tactical media movement, interested in the innovation brought about by this tactical project. In an interview I conducted at Eterea II on behalf of the network, tactical media pioneer David Garcia foresaw the end of Telestreet, once the Italian political crisis was over (Telestreet, 2004). It was not to take on the infamous prophetic role of Cassandra, but in the spirit of tactical media that Garcia celebrated the reversals of power brought about by Telestreet, while emphasising that they would only suffice in uncovering the problematic arrangement of media in the country. Unless new effective strategies were developed, Telestreet’s endurance and potential institutionalisation would inevitably constitute its capture and demise by dominant powers. Three years later, the media tactician openly declared the death of tactical media as an efficient form of political activism because of its definitive co-option by capital, turning culture and creativity into commodities and economic resources (Garcia, 2006). The essay raised the problem of a new split between artist and activists, precisely on the basis of the commercial cannibalisation of creativity. For Garcia, neoliberal rhetoric of ‘freedom’ and ‘creativity’ has re-opened an old fault-line dividing artists from political activists. This resulted in producing mere epiphenomena of communicative capitalism not only tolerated but consumed and appropriated by it (Garcia, 2006). This, apparently, has the effect of ‘de-politicising’ and subtracting credibility from 52 tactical media. Garcia calls for new connections between short lived tactics and more sustainable strategies of dissent: “It is not that cultural or information politics are not important, it is just that outside of a broader context and strategy of meaningful confrontations they are simply not enough” (Garcia 2006). The Situationists’ strategies to undermine the spectacle in society have turned themselves into a spectacle––R.I.P. tactical media. If mere inversions of power and constant movement are not enough anymore to engender effective forms of resistance within neoliberal governmentality, what is Telestreet’s purpose? And why or how is it still functioning? Garcia’s call for sustainable strategies has not gone unheeded. Or better, long before Garcia lamented the need to harness tactical forms of activism in a more sustainable context, activists had already incorporated DIY creative and aesthetic tactics into their modes of protest (Ch. 4). Still, there seems to be something more to Telestreet than simply being an attempt to harness temporary inversions of power and make them endure. It seems rather that Telestreet doubles the bet, moving beyond temporary inversions of roles and power by embodying not only social critique but also one possible solution to the social problem it addresses. Tactical media appropriate sign and symbols to deterritorialise the codes that fix the social imaginary along the logic of the market. Telestreet détourns tactical media; it pushes this practice to its limit by not simply using a medium, but being the medium that others can use: “We are television and we circulate messages that disturb and change the spectators' usual perspective. In this way we stimulate criticism, we create visions of multiplied reality” (Jankovi! 2004). Media activism is often associated with attempts to portray events as close as possible to reality. Yet, since the language of television is never neutral and always manipulative, many street television channels openly, humorously and purposelessly embrace this manipulation, offering narratives and visions of possible worlds that push manipulation into creation. Criticism and creation go hand in hand, but criticism is only implicit in the process of creation (Ch. 5). This means that to tell the story of Telestreet as an anti-Berlusconi movement is to tell only part of the story. Defying much of the media attention that 53 created the hype about the project, the Telestrittari (people involved in Telestreet nodes) do not strictly see themselves as the paladins of the anti-media consolidation crusades. Granted that they were engendered within the context of Berlusconi’s rise to power and are critical of it, Telestreet does not conceive of itself primarily as a movement causing power inversions (Ch. 5). “Reverse engineering” is a practice that requires the unpacking of the functions and modes of devices. With the traditional television model morphing into a networked grid for the flow of heterogeneous data, symbols and codes of semio-capitalism (Berardi, 2007), it becomes harder to talk about a simple reversal between spectators and creators of images, consumers and producers of desires and lifestyles. Can we still argue that a remoulding of the perception of the media takes place through a simple reversal? Through the anti-television model of communication “from many to many” currently taking over the traditional broadcast system, Telestreet’s reverse engineering process investigates the interoperability of television with other forms of accessible technology and alternative modes of socialisation that surpass communicating and distributing information: “if television killed the streets, we return it to the site of the crime […] Television is a weapon. The screen reality must be squatted. Weapons are in our hands, beware! If there is a big brother, Candida [tv] is his little sister…” (Jankovi!, 2004). The concept of interoperability, more than the idea of reverse engineering (of the social and of semio-capitalist structures) opens up the possibility for a qualitative transformation of tactical resistance (Prop. 5-6) into autonomous practices that facilitate the continuous self-fashioning of meaning rather than yet again forcing subjects through streams of disjunct objects and affects (Crary, 1984: 289). Street television literally and figuratively becomes a (strategic) relay of multiple realities and ways of (re)directing its codes and flows of meaning, on more than one level. This is where the ongoing selfcritical attitude, inherited from the Situationists and from tactical media, enables processes of reverse engineering to reach deeper levels, in order to connect, interface and more efficiently relay different realities. 54 Telestreet detourns tactical media’s inversions into perversions of power, it moves from symbolic temporary inversions of forces between mainstream and independent media to a perversion of the television model as an interoperable concept always under construction because rooted in its collectivism. This tactical concept of television enables the strategic embodiment of plural experiences and a search for non-representative political forms through “active participation in socialized knowledge” (Virno, 2004: 13). This knowledge is partly created in the act of working together, and partly by harnessing this work in already available resistant practices and discourses (Ch. 5) Thus, the telestreettari find their own fulfillment in their practice of being together, and not in any end product (Virno, 2004: 13). To paraphrase the Situationists once more, Telestreets refuses traditional forms of communication but also turns this refusal into a constructive project (McDonough, 2004: 134) of collective creation. Telestreet is not a tactical media practice but it draws on it and turns tactical media into a strategic, autonomous medium with no fixed purpose other than an ongoing perversion of power relations, i.e. the creation of “multiplied reality”. Proposition three: Telestreet is a counter-public Bangalore, India: a media workshop organised by artist Shaina Anand for the students of Srishti School of Art Design and Technology turns the multi-ethnic Russel market into a “microcosm, a temporary utopia” (Anand et al., 2005). In it, students interact with vendors and visitors, producing the television content that the latter wish. For a few days, all sorts of programmes are showcased by a network of cabled TV sets placed in the aisles between the market stalls: songs, poetry, dancing, re-enactment of movie scenes, talent shows, but also serialised features and portraits, “time-lapsed shorts about the 24- hour cycle of the market and its environs, photo essays, promos, signature tunes and animations in more than four languages” (Anand et al., 2008: 335–6). The programming is enriched with live broadcasting, open fora, and “tele-jamming”––inserting different content between sections––during cricket matches or screenings of pirated movies. Through the use of video, the market becomes a site for the exchange and sharing of 55 memories, experiences and personal narratives. We could argue that this is an example of the self-creation and self-organisation of a public as a site for the reflexive circulation of discourses (Warner, 2002: 62). More precisely, Warner sees publics and counter-publics, as the result, rather than the starting point of communication between humans: a public is understood as an ongoing space of encounter for discourse (2002: 90). This space is clearly present in Anand’s account of the ‘Rustle TV’ project: “the site of the market was the public realm, its people were the audience and performers who determined the content and in turn received what the students gave them by way of their performance” (Anand et al., 2008: 332). In addition to this, the workshop underscores the temporary aspect of publics, as well as their intepellative element (Warner, 2002: 86 ). Publics are not static entities, they come into being through their self-creating capacities and through the reflexive circulation of discourses— but they disappear once these activities cease. Finally, Rustle TV is a reminder of the fact that a public needs to be self-organized through discourse rather than external frameworks to produce a sense of belonging and activity (Warner, 2002: 52). It is only through the collective work of the students and the market dwellers that the public can be (temporarily) projected from the concrete experience of a world that is shared (Warner, 2002: 63). A public is a useful concept and a discursive practice that aims at empowering those who come together around issues they share. Warner is not alone in recognizing the importance of participating in a public to discursively involve oneself in civic life (2002: 52). Other scholars who have discussed the political role of publics and the public sphere(s) foreground the value of feelings of commonality, communication and participation in the empowerment of political subjects (e.g. Arendt, 1998, Fraser, 2008, Habermas et al., 1989). In this context independent communication is often seen as contributing to the emergence of such public spheres. Traditional media, like television, are being celebrated as spaces where this form of communication can be enabled. In a similar vein, Telestreet has been described as exemplifying “the desire to redesign the contours of the Habermasian public sphere in a mediatic context that stifles innovation, creativity, and diversity” (Ardizzoni, 56 2008). Telestreet’s ability to ‘squat’ the streets––as well as the air waves–– is, according to Michela Ardizzoni, the concretization of a spatial activism reclaiming the boundaries of public space and of the public sphere (2008). In addition to this, projects like Telestreet can be seen as developing a new consciousness of communication rights and a claim to such rights within a new Public Domain of media (Pasquinelli, 2003). Another example of this emerging consciousness is the “People's Communication Charter”: a project that mobilises groups to express concern with the quality of the current communication environment and to play an active role in shaping the cultural environment, as well as the production and distribution of information and culture (www.pccharter.net). For media scholar and activist Matteo Pasquinelli, Public Domain refers to “a sphere which does not belong neither to the State nor to the Market, but to the whole society, and it is managed and controlled by the society itself” (Pasquinelli, 2003). By “giving voice to the voiceless” (Ardizzoni, 2008), the presence of antagonistic publics in the public sphere of media––what Warner calls counter-publics––not only enables dialogue among dominant and minority groups but it also fosters the development of and exposure to alternative practices of “embodied sociability, affect, and play” that may be transformative, rather than merely replicative of dominant models (Warner, 2002: 88). Although Warner specifies that publics do not have agency, if not at a discursive level, what they do have is the capacity to constitute a presence in the public sphere that opposes dominant public discourse and may create the conditions for social change. Linz, Austria, September 2005: Rustle TV meets Telestreet channel Orfeotv at the festival Ars Electronica. While the split screen in the background blasts the images and sounds from Russel market, conversation quickly moves to what it means “to take media to a space”, whether the market or a neighbourhood. The group touches upon how television shapes the social imaginary of both countries, how to pick the right technology and calibrate interventions to on-the-ground knowledge of the sites, how to open up spaces that would otherwise be closed. 63 artists, feminists, “proletarians” picked up, developed and incorporated some of the theories circulating at the time in their experiments with socio-political practices outside of a logic of capital. These included, but were not limited to, autonomous education or work groups, zines and journals, music, and the free, independent radios. It is in these kinds of practice that, following Foucault, it is possible to see the extent to which ideas make an impact and are able to emanate the force necessary to produce (sometimes otherwise imperceptible) shifts and transformations (Ch. 2). In order to investigate how individuals and groups come together around ideas such as the ones above, researchers have followed Foucault’s method for an archaeological analysis of discourses, or discursive practices (e.g. Fairclough, 2003). This operation takes place through a search for “systems of statements” with particular modalities of existence that constitute a discursive formation. More precisely, archaeological analysis requires an analysis of the groups of verbal performances that come together within what Foucault calls statements, searching for regularity in the dispersion of such statements to map how they come to constitute a discursive formation (1972: 107). Fast-forwarding to the time of political ferment in which Telestreet was born (Ch. 4), what does it mean to look at their discursive practices––the place “in which a tangled plurality –at once superimposed and incomplete—of objects is formed and deformed, appears and disappears” (Foucault, 1972: 48)? What are the discursive relations, the groups of relations that discourse must establish in order to speak of Telestreet, in order to “deal with them, name them, analyse them, classify them, explain them, etc.” (Foucault, 1972: 46)? I listen to one of the most exciting interviews about ‘the making of a media activist’ and try to think through media activism as a discursive formation. My interviewee tells me about disillusionments with crystallised and stagnant statements informing and animating local discourses on activism. He tells me of a 2003 summer camp to protest the presence of detention centres in southern Italy as a way to cure his ‘activist burn-out’ without completely disengaging from politics. We discuss the increasingly (and forever 64 increasing) harsh treatment immigrants receive once they are washed up on the shores of ‘the garden of Europe’, as some Italians still like to call their country. From the late nineties on, activists have been using cameras for documentation purposes, but also as proof of police brutality during rallies. Simultaneously, the independent, grassroots documentaries available online and through activist networks have multiplied. Nicola tells me about how, during the camp, more or less by chance, he ends up with a video camera in his hands while gate-crashing a detention centre in Bari to document the infrastructure of the camp and the stories and complaints of its inmates. Still more or less by chance, he manages to hide the tape with the footage before the police destroy all visual evidence of the event. Some inmates escape. Rumours have it that one of them is now a football player, and others found work. “Alessandra, since then I could not put the camera down” (Nicola, 2008) is all he needs to say. Already, I can isolate some statements coming from other discursive formations (e.g., about transnational flows of people, human rights, rights to citizenship, but also statements on geopolitics). These are relayed, come together, combine with other statements (e.g., freedom of communication, counter-information, critique of cultural production, the symbolic power of broadcast images, media consolidation) and start delineating a possible regularity (and shift of the statements) in what we could call media activism as a discursive formation. Telestreet’s discourses develop at the intersections between some of them and others that can be identified through further analysis. For Foucault, statements are not phenomena of expression, they cannot be ascribed to specific unified and unifying subjects; they cannot be attributed to ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledgeable’ individuals. Rather, the latter are various dispersed enunciative modalities, they are functions derived from statements (1972: 54–5). Nor are statements simple linguistic units, “Far from being the principle of individualization of groups of ‘signifiers’ […] the statement is that which situates these meaningful units in a space in which they breed and multiply” (Foucault, 1972: 100). Statements are constantly differentiating themselves. In addition to this, statements always border other statements that constitute their external limit and condition their 65 enunciative function. This means that Telestreet’s statements cannot be simply found in their language; that they cannot really be ascribed to the telestrittari, but rather situate the latter within a field of statements that are linked to practices and modes of subjectivation; and that they refer to a series of statements by adapting, commenting, countering them (and their associated field); they refer to all formulations enabled by, and whose status can be shared by that statement (Ch. 5). Looking to isolate these elements and understand how they come to constitute a discursive formation, perhaps media activism, I watch an online video of the detention centre action (Noborder, 2003). I watch a fence, and pliers cutting it. I watch people sneaking in with their cameras and a banner. Of course, I hear them chant “No borders, no nations, stop deportation”, and the detainees’ answer “Freedom! Freedom!” Yet, the bruises they have from the police beatings and the metal mesh they speak through are not discursive, they are real––material. They are certainly more real and material than an abstract call to stop detention and deportations, which does not necessarily have the performative function it would like to have. And real are the soldiers escorting “aliens” out of the country or arresting (and lately releasing) the protesters. There is a materiality to these practices that reminds us about Foucault’s emphasis on another aspect of his archaeological analysis of discourse, namely the non-discursive as constitutive of the statement itself (1972: 101). This materiality does not merely refer to the actual tools, resources and communication means used in contemporary struggles for social justice. Much more than this, it plays out in the localised existence of ‘institutionalised’ settings in which statements create their objects and their attendant subject positions (Foucault, 1972: 163–4; 46). Here, I think of the institutions and the statements that ‘create’ national borders and ‘aliens’. I also think of the ‘material’ social networks of migration and media activism with an enunciative force that enables the transformation of an anti-deportation supporter into a media activist and eventually into a telestrittaro. 66 There are other non-discursive elements, which fulfil a fundamental role in the complementary space of non-discursive formations such as the rallies and actions mentioned, with their attendant practices and the processes they trigger. For Foucault: the statement, as it emerges in its materiality, appears with a status, enters various networks and various fields of use, is subjected to transferences or modifications, is integrated into operations and strategies in which its identity is maintained or effaced. Thus the statement circulates, is used, disappears, allows or prevents the realization of a desire, serves or resists various interests, participates in challenge and struggle, and becomes a theme of appropriation or rivalry (1972: 105). Hence, there is a need to look at institutions, processes and social relations that enable the articulation of a discursive formation. Ultimately, however, this discourse can articulate and mutate in the social field only because of non-discursive practices that are external to it (Foucault, 1972: 164). Both media activism and no-border activism at the beginning of this millennium can be analysed as discursive formations, yet they are connected to actual groups and individuals, and their non-discursive practices. How does one struggle for and against ideas? The ideas and forces Foucault refers to in “Reportage des idées” are microphysical power relations mutually implicated in the constitution of fields of knowledge and diffused within a social field (Foucault, 1979: 27). To be able to understand these relations at given times and in given contexts, Deleuze takes up Foucault’s concept of a diagram––the display/plane of the relations among the forces that localise power and compose both discursive and non-discursive formations: “The diagram acts as a non-unifying immanent cause that is coextensive with the whole social field […] and these relations between forces take place ‘not above’ but within the very tissue of the assemblage they produce” (Foucault, 1972: 36–37). Forces can only be identified through the points they traverse, so that there is no diagram that does not include certain points of creativity, inversion and resistance and which are forever changing. In this sense, diagrams function as processual maps of the (micro)relations that engender change in the social. 67 By analysing the “formation and transformation of a body of knowledge”, it becomes possible to avoid assigning a central position to individual or collective consciousness, to rational ‘revolutionary’ subjects. Thus, looking at how one struggles for and against ideas would explain how discursive practices emerge and how bodies of knowledge play out in behaviour and strategies which offer up a theory of society and affect that behaviour and those strategies (Foucault, 1972: 195). This is the kind of operation Foucault seems to be referring to in the introductory quote. But what does it mean to ask “How does one struggle for and against ideas?” Laying an emphasis on mapping movement between objects is an ontological and ethical issue (Deleuze, 1988b: 297–98) that underlies a different way of perceiving agency in the social, as well as political knowledge. Looking at the relation between points/forces can do more than just help us understand these functions: thinking through concepts like processual mapping strives towards a practice of thought and action that uses these same objects as reference points, as “signs pointing beyond themselves” (Bogue, 2004: 334). It understands change as an ongoing flow from which to draw and forge a series of new connections, new assemblages or mechanisms. This is why “to write is to struggle and resist; to write is to become; to write is to draw a map” (Deleuze, 1988b: 297–98). From this perspective, Telestreet may even be looked at as a discursive formation, however, what really needs to be proposed is not another definition of the project, especially if cut off from its non-discursive elements. What we want to do is to draw this map as a way to tap into, relay, interrupt, or follow and divert the lines that come to engender Telestreet for what it is, and what it can become (Ch. 5-8). Proposition Five: Telestreet is a terrorist organisation In the era of intangible weaponry, some of the biggest guns of all are deployed by the media. (Toffler and Toffler 1997) From: [email protected] 68 Date: January 18, 2005 8:12:20 PM EST Subject: [Media] Terrorism and Telestreet The eyes of the Viminale (Ministry of Interior) on the Telestreet phenomenon. “Often close to antagonistic movements” (ANSA) - ROME, 18 JAN –Policing eyes on the so-called Telestreet, “street televisions” or “neighbourhood televisions.” This is revealed in the Ministry of Interior’s Report to Parliament. The chapter “Terrorism and Subversion” says that “these pirate broadcasters are often close to social centres and transmit alternative programs with the aim of creating a Global network with independent communication channels for antagonistic movements. From: [email protected] Date: January 21, 2005 3:40:27 PM EST Subject: [Media] Terrorism and Telestreet – Bulgarelli’s Response Security: Bulgarelli (Green Party), Viminale baffled about street tv; questioning after the analysis of the phenomenon (ANSA) - ROME, 19 JAN - ''It is really baffling that the Ministry of the Interior decided to include Telestreet in the chapter “Terrorism and Subversion” in the Report to Parliament on Order and Public Security. This is the statement of Green party MP Mauro Bulgarelli who requested from the Minister of the Interior a hearing on the matter. Bulgarelli explains: “we are confronted with another move in a campaign launched by Minister of the Interior Pisanu to criminalise social movements.” The MP continues: “Street televisions are reported to be close to the social centres and part of a general project defined as “global network”. For Bulgarelli: “these autonomous, non-profit experiments should be supported and funded by the State, not depicted as dangerous breeding grounds for terrorism.” ANSA (the Italian associated press). In their foreword to In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, social scientists Alvin and Heidi Toffler describe an emerging mode of interaction and power distribution between media, governments and various stakeholders (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997b). Within these “complex coalitions”, media technological innovation–– the so-called Third Wave ––is not a tool but an active element formatting and shaping “networks of alliance”, or “deep coalitions”: three nation-states, fourteen civil society organizations, a narcotraficante here or there, a couple of private corporations with their own self-interests at stake, an individual speculator, and who knows what other components. The deep coalition involves players at many levels of the system. It is multidimensional, with all of these groups operating all the time, in continuous flow – multiplying, fissioning, then fusing into others, and so on. It is 69 part of a nonequilibrial order in which there may be instability at one level and temporary stability at another (1997: xix) Although such assemblages with their peculiar combination of parts may remind us more of a screenplay for a Hollywood blockbuster than of a sociological case study, the formation above is considered symptomatic of contemporary strategies adopted by state and non-state actors to wield power. This increased merging of diverse actors and media on the basis of political discourses, private self-interest, speculation and outright criminality becomes clearer when thinking of capital accumulation as a crystallization of power (Nitzan, 1998). That is, if we think of capitalism not as an economic process but as a social order in which the action or inaction of certain actors has a significant effect on others’ ideas and practices. It is this relationship, not productivity itself that makes accumulation possible while drawing on population and technical knowledge as resources: “accumulation is an interaction between productivity and power” (Nitzan, 1998: 174; 180). Information, and information technologies play a major role in this process and are therefore also the main focus of studies for the economic restructuring of countries and their military systems. Indeed, elaborating on some of the overall effects the recombination of human actors, resources and social forces have on larger configurations of global power systems, Toffler and Toffler (as well as Nitzan and Foucault) lay an emphasis on the development of different relationships to this knowledge for the creation or the destruction of new system of wealth: the new system is based less on “balance of power” relations among major nations than on the ability to configure the right combination of players at every level. More important than the balance of power is the “power of balance”—the ability of a major state to keep its senses in the midst of this turbulence, and to match its economic and military capabilities with high-level knowledge resources. (1997: xix-xx) The continuous dismantling and reforming of assemblages across social and economic domains does not merely entail the coming together of various actors to guide the stream of capital. It also, equally, implies a relation among terms––including any material and 70 intangible resources––to impact the development of social practices, and consequently the unfolding of new modes of collective subjectification of the population. Accompanying these shifts in economic discourses and structures is a mutation in governmental techniques in the name of social interests. For Foucault, liberalism and neoliberalism turn politics into a mode of dealing with individual and collective interests: “the new governmental reason […] deals with […] interests, which precisely constitute politics and its stakes; it deals with interests, or that respect in which a given individual, thing, wealth, and so on interests other individuals or the collective body of individuals” (2008: 45). In the name of safeguarding these interests and wealth, states also take on the task of protecting citizens from any internal or external threat. Knowledge about technology and information dynamics play more and more into the balancing acrobatics sustaining or hampering both civilian economies and global geopolitical arrangements of power. In particular, with increased access to technology, the agency of civilian in critiquing, opposing or sabotaging the dominant order has increased considerably, thereby blurring the line between military and civilian threats, between fields of struggle and control (Toffler and Toffler 1997:xviii-xix). That is, with the boundaries between war and civilian guerrilla opposition blurring, governments find themselves looking for threats outside of the traditional military and paramilitary formations. The US-based RAND corporation offers an illustrative example of the kind of inquiries about “networked warriors,” or “civil society netwarriors,” that states are commissioning for the purpose of public safety. This American think-tank studies social justice movements on behalf of the US government with the help of sociologists hired to develop “non partisan” case studies and provide suggestions for counter-strategies to neutralize them: “Netwar is the lower-intensity, societal level counterpart to our earlier, mostly military concept of cyberwar. Netwar has a dual nature […] in that it is composed of conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, and ethnonationalist extremists; and by civil-society activists on the other” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001: xi) The activist groups included in the list of examples for netwarriors includes campaigners for the 71 removal of landmines and pacifists (Zanini and Edwards, 2001). RAND’s in-depth analyses underline the challenges posed by the novel character of contemporary social struggles based on information and knowledge circulation and set the criteria to discover an appropriate response. In this context, politically motivated social researchers do well to remember how their “non-partisan” inquiries could easily become tools of repression of basic civil rights. Among the suggested strategies to deal with dissenting voices is the dismissal of all efforts to debate the political and social issues raised by civil society’s organizations. Then, if the level of attention of citizens and members of civil society becomes so high that it is difficult to avoid any discussions, “counter-netwar” should be waged: Since network designs are inherently information intensive, counterterrorism efforts should target the information flows of netwar groups. […] Equally important, policymakers should consider going beyond the passive monitoring of information flows and toward the active disruption of such communications. […] Increased emphasis on targeting information flows should not exclude non-electronic efforts to gather intelligence and undermine the network (Zanini and Edwards, 2001: 53). Repression of networks constituted within civil society becomes a necessary step in the interest of the wellbeing and safety of populations, especially after the 9-11 attacks. To this end, the Italian Ministry of Interior’s Reports to Parliament on Police Activity, Public Security and Organized Crime, issues a special section on Terrorism and Subversion that sets the ground to take action against (potentially) dangerous collective actors. In 2005, this section described street televisions as: “close to the squatters movement and broadcasting alternative programmes that aim at creating a global network of independent channels for antagonistic movements” (ANSA, 2005a). In order to map the emergence of social formations we need to look for the points of intersection and clash among various forces. The emails reported at the beginning of this proposition signal a particularly complex encounter and layering of statements. They do more than simply construct media activism as a political force. In the first email, the encounter of the statements by activists with other fields of statements about the global 72 economy, individual and collective freedoms, law, dissent and the security of populations, takes place within a configuration of discursive relations sustained by the existence of institutions of the Italian State, together with other stakeholders and international bodies. This is how the Ministry of Interior can speak of Telestreet through statements that name and classify them as “terrorist” and be prepared to deal with them according to strategies of defense that draw on the abovementioned bordering statements about domestic or alien threats by “netwarriors” (Ch. 2; 4). The second email reported adds further data to the analysis. Telestreet’s support by some left-leaning parties and personalities locates the project in the crossfire of institutional political battles between Berlusconi’s ruling majority and those in the opposition who not only disagree with his political agenda but also denounce the Prime Minister’s conflict of interests (Prop. 1). Green Party MP Mauro Bulgarelli is one of the politicians attempting to legalise the network’s status, recognizing its value for local communities (Ch. 5). In his call for an investigation about the report, Bulgarelli emphasizes Telestreet’s heterogeneous composition and names it as a valuable organ of Italian civil society: “these autonomous, non-profit experiments should be supported and funded by the State, not depicted as dangerous breeding grounds for terrorism” (ANSA, 2005b). Bulgarelli also denounces the government’s attempt to criminalise social movements––a trend that is on the rise in many countries with high stakes in the implementation of neoliberal economic policies that undercut states’ social responsibilities towards their citizens. Two sets of discourses can be seen to collide as the stakes and interests of the majority’s legitimizing their presence in the government and its opposition define Telestreet. Since the Berlusconi government started systematically dismantling the Italian welfare state to allow more competitiveness on the market and more wealth for the nation, the Italian Federation of Greens, or Green Party, has been involved in direct actions against the economic restructuring and media censorship. The collision between these two discursive formations on the same institutional ground locates Telestreet in a zone of tension between the illocutionary act of naming them a terrorist organization and valuing them as a social and cultural resource. Although never completely, the tension can only be 79 The social itself is thus conceptualised as a system of relations: “a system that implies a relation and sustains it” (Simondon, 2006: 175). Again, the relation between the individual and the collective is not pre-given, but is exactly what emerges and shapes both terms through interaction. In other words, individuation, both personal and collective, takes place through practice. What I become when I look through my camera can only unfold through what I do with Telestreet and in the act of writing this text. Guattari and Simondon are certainly not the only ones to point at information and communication technology as important factors in processes of subjectivation, resonating with memory and social intelligence but especially with our sensibilities and affects. Yet, they are among the few who do clarify that this is not mechanistic causal thought à la McLuhan. The limit set by the camera or TV screen is certainly not the only one that helps Telestreet’s experimentation, yet it is one of those thresholds past which different relations and conceptions of subjectivity and alterity are engendered, not determined, with the aid of technical objects. This is because the screen is both connected with the time-space in which we are present, and it also has to go though a virtual limit where the outside can once again be folded in (Foucault, 1998). By folding along the line between the two planes of “reality” separated by the interface, the subject engaging with Telestreet can re-actualise the influence of the medium of television onto herself. This is an important objective of the project, as the shouting mainstream TV host declares in the “Telestreet” video: “[Inserted commercial film footage of a TV presenter in front of a screaming crowd] This is mass folly, you are all crazy, for God’s sake you are real, it is us who are only an illusion” (Telestreet, 2003). Thinking beyond the cliché idea of a blurring between producer and consumer, we abandon the much heralded birth of the “prosumer” characteristic of nineties technodeterminism. Many of the Telestreet nodes are not “prosuming” information. They are not creating to consume but are creating the conditions for modes of relation that draw on technology to creatively set the ground for new encounters. As Sandro Verna from insu^tv explains, much of their work aims at stopping “the spiral of silence”, the feeling of isolation that people have when they are not aware of the 80 existence of others that share the same views, and to whom they can relate (Verna and Renzi, 2005). Against this isolation, insu^tv constantly connect, disconnect, incorporate, synthesise and assemble together every element available that can sustain their work (Ch. 5). As Guattari emphasizes, what is important is not the final result but the fact that this experimentation coexists with processes of subjectivation, by reterritorializing the means of production of subjectivity (1996: 198). Telestreet’s combination of television, technology and the Internet with their videomakers and media activists exceeds the creation of a network and any other imposed scales between communities, borders and other imposed boundaries, new and old subject positions. Telestreet is not a form of political subjectivity, it is a (changing) set of practices, experimenting with social relations indissolubly connected to processes of subjectivation and collective individuation. To talk about subjectivation through action is to talk about politics. Conclusions Looking What has my lens grinding allowed me to see? What was the effect of repeating this same gesture over and over? I squinted and ground: Telestreet is not a social movement but it brings up the question of movement within the social––it tells us about social change as relation, and about the possibility of talking about and intervening in these relations. As a member, the case study of Teletreet/insu^tv is a useful and familiar entry point into an analysis of the Italian non-institutional political field because it enables me to talk about social struggles, while still participating in them. Telestreet is not simply a tactical media practice that engenders power inversions. It enables the strategic perversion of the dominant role of communication, as well as the creation of a multiplied reality through the reverse engineering of informational components and social habits that produce new forms of interoperability. That is, Telestreet can be looked at as a set of practices that move us away from a simple critique 81 of the spectacle of television and of the celebration of techno-power to facilitate the creation of forms of sociability. The focus on the production of relations, rather than on the (albeit temporary) tactics and discourses against dominant powers contributes to a genealogy of the project while bringing to the fore its pedagogical elements. Telestreet is not a counter-public. It bypasses oppositional politics as a mode of publicity in a society of control and opts for a vernacular, minor status that keeps the process of power perversion and reality creation open and in ongoing interaction with political economic forces. Telestreet may be described as a discursive formation. However, Foucault’s analyses of discursive and non-discursive formations animating political struggles calls for a practice of processual mapping of social relations, rather than for theoretical prowess in representing groups. Processual mapping exceeds traditional modes of representational descriptions to facilitate new creative connections between theory and praxis; knowledge production and agency; social research and political struggles. Telestreeet is not a terrorist organization. Rather, the battle for the legitimization of projects like Telestreet unfolds through discursive and non-discursive practices that play out in a field of power relations that decompose already individuated bio-social-technical assemblages and (re)compose new ones. Looking at insu^tv as one outcome of Telestreet offers an example of how these recompositions are also affected by a kind of contagious experimentation that draws on past political practices and discourses while adapting to changing external forces. Finally, beyond crystallizing the static subject position of ‘media activist,’ Telestreet opens up a space for political experiments with assemblages that cannot be isolated from a discussion of and from the actual process of subjectivation. Subjectivation cannot be separated from the practices that enable it; this is not limited to political actors but also draws attention to the agency of the activist researcher developing alternative modes of being in the field. Reflections 82 Lenses help us see well but they also reflect. My choice of starting with lenses and with Spinoza originated from and sparked a series of reflections and refractions. First of all, whereas all objects of research can be defined through propositions, the mapping of relations is linked to the concept of composition. More precisely, the use of propositions in philosophy has mostly been connected with a statement, which defines a predicate of a subject or object as either true or false. After having moved away from looking at Telestreet as an object of research, each proposition was invalidated as neither true nor false but it engaged a series of compositions and connections made among various elements and terms of the analysis. Setting the stage with the first proposition, we went from position to movement to look at social change from the perspective of a cartographic mapping of relations. Second, for Spinoza, bodies, and I include collective ones, are composed by their affects. That is, they are defined by the way they affect other bodies or are affected by them; by how they enter in composition, engendering creation or destruction (Spinoza, 1992). His focus on processes of change from the perspective of relation unavoidably leads to an analysis of the practices developed by single individuals as well as groups to affect and be affected. This operation not only addresses the relationship among Telestreet’s members, and between Telestreet and the outside, but it also and especially extends to my relation to my work with them and to the milieux in which all of the above unfolds. Disregarding this last aspect would not only be disingenuous but also methodologically unsound, given my theoretical framework. Third, the relation among composing forces and their folding into individuated assemblages does not only address the results of my work but my own subjectivity as soon as I enter into composition with the Telestreet groups. In particular, my experience of working with insu^tv during my work in Naples and the long distance collaborations have affected (and are affecting) me in ways that can only be rendered in the process of composing this text, with the intention of creating a relay between my existential territories, our collective frames of signification, my professional and political commitments, etcetera, etcetera. The latter include consciously considering my own subjectivity from the perspective of its production. 83 Finally, in the winter 2008, I witnessed the death of Telestreet. The network exhaled its last sigh in a couple of tired emails that exhorted all the listserv members to pull the plug from a comatose body full of sad affects. Euthanasia can be the best treatment to avoid watching the slow decomposition of Telestreet at the hands of internal friction, inertia, lack of resources and the disappearance of many of its nodes (Ch. 5). The agony had been already going on for a while, yet this made me want to continue the work I started even more. This is because although some telestrittari are now caught in a finger-pointing stalemate of sad passions, and some have simply moved on, a few channels survive, thrive, and make this story a worthy story to tell. Worthy, not only because Telestreet has been an experiment that opened up a space in the imaginary of many, and not only because the story of insu^tv is a story that needs to be told in the spirit of contagion and epidemic. Telestreet’s story, like many others that came before and are yet to come, is emblematic of the life cycles of activist projects from which we can learn the limits and potentials of being together in productive ways. Moreover, the story of Telestreet has to be told because it is in the act of telling it that something new can emerge. In this context, I apologise to those who may find themselves confined to marginal roles in a (unavoidably partial and subjective) narration of events, since this will not be the story of how they created Telestreet but of how Telestreet created them, and others like me. Refractions Naples can be a nightmare of a city. With its density of population, faulty infrastructure, high unemployment and criminality rates, and lack of resources (Ch. 6), life its not easy. However, (permanent) crisis makes people creative. Insu^tv is just this, the miraculous effect of passion and desire in the face of difficulty. There is one word, I find, that sums up the creative momentum of this group: repurposing (Ch. 7). In his discussion of processes of individuation and the emergence of bio-social-technical assemblages, Simondon talks about technical objects. A technical object expresses 84 mediation between man and the natural world. This technical mediation is unveiled when a certain kind of culture of technology grasps its effective reality and implications for human beings and the social field in general. However, despite its potential to affect social dynamics, the technical object reproduced and marketed by industries loses its “surreal value.” Anesthetized in its daily use, it effaces its singularity and potential. As a mere tool, the technical object does not have the same meaning for the individual: It is appropriated by society, it takes on a specific role, it is normalised and loses its dynamic essence (Simondon, 2006: 251–3). Still, it is possible to rediscover an object’s essence by drawing on a specific sensibility and creativity ––technological taste–– that enables us to move beyond its function as a tool (Simondon, 2006: 263). When endowed with its technological aura, the technical object can inspire a reconfiguration or creation of assemblages. Insu^tv’s practice of repurposing can be understood in this context, as the ability and act of drawing on the aura of technical objects to create something new. This is Telestreet’s practice of reverse engineering and interoperability pushed to its limit and it is not confined to the reuse of material resources for logistical purposes, for ecological reasons and for cutting down costs––or for the displacement of power dynamics. Repurposing functions on multiple levels because it consciously facilitates encounters and exchange (Ch. 7). The insulini can be said to recognise in the technical object’s aura the possibility to re/invent their role as a “connective.” For instance, I do not see the documentary on the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Naples as simply the work of a group of media activists trying to remedy a lack of information about this issue (insu^tv, 2009d). Much more than this, as we will see, Wasting Naples is the outcome of years of activities and support on the territory and one more occasion to bring people together around issues that affect them directly. Moreover, these encounters often create an interest in the insu^tv project and spark invitations and ideas for collaborations. The insulini recognise and size up the potential for repurposing this “surplus energy” into new modes of affection. Information production and distribution are repurposed; the momentum of creative repurposing takes 85 on a contagious force (Ch. 7). Importantly, insu^tv’s openness to process and change, their refusal to maintain rigid structures, and the ongoing reconfiguration of the collective territories in which they situate themselves are first of all a way to persist as individuals: they are not inscribed in any programmatic political strategy (Ch. 6). As a system continuously individuating herself, the individual is always in a metastable equilibrium (Simondon, 2006: 232). In a rather Spinozian move, Simondon discusses the acceptance of and engagement with the metastability of certain structures (that include the individual) as an ethical comportment towards ourselves and others: “ethics is the sense as well as the direction of individuation, the sense of the synergy among successive individuations” (2006: 229). This is the line that informs the connection between subjectivity and politics, and it is only at this threshold, at this limit as an ethical frontier, that it becomes possible to repurpose the social field for politics. 86 CHE CENTO FIORI SBOCCINO CHE CENTO RADIO TRASMETTAN O CHE CENTO FOGLI PREPARINO Un ALTRO ‘68 con ALTRE armi (A/Traverso, 2007)6 Chapter 3 Books, Radios and D.I.Y. Factories of Desire7 The madness of creativity: a brief history of the 70s A young man, a soldier, is taken to the psychiatric ward after refusing to leave his sentry post once his shift is over: he shall remain on guard for as long as he has any strength left. During the ten days under medical observation the soldier is passive, yet claims to be fine. The only problem is his uncontrollable impulse to remember and sum up car number plates whenever he sees any. The doctor that releases him from military duties compliments him on “having learned the lesson well, if he is faking” (Bifo, Interview). Indeed, the man’s performance had been very successful; his diagnosis is a perfect case of obsessive delirium, the fruit of hard reading labour. It is 1974, one of his friends gave Franco a book by a French psychoanalyst who looks at 6 [Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred radios transmit, let a hundred pages prepare another ’68, with different weapons.] 7 The conversations used in this chapter took place in Bologna in the summer 2008 and in Toronto in March 2009. Franco Berardi (Bifo) and Ambrogio (Giancarlo Vitali) were among the founders of Radio Alice in the 70s and of OrfeoTv/Telestreet in 2002. 87 the world from the perspective of a patient (2008). Indeed, Felix Guattari’s Una tomba per Edipo (1974) proved to be a great book to learn to “play mad” and get out of the compulsory military service. “During my experience, I understood something about schizo-analytic thought”, he tells me, “that folly––madness––entails a strong element of choice, of desire, of intention, and construction. […] I started seeing Guattari as my saviour” (Bifo, Interview). Three years go by, and Franco, this time on the run to avoid prison, invokes his “Saint Guattari” once more. Like many of his comrades, he is hiding in Paris, where he goes looking for Felix. When I tell the story like this, you see, it says nothing, but if we follow the thread of madness, things take on a different meaning […]. My encounter with Guattari was like a kind of cry for help. I was like a patient searching for help but not to get out of madness, like Breton says: ‘It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled.8’ In a sense, it was a reversal of the fear of madness. Madness should not be scary, madness seen as delirium, from de-lire, to exit, to get out from the reading, from the structure, from the text…Madness can be a way of finding your way... (Bifo, Interview). The ideas Franco is referring to are articulated in Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, the first volume of “Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” published originally in French in 1972, and Italian in 1975. The book had made its way to Franco’s prison cell, during another unfortunate accident in March 1975, when he was accused of having placed a bomb in the headquarters of the Christian Democrats. Franco was subsequently acquitted (Berardi (Bifo), 2008: 3) but reading Anti-Oedipus left a mark on him, as it did on many other political activists who read it in that period (Berardi (Bifo), 2008: 3; 145). In my interview with him, Franco places special emphasis on the fact that reading Anti- Oedipus enabled him to operate on the basis of a new conceptualization of political subjectivity and agency. Overall, the book had very important implications for the development of alternative practices of cultural production and political militancy in the 8 André Breton. “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924. 88 seventies, especially in Bologna. The idea of ‘madness’ as a source of creativity, as the ability to use signs not just for signification but as affective devices and platforms for experimentation is premised on a different conceptualization of the unconscious. No longer seen as the hegemonic theatre of signification, the unconscious is presented as a factory in which a-signifying elements are invested with meaning and functions (only) in contexts and through practices. When harnessed, these elements partake in a process of subjectivation. More precisely, the role of the sign moves away from fixing a signifier to a signified, and from establishing an interpretive relationship with the imaginary and the symbolic. Attention to the sign is diverted from discovering links with the unconscious/conscious and becomes an option to affect constituent elements of social reality (and ‘reality-perception’), relaying processes of subjectivation and socialization (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983 [1972]; Intro: prop. 6). Drawing on Charles Pierce and Louis Hjelmslev, Deleuze and Guattari describe the sign (and language) as entirely immanent and socially determined by stratification. This complicates any binary correspondence between signifier and signified, between form and substance, content and expression (and between semiotics and pragmatics). Of course, there is reciprocal presupposition of the terms. Yet, a double articulation moves the sign and the unconscious, thought and subjectivity, away from any identity/hierarchy-based grids in the direction of a differential relation, at each strata of the sedimentation (1983 [1972]: 240–62, 1987: 39–74). In this sense, movements of double articulation and differential stratification refer to a dynamism that requires the interjection of external elements to trigger change, before it crystallizes at the next level of signification. Through the transversal infiltration and connection of external elements, it becomes possible to pragmatically shift the collective flows of signification and communication. Between 1975-76, Franco co-founds A/traverso [transversal crossing] with a group of intellectuals from Bologna. This collective publishes a cultural and political agitation pamphlet that reflects on the possibilities of a critical use of the media (A/Traverso, 2007: 10). This publication attempts to elaborate new languages and forms of expression to sabotage traditional communication flows. As with their name and their slogans, Anti- 95 realise the importance of this radio project. Four flatmates, Ambrogio, Luciano, Stefano and Paolo, and some friends and lovers, faced with a choice between weapons and words chose the latter: a life choice. The desire to be on the part of life and creation: this was an opportunity to resist State repression with words for many of those trapped in the dregs of heroin, passivity, or violence. What is more, Alice also became a constituent element of a small techno-social revolution, or better, revolt. Social unrest had been building up for years, 1977 started under the aegis of violent clashes between demonstrators and police. The past had been marked by a harsh government response against workers and student protests, and in 1975, the Christian Democrat (CD) government passed the ‘Reale Law’ that enabled the police to shoot and kill any time they felt a threat to public order. A year earlier, other laws had already increased preventative jail sentences to 8 years and targeted individuals in possession of weapon-like items and garments that may be used for disguise. In the first 15 years under the Reale Law (nr. 152 on 22/5/1975), the Italian security forces shot 625 people (254 dead and 371 wounded), of which 208 had not committed and were not about to commit any crimes (Centro di iniziativa Luca Rossi, 1990). These tactics did little to reduce State opposition and kindled more protest fires. In March 1977, a Bolognese student was shot dead by the police, during a protest. The event triggered three days of riots, which only ended when Minister of Interior Francesco Cossiga sent tanks into Bologna. Because of the combination of radio and telephone, Radio Alice’s function surpassed simple reporting about the clashes. After an initial call denouncing the shooting––a few minutes after it took place––the radio became a coordination mechanism for the riots. By night time, the police raided the studios, confiscated the transmitter and arrested those who could not flee. Thirty years after the events, police chief Ciro Lomastro, reflects on the efficiency of Alice’s bio-social-technical assemblage (Ch. 1: Prop. 5): “they were better organised than us. We had our walkie-talkies but it was one-to-one communication […] they sent instructions to everyone who had a transistor radio, collected information through the phone calls and broadcast them. Incredibly efficient” (Smargiassi, 2007). If a 96 revolt is a failed revolution, the seeds had been planted for the guerrilla communication that will become full-fledged from the 90s on (Ch. 4). Exodus, autonomy and composition: Autonomia It is not possible to understand contemporary Italian activism without revisiting the political ferment and violence of the 70s and there are various terms that describe the movements that developed in Italy from the mid 60s onwards. I have chosen to use Autonomia to avoid confusion and because it tends to sum up an important aspect of the relationship between politics and subjectivity within various social formations. In its most generic sense, the word autonomy refers, first and foremost to a disenfranchisement from party politics, orthodox Marxism and from mediation with the state as a political strategy. Its more subtle inflexions will be discussed below. The term ‘workerism’ (operaismo) is also often used, albeit more in connection with the wave of labour struggles that took place before 1968 and in which the student movement played a minor role. Understanding the originality of the so-called Autonomia movement is important for a series of reasons. First of all, because the ideas and practices that broke down traditional modes of political engagement reached a threshold, after which they will come to us under a different guise. In fact, though not simply a direct causal filiation from this past, the ideas, the activists, and autonomous media of today’s Italy would not make sense if we did not pass through the same threshold and followed this mutation. This means that we need to understand the reasons for the exodus from spaces engaging with traditional politics at the institutional level to completely autonomous sites for politico-social practices, that started in the 70s and characterizes the present (Ch. 4). Second, this exploration is important because to look at the conflicts of that period means to map relationships among the cultural, technological, economic and political events that engendered those changes. Finally, to look for the seeds of the present in this troubled past also enables us to unveil the importance of certain practices and discourses whose connections are often ignored because of a seemingly indissoluble and problematic link between political ideas, the use of organised violence and the increased sophistication of the State’s repressive apparatus of dissent. 97 The first decade after WWII was marked by endeavours to rebuild Italy whose economy, for the majority, still consisted of a backward agrarian sector and some small, technologically outdated factories and small businesses and shops. With the help of the United States through the Marshall Plan for reconstruction, and with the Italian financial sector protecting the currency (as well as ongoing austerity measures and hard working conditions), it became possible to complete huge infrastructural public works, gear up for resource extraction, develop the car manufacturing, heavy and petrol-chemical industries and increase the internal demand for goods (Ginsborg, 1989: 283–93). In the 60s, huge numbers of young people who did not cross the ocean in search of better lives were flocking from the poor south to the north of Italy. Here, the construction boom and the factories––whose technological innovations now required unskilled labour (e.g., for the assembly line)––were contributing to the so-called “economic miracle.” While Fordist automated production of goods and consumption became the two pivotal points of the economic growth of western countries, Italy too enjoyed increased wealth and became an important player in the economic field. With the end of protectionist policies at this time, Italy’s diversifying economy fully integrated into expanding European markets by setting up to deal with the competition. Yet, while the economic miracle made Italy into an important international economic actor, it also widened the social and economic gap between the North and South of the peninsula. The reconstruction effort was accompanied by a stalemate in the Italian Workers movement, during which the institutional left and the managerial classes worked together to prevent any form of labour struggles. The lack of support for factory workers later became one of the main points of critique against, and eventually rupture with the ICP, which chose a moderate line of cooperation with conservative parties to stay in power (Borio et al., 2002, Moroni and Balestrini, 1988). This, together with animosity towards the ICP’s disengagement from the needs of the workers, and the dissociation of many workers from communist-framed ethics of labour as duty and a mode of emancipation, factored into the specific form of the political groups to come. Factories, together with schools and universities, fostered a generation of youth 98 demonstrating a marked antagonism towards the rigid social structures they inherited and optimism towards the possibilities for social change. Here too, the feeling was fuelled, among other things, by the introduction to Italy of foreign literature and philosophy, by an attention to the emergence of social movements and struggles outside their borders (e.g., pacifism, feminism, anti-colonialism, the Black-Panthers and later the gay and lesbian liberation movements), and by the contact with counter-cultures like the beatniks, hippies, and later punks and drop-out cultures. Migrants from culturally different, poorer zones of the peninsula, the young workers from the industrialized North (whose fathers’ belief in the advantages of a collaboration with the bourgeoisie had been shattered), the students and intellectuals connecting with them, all became the protagonists of the intense political struggles from 1968 onwards. These groups started interacting already at the beginning of the decade and eventually set the stage to reframe the theoretical basis as well as the practices of communism outside of party and union structures (Moroni and Balestrini, 1988: 20–30). Works like Anti- Oedipus, discussing and criticizing the theoretical tenets of the time–Marxism and psychoanalysis– are very important actors in the socio-cultural shifts that characterise the 60s–70s. Yet their analysis and use cannot be properly grasped without talking about the journals that played a catalyst role in the development of a new form of Marxism. The pages of journals like Quaderni Rossi (Red Notebooks, 1961–65), Classe Operaia (Working Class, 1964–67), Potere Operaio (Workers’ Power, 1969–73) and Rosso (Red, 1973–77), to name a few, were the canvases on which political theory and analysis on the new economic conditions, cultural models and subjectivity of the worker mixed with a critique of the institutional communist credo, producing shapes unseen so far. Much of the cultural work of the journals mentioned revolved around researching and understanding the composition of the new class of workers and their relationship to the local capitalist system. The journals tried to map the hidden modes of struggle in the factory as constituting and revealing the organization of capital at that given moment (Ch. 6). Here, sociological inquiry played a major role, through the activity of conricerca [co-research] or inchiesta [inquiry] (Alquati, 2003: 6), functioning as an interface that harnessed 99 theoretical reflection and the actual experience of the workers, thus facilitating contamination and innovation on both ends (Moroni and Balestrini, 1988: 38). While Marx’s Das Kapital still functioned as a staple text, a creative reading of the Grundrisse is what enabled a basic re-conceptualization of the figure of the worker and of the relationship between resistance, labour and production (and technology). Rather than as an objective analysis of capitalist development, the two books were read as representing the point of view of the worker, who ought to reflect on the historical stages of capitalism and understand their intrinsic forms of bourgeois antagonism to devise suitable strategies of emancipation (Moroni and Balestrini, 1988: 38). Marx’s analysis of the technologization of the production process had rendered manifest a separation of labour into mental and menial that spoke to the economic context of the period. In fact, the economic development of post-war Italy had deeply affected the social fabric, giving birth, among other things to (equally exploited) specialized workers and the so-called unskilled Operaio massa (mass worker). In particular, Marx’s concept of the Gesamtarbeiter (total worker)–i.e. the combination of the workforce for production– paved the way to rethink exploitation as inherent to the production process (rather than to specific modes of labour). Attention then, moved from labour to the worker: while part-workers are paid individually for the production of goods, their social role in the production of absolute surplus value is neither recognized nor remunerated (Marx, 1961: 531–2). At the same time, the valorization produced through their assemblage, exceeding the sum of the goods produced while still only actualized in the production process, points to a reciprocal presupposition of workforce and capital. It points to working class agency to enable or prevent production––to ‘become’ capital or to divert their cumulative force towards the production of other forms of value. Against the traditional ICP line, Mario Tronti was one of the first thinkers to invert the idea that class struggle can only take place once a certain level of economic development has been reached. Rather, he advocated for ongoing class struggle that reoriented the production process and forced capital to adapt to workers’ needs (2006 [1966]). 100 More importantly, since at this stage of capitalist development, social relations are entirely subsumed by capital, society itself is seen as an extension of the factory and an articulation of production. This is one of the theoretical breakthroughs that led to the conceptualization of the “social factory,” a concept that still plays a fundamental role in the discussion of contemporary modes of struggle against capitalist exploitation (Ch. 3). Within this framework, antagonism is displaced from the factory to the social level through a refusal of participation in the process. A cooperative articulation of time spent outside of the capitalist production process becomes the explicit practice of resistance, especially after 1968, and then all the way to the present. In the words of Antonio Negri, resistance against capital becomes a “movement of productive co-operation that […] presents itself as the refusal of capitalist command over production and as the attempt, always frustrated but not less real, of constituting an autonomous time” (2003 [1997]: 73). The refusal of work becomes the line out of capital in order to subordinate labour to the needs of the working class. This practice dovetails with a belief in the possibility of more equal distribution of work to increase the development of a general social knowledge, or general intellect, that is also partly connected with technological innovation (Marx, 1973 [1857-8]: 706). Ultimately, the social liberation of the subject can only take place once an awareness of her own agency “within the contradictory structure of the relations of production” is reached and time can be devoted to alternative practices of selfvalorisation, and hence of subjectivation (Negri, 1999 [1979]: 160–63). Un-prefigured, on-going, autonomous struggle immanent to capital’s dynamic: this is where the meaning of Autonomy goes beyond a disengagement from institutional politics to refer to the autonomy of the worker from capitalist development (through selfvalorization of needs and desire). It refers to the main characteristic of the subject in a communist society in which she has control over her own multilateral productive potential (Negri, 1999 [1979]: xxx). Autonomy stays open to directions that can only form during the struggle, rather than before it. 101 This libidinal economy takes shape against the power of capital and of the State as a fundamental element in the composition of a class of resistant subjects in radical and irreconcilable opposition to the majority. For nearly two decades, the part-worker increasingly detaches herself from the part-owner to enter a process of re-subjectivation (Borio et al., 2002: 72–3 ) through a long period of production sabotage, factory and university occupations, permanent assemblies, wildcat strikes, and auto-reduction of prices for transportation or leisure. In general, much time is devoted to the theoretical analysis and development of alternative forms of socialization to exit the rigidity of inescapable subject positions and the context they play within. This generational-‘anti-social’-technologically-equipped composite is defined by Alberto Asor Rosa as the “seconda società” (Asor Rosa, 1977). A ‘second society’ made of students and young factory workers, feminists, the unemployed, organised political groups like Lotta Continua or Potere Operaio, and in general, youth and outcasts, thriving in their alterity and marginality. Many of the practices that originated between 1960 and 1977 are marked by a strong desire for the creative development of an autonomous infrastructure for cultural and social production; by a lack of prefigurative goals of the struggle and its vision, if not contextually; by a constant attempt to undermine normalised language and modes of expression as is the case with Mao-Dadaism; by the exploration of sexuality that with the aid of contraceptive technology, countered the influence of the Catholic Church. The 70s are also the time of the legalization of divorce and abortion. This is the time of the first “centres of the young proletarians”, what will later become the CSOA’s (Ch. 4): squatted houses that run communes, self-managed initiatives, laboratories for counter-cultures and counter-information; spaces of aggregation against the isolation of young people and the valorisation of free time. This is the time in which humour, irony and parody become important tools of critique and contestation. This is also the time of the indiani metropolitani (metropolitan Indians)––groups of protestors that used humorous, non-violent tactics to contest the seriousness of politics, constantly redefined the limits of language through Situationist and ‘Mao-Dadaist’ practices. It is a time where, in general, the tactics of avant-garde artistic movements and new philosophical currents seeped into daily life mediated through independent music, 102 journals, radio and other means of circulation, reaching a broad public (Eco in: Moroni and Balestrini, 1988: 608–12). By 1968-9, the CD government attempted to put an end to a decade of successful workers and student struggles. The so-called “strategia della tensione” (strategy of tension) brought together the secret services and collaborating fascist groups to undermine the movement’s credibility through a series violent terror attacks.10 By the early 70s, police repression; the weight of the oil crisis; unaddressed inflation and unemployment; as well as an attempted fascist coup d’état11 moved discourses about the relationship between subjects and the State from one of exploitation to one of domination. This condition, for some, could only be overcome by force. As the ICP came even closer to moderate politics through the “Historical Compromise” with the CD, armed cells like the Brigate rosse mushroomed across the country. The steady escalation of conflict among Autonomia, State and fascist movements reached its peak in 1977 with protests in cities like Bologna, Rome, Genoa, Turin and Milan and eventually culminated in 1979. That year, the kidnapping and killing of DC president Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades triggered a witch-hunt that put entire groups of intellectuals, together with activists, behind bars. In his analysis of the relationship between Italian politics and violence, the “Anatomy of Autonomy” (El Kholti et al., 2007), Bifo makes a distinction between forms of violent struggle when necessary for action (picketing, occupations, taking to the streets) from the militarization of the movement through autonomous armed cells, i.e. terrorism. This distinction clarifies the paradoxical connection between Radio Alice developing as a project that takes up words rather than weapons, and the Radio’s support of the Bologna riots in March ’77. 10 For more information on this issue see for e.g.: Philip Willan, Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, London: Constable and Company, 1991and Giuseppe De Lutiis, Storia dei servizi segreti in Italia, Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1984(1994). 11 The reasons and dynamics behind this attempt are yet not clear. After a series of harsh sentences, the appeals to the trial, which connected the fascist group with the government, its secret services, the Free Masons and the mafia ended up with an acquittal of all the individuals involved (apart from some jail sentences for illegal weapon possession). For more information see: Gianni Flamini, L'Italia dei colpi di stato, Newton & Compton Editori, 2007. 103 In September ’77, a convention against repression brought together 70,000 members of Autonomia groups (and international intellectuals interested in the phenomenon) to rescue the movement from its crisis. The event merely resulted in the re-emergence of an old fracture on the forms of political organization, and left the groups ill-equipped to produce any alternatives to the “armed struggle” and to their own looming (and nearly total) demise (El Kholti et al., 2007: 160). The debate between Luxemburgian spontaneisti (spontaneists) and Leninist Organizzazionisti (organizationists) had been an underground force that shaped and reshaped the various groups of the movement ever since its beginning. On the one end of the continuum were those who refused any kind of structures that shaped the movement from the inside, and who opted for complete self-organization based on the needs of the class (Rosa-Luxemburgists). On the other were those who advocated for a clear political direction of the movement to reach political mediation with the dominant powers (Leninists). Moreover, the movement was never successful in conceptualizing “spontaneous organization” or in developing any cultural and social strategies that drew from the heterogeneity of political movements––rather than merely political structures (Borio et al., 2002: 99–101). This hard to theorise relationship between class subjectivity and political subjectivity is still a major part of the debates and tension that shape the movement in the present (Ch. 6). The escalation of violent actions permanently etched a homology between terrorism and Autonomist political practices in the collective imaginary of Italians. The condemnation of the entire movement took place despite the fact that the make-up of groups like the Red Brigades was shaped by a rigid adherence to Marxist-Leninist dogmatism, distinctly Stalinist in theoretical-political grounding. Similarly, their actions were cut off and independent from collective class struggle, increasingly setting them apart from the development of Autonomia (El Kholti et al., 2007: 160). The reasons for the use of the expression “the years of lead” to sum up a movement that involved hundreds of thousands of people in the most heterogeneous activities and lines of thinking, go deeper than a simple value judgment regarding some modes of struggle. 104 In fact, while the police and the legal system fulfilled their function of ‘establishing order,’ it was the sensational coverage by the media that steered public opinion about the events. The rampantly pro-government media disseminated contradictory, unfounded accusations against thousands before they could be legitimated by the judiciary. It hid proof of secret services’ infiltrations, stool pigeons and unjustified life jail sentences and it even became the target of Guy Debord’s bitter irony: Italy is also the most modern laboratory for international counter-revolution. Other governments, coming out of the old bourgeois democracy, “pre-spectacular” in nature, look on with admiration at the Italian government for the impassiveness which it can maintain at the tumultuous centre of its degradation, and for the calm dignity with which it sits in the mud. It is a lesson which they will have to apply in their countries for a long time to come (El Kholti et al., 2007: 98). And while many countries did indeed learn the lesson, the Italian government perfected its skills. More spectacularly than even Debord could have fathomed, on 23rd October 2008, in the midst of clashes between the police and protesters against the privatization of Italian universities (Gelmini Law), the ex-Minister of the Interior Francesco Cossiga gave an interview to the major Italian newspapers about the current violence against protesters (among which were elderly teachers and school children). Cossiga reminisced about the successful strategies of his term in office, and advised Prime Minister Berlusconi to reduce police presence in the streets and in universities, infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs “capable of anything” and let the demonstrators destroy the city. Once public opinion is against them, “the sound of the ambulances should cover up that of police sirens, […] beat them up [the protestors] and also beat up all the teachers that support them […] maybe not the old ones but especially the young female teachers […] indoctrinating our children” (Cangini, 2008). To the suggestion that these may be fascist practices, Hon. Cossiga retorted that he regards his method as a “democratic recipe” justified to nip terrorism in the bud. The use of the media and of the state of emergency as tools for repression not only succeeded in boosting the public image of the government but especially set the stage for future confrontations between state powers and demonstrators (Ch. 4; 7). As the next chapters will show, this model also shaped the government’s strategies for dissent pre- 111 benefits by claiming to be responsible for change. Moreover, from this perspective, Silvio Berlusconi merely functions as a metonym for a broader assemblage that is characteristic of our times (Ch. 2). This particular assemblage folds together the general geopolitical and economic shifts that I have previously associated with neoliberalism, changes in Italian party politics, the institutional and social reactions to the 70s political climate of protest (Ch. 3), the rise of organised crime as an economic stakeholder, as well as developments in technology, the expansion of the entertainment and financial sectors, to only mention a few. This chapter will be informed by the theory of differential accumulation, not only as it pertains to the processes through which the Berlusconi assemblage came into being but in relation to the kinds of practices that obtain and consolidate power. Finally, the questions posed will pertain to the strategies, conflicts and contradictions informing discursive and non-discursive formations of this assemblage (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 327). Understanding the emergence of such elements, and how they interact with each other can help us map the field of relations within which certain forms of power affect social structures, as well as help us think about new political strategies that address political and economic powers simultaneously. I argued in proposition two of chapter two that it is possible to understand change from disciplinary societies to societies of control by laying an emphasis on the shifts from a product-based economy–that is factory production–– to immaterial production. However, this analysis already presupposes a dynamic interaction between the economy and society in the form of ‘social production’ (Ch 2). By focusing solely on the concept of production it becomes harder to identify some of the points of intersections among the forces that make up both the economy and modes of government. In this account, the state and the economy remain two separate entities that may or may not interact. Alternatively, it is possible to start from ‘capitalization’ and consider it not merely as an economic category, but as “an encompassing mode of power.” The real power of accumulation here does not lie in productivity itself but in “the ability to subjugate creativity to power” (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 217–218): that is, in the ability 112 to harness creativity and, knowledge, and thus productivity, to accumulate power. Not every owner of assets can differentially accumulate. The great majority of people own assets for their use and survival. It is the owners of financial instruments, those who can afford to accumulate, that have power over others. These do not function individually but as a group/assemblage, because forces in the economy limit the agency of single capitalists. This is why corporations and corporation-government alliances are a profitable strategy (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 314). Both disciplinary and control societies’ modes of governmentality bear on profitability in different ways, depending on the dominant material or immaterial economic structures that characterise them (Deleuze, 1995). Yet, in both systems, any kind of earning will be the outcome of a struggle among dominant capital groups to shape and restructure the direction of social reproduction in order to create the conditions for capitalization (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 218). Hence, the latter is precisely what drives struggle and change, especially since many actors aim at increasing, rather than retaining, their relative capitalization. As a mode of power, increased capitalization means increased power to transform society, and since the accumulation of power is never absolute, but always in a relation to other powers, the concept of the differential becomes useful (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 309; 312). The higher or more predictable the profit with respect to competitors, the more ‘differential power’ is accumulated through a quantitative redistribution of ownership– with qualitative repercussions on the distribution of power (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 325). To return to 80’s Italy, elements like religion, communist or autonomist ideologies, organized crime and violence, the law, the state of technology and modes of production, labour relations or television programming and other forms of cultural production all influence the differential level of earnings. Discounting these earnings into capital values turns elements like the ones just listed into parts of capital, thereby commodifying power and making the line of demarcation between politics and the economy untenable (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 9). It is dominant capital that determines the possibilities of accumulation and is in constant 113 conflict with small firms to maintain their differential power. Small firms tend to maximize in absolute terms–i.e. they aim to reach capitalization benchmarks–whereas dominant ones tend to undermine and sabotage them to be able to consolidate power. In this context, accumulation takes place by limiting access to resources through laws and norms, by excluding others from the game and by taking away the power from them. This operation often requires ‘distributional coalitions’ in which different actors come together to increase their chances to accumulate, (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 315), hence the strong link between governments and corporations that characterises neoliberalism. In other diagrams this kind of exclusion may be due to rigid social norms and conventions such as class or gender. Generally, because of the hegemonic character of the neoliberal doctrine, small firms still believe in the free market and criticize government intervention, believing that under conditions of absolute freedom they would be able to capitalize more (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 315–319). This the case with the small business owners that support the secessionist/federalist party Lega Nord (per l'Indipendenza della Padania) [North League (for the Independence of Padania)] and are part of the Berlusconi government coalition. They are staunch opposers of the super-state structure of the European Union and strong believers of the power of the free market. Processes of differential accumulation constantly shift the positions of the actors involved and usually revolve around a cohesive group connected through tight business deals and through government agencies. The connections are enabled by a complex web of regulations, contracts, and shared worldviews. Since industrial production is deeply embedded into more rigid disciplinary diagrams of power, it is finance that functions the best through these complex webs of fluid relations. Finance, best exemplified by the fluidity, mobility and power of corporations, thrives in societies of control to the point of controlling and limiting industry for its own differential gains (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 319). As already mentioned in chapter one, societies of control are marked by diffuse forms of hyper-connection, control and surveillance in which life answers to the logic of capital. Those who accumulate the fastest end up at the top, as is the case with Berlusconi. Here, more than a single person, Berlusconi should be considered as a 114 multinational brand, since his empire has the agency of a transnational corporation that is fragmented only to bypass control. From rags to riches: undoing the Berlusconi myth Silvio Berlusconi begins his career in construction in the late 60s, during the economic miracle. He is soon able to build entire suburban neighbourhoods and shopping malls, pooling together considerable amounts of investments–often from mysterious Swiss banks accounts and companies (Barbacetto, 2004, Gambino, 2001). He also seems to have no difficulties in receiving any building permits and even succeeds in deviating flight routes from one of the construction sites, for the peace of its future dwellers. From this point on, his career is marked by the continuous creation and relocation of sister companies registered under relatives’ or friends’ names. Fininvest, his main (investment) company, is created in 1979 to coordinate and organize this fragmented empire and is soon after divided into 23 to 38 holding companies, to save money on taxes, and to avoid transparency during financial operations (Barbacetto, 2004). With a seemingly endless flow of cash, Berlusconi’s activities start branching out into finance and insurance, the entertainment business, advertising, publishing and television that are emerging in the Italian economy, in resonance with other western countries. In all these sectors he beats the average accumulation rate by bringing his competitors to their knees through rock-bottom prices and takeovers, differentially accumulating at a higher and faster rate than his competitors. By the early 1980s he has purchased two more channels (Italia 1 and Retequattro) from two of the major publishers in the country and is able to wage war against the Italian public service broadcaster RAI. The first battleground is the field of advertising, where Publitalia 80–Fininvest’s advertising wing–offers such low advertising rates for his TV network that it enables even small companies to access this market. In the 1990s, television advertising had only been open to businesses with enough capital to meet the high investment costs demanded by RAI. With the arrival of Berlusconi, advertising becomes such a bargain that one would think Publitalia 80 is heading for a financial 115 crash. Yet, because the frequency and accumulation of ads during each show on its channels is unprecedented and the introduction of American movies and series through the VHS tape system allows nationwide distribution, Berlusconi steals RAI’s audience and surpasses the average accumulation rates. Fininvest started thriving during dark and depressing times: at the peak of the brutal repression of social movements, and during the fragmentation of the political scene due to terrorism and heroin abuse, while the spread of organized crime seemed uncontrollable. To make things worse, inflation was on the rise and the country’s economy has entered into recession. Nitzan and Bichler demonstrate how, contrary to what is commonly thought dominant capital thrives during periods of inflation because there is a redistribution of capital from small to large firms. This is also partly due to the ability to raise profits faster than it takes for wages to catch up (2009: 370–5). Indeed Italy’s economy once again found wind in its sails. In the 1970s, the State had sustained industry with subsidies and increased public spending. The low exchange rate of the Italian currency had stimulated exports and increased demand for national products, triggering growth and inflation. In the 1980s, both Europe and North America started seeing the decline of industry that moved to developing countries and the consolidation of corporations and oligopolies through the implementation of neoliberal policies. Italy too invested in service-based and immaterial economies, contributing to the expansion of the tertiary sector. During the period of passage from industry to business, under the aegis of the Craxi government, one of the first systems to go was the so-called scala mobile, a mechanism that automatically raised wages in relation to prices. Now Italians had less money and more time to spend at home. Moreover, due to police repression and drug-related crimes, the streets no longer felt safe to many, who therefore preferred to sit comfortably in front of a TV. Finivest’s Canale 5’s motto aptly sums up the climate of the times: “Corri a casa in tutta fretta, c’é Canale 5 che ti aspetta” [Hurry, hurry home, channel 5 is waiting for you] (Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 28). In this climate, Berlusconi’s cutthroat competitive strategies met the needs of both investors and of audiences looking for 116 entertainment, and easily overtook RAI’s role of “family sitter.” As an alternative to austere and conservative television programs, the new channels offered the latest movies; the sappy romanticism of soap operas and thrills of TV series; the best TV hosts that had jumped ship, and countless variety shows and quizzes. The superficial and carefree nature of this programming immediately captured the Italian imaginary and contributed greatly to a climate of “cynicism, opportunism and aggressive hedonism”, exemplified in one of the biggest successes of the time, the television series Dallas (Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 28). While the economic prosperity of the 80s was reflected in the television programs that reached Italy, the restructuring of the economy that had started at the global level was also reflected in what was called the “second economic miracle” (Ginsborg, 1989: 547). 1980 opened with a defeat of the Unions by FIAT’s industrialist that will permanently achieve the upper hand over workers. Thus, while some Italians were only left with the spectacular, consumption-oriented and predominantly sexualized television programmes as compensation for the drab reality they were immersed in (Ch. 5), many others were able to enjoy the opportunity for new investments and wealth. The new investments and wealth were stimulated by the flourishing global economy, lower oil prices, and increased exchange of goods, as much as by the backdoor deals taking place in the government offices and palaces. Together with the ‘secularization’ of culture from the church on the one hand, and from the religion-like doctrine of the communist party on the other, a new generation of socialist politicians emerged. They took away the power from the old guard of the CD party and from its jeopardized alliance with the PCI (Ch. 2; Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 29, Virno, 1996). The politicians’ rhetoric was marked by a similar (Dallas/Reagan-style) superficial optimism, hedonism and individualism, and by an unprecedented openness to lobbying and corruption. The collaboration between entrepreneurs like Berlusconi and parliamentarians like Bettino Craxi transformed the Italian economy, transitioning from modes of material production, once based on agriculture and factory production, to high finances and communication-entertainment businesses. Their power however, was not only wielded through political decisions and seats in parliament but especially through 117 the influence that politicians exercised on the so-called sottogoverno (subterranean government). This term describes the highly pervasive state-funded sector of the Italian economy and culture industry that includes anything from state corporations and banks to museums, hospitals and research centres–all run by government officials. Rather than decisional autonomy, the links between this lower level of State apparatus and the government are the tight relationships of nepotism, patronage and debt that run along the lines of party politics (Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 47). In the 1970s, 45,000 state corporations controlled 80% of banking, " of industrial employment and # of Italian fixed investment (Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 47). The direct and underground links between the heads of many financial institutions and state industry with private entrepreneurs facilitated secure investments, the allocation of tenders and contracts and the privatization of important sources of profit. Traditionally, patronage has been present in Italian culture under different guises for centuries: from specific relationships to the church, to god-parenting and community ties between powerful and powerless individuals. In particular, after the unification of Italy in 1861, the patronage often mediated between citizens and malfunctioning administrations and institutional structures. Eventually, after WWII, the DC incorporated this practice in its fundraising and vote collection activities (Berardi (Bifo) et al., 2009: 44–49). By the time Berlusconi arrived on the market, patronage within politics had already turned into bribes and corruption; it reached its apex with the Craxi government. Working hand in hand, the new class of politicians and entrepreneurs were responsible for Italy’s entry into the world of global business, for the privatization of much of its infrastructure, and for the slow demise of an allegedly too costly welfare state. These changes enabled more circulation of capital and new investments that consolidated the power of some economic (and political) actors, while eliminating many others. Events like the reconstruction after the devastating November 23rd, 1980 earthquake in southern Italy became triggers for speculation and theft, and solidified collusion among politics, business and the mafia (Ch. 6). Most importantly, while rising inflation and huge deficits paralyzed the country, the government started to implement a series of economic measures that were supposed to curb inflation and raise the GDP. Thus, optimism and 118 hedonism could continue unabated, sustained by the work of the Bank of Italy, occupied with issuing investment bonds to finance the public debt and trying to contain the damage caused by inflation; by the Italian entry into the European common currency; and by the expansion of the tertiary sector and of employment. Behind the glossy façade painted by Berlusconi’s media and by the politicians’ declarations that convinced even struggling Italians that all that matters is to look good and consume, in reality, public debt kept on spiralling up. To enable the new financial ethos to thrive, the illegal and/or flexible and precarious worker stole the role of the protagonist away from the factory worker, through new temporary contracts and parttime work positions. Still, in both cases, the worker also doubled as a consumer. Indeed, precarious workers will later become one of the major focuses of the labour rights movements. This shift in ‘character roles’ is best exemplified by the increased reliance on financial loans and the use of instalment purchases and credit cards. Here ‘virtual’ money transactions enable the economy to thrive even in the absence of ‘real’ capital in the hands of consumers who are subject to job and financial insecurity. Moreover, debt itself takes over the function fulfilled by state assistance in accessing basic rights such as housing and education (Lazzarato et al., 2009). Instead of information, the sensationalism, sex, (macho) vulgarity, violence and common people’s exhibitionism on TV helped shape many Italians’ perception of the world. Exit the metropolitan Indians and the intellectual labourer, enter the yuppie and the paninaro, the cynical consumer and logo-oriented youths who meet outside the newly arrived MacDonald’s restaurants. Thus the coalitions between the media, business and politics became even more instrumental in pacifying discontent and stimulating consumption. In this continuous subtle and not-so-subtle movement of capital and power, the relationship between government and economy started taking on a different shape. As discussed above, to look at capital from the side of production, as a material–economic substance, does not shed light on the effects of differential accumulation. But when looking at assets as capitalized power, government is incorporated into capital and its influence is discounted into corporate stocks and bond prices. In a context in which this 119 process can be made predictable and manipulated through corruption and other practices, accumulation increases more easily, affecting the market/social make-up through more concentration of power into the hands of fewer capitalist groups. These groups, in turn, can condition institutions and shape the logic of capital, often making powerful corporations into de facto regulators (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 297–9). Much of the Berlusconi brand’s ability to dominate the market derived from his capillary expansion in many emergent sectors of the economy, and from personal connections to high-ranking government officials supporting the neoliberal credo. Fininvest Inc. could bring together different fields of investment, facilitating capitalization. Above all, the firm could lobby politicians and the government itself (Barbacetto, 2004: 39). This power gave Berlusconi and those working with him the ability to sabotage competitors within the entertainment business by offering unbeatable deals and by having a say in broadcasting regulations that would cater to their own interests, and thus impeding the development of a truly competitive market. What may have seemed like a very risky investment was in fact a safe way to differentially accumulate. This is also how, by 1984, Publitalia was already leading the market with 30% of the Italian advertising revenues. Its (differential) accumulation tendency remained steady for the following decade while RAI’s once powerful advertising company Sipra ended up with 20% of the revenues and less power on the market (Barbacetto, 2004: 39–40). Ironically, it was not until a concern with media democracy was raised at the end of the decade that Berlusconi became officially free to dominate the airwaves. Indeed, when the Craxi government was finally forced to regulate the field, the Mammì Law simply normalized the situation and only caused some minor disadvantages for the media magnate. More precisely, since it is not possible to control both the print and the broadcast media, Berlusconi was forced to sell one of his newspapers, Il Giornale, to his brother. Still, unlike in any other European country, Fininvest was allowed to keep three national channels and the law does not include any anti-trust regulations, nor any limitations on advertising. In addition to this, five months later, Berlusconi was allowed to launch three pay-tv 120 channels. Although the law only allows him to own 10% of these assets, later investigations by judges in Milan revealed how the pay channels were controlled through a series of offshore companies and straw men. The Mammì law was passed despite the protest resignation of five ministers. In 1991 and 1992, Berlusconi paid a total of 23 billion lire into Craxi’s offshore bank accounts from an underground of Fininvest (The Economist, 2001). In his collection of documents and transcripts of all the trials and investigations, Gianni Barbacetto also mentions Berlusconi’s membership of the secret Masonic Lodge P2, involved, among other things, in an attempted coup d’ètat (Ch. 3). In 1981, fellow members, P2 head Licio Gelli, Communication Minister Michele Di Giesi and other high ranking government officials procured Berlusconi the exclusive rights to broadcast live and nation-wide a world soccer championship, despite legal restrictions. On many other occasions, Berlusconi’s channels were rescued and RAI sabotaged by the prompt intervention of other friends (2004: 40–41). The secretary to Minister Mammì left his job right after the law was passed and received from Fininvest a gift of 460 Million Lire (2004: 61). This is how the Italian mediascape ended up divided into in two poles: the RAI, controlled by the government and the channels owned by Fininvest (Barbacetto, 2004: 40). Many of these illegal practices–Swiss bank accounts and offshore warehousing of shares, money-laundering, association with the Mafia, tax evasion, price inflations, complicity in murder and bribery of politicians, judges and the finance ministry’s police for mergers and take-over–started surfacing in 1992–93 when the so-called Mani pulite [clean hands] team of judges started an investigation. They basically brought most politicians, many lawyers, judges, business people–including Berlusconi’s brother and Fininvest CEO–to court and/or behind bars. While Craxi fled to Tunisia and was sentenced in absentia to prison for corruption, the Left was ready to take over the government in the upcoming elections. Berlusconi was left under investigation, with Spanish authorities trying to lift his European Parliamentarian immunity to persecute him for breech of anti-trust laws and alleged illegal warehousing of a 52% stake in Telecinco, a Spanish television station (The Economist, 2001). With his business on the verge of financial collapse, no one in the government to back him up and the possibility of the new government taking up punitive measures urgent action was needed. 127 workers in order to develop creative ways of forcing (social) production outside the logic of capital (Ch. 3). It shifted the focus of resistance from conceptions of constituted to constituent power. The use of theories of differential accumulation adds a further dimension to this analysis in that it can help us understand the significance of production, beyond providing the material conditions for social life. In this process, productivity bears directly on power, while capital accumulation, state formation and criminal activities are all key elements of a single process to accumulate capital as power (Nitzan and Bichler, 2009: 280). Looking at the interaction among these elements enables us to map the relationships between potentia and potestas emerging in contemporary social formations in order to address such relationships with new practices. This is not so much necessary to take over constituted power but to be able to practice autonomy without falling victim to the criminalization of dissent that has recently developed in many countries, including Italy. Although the study of differential accumulation is in its early stages, and it has not yet yielded enough studies to help activists devise new practices of resistance, my brief analysis of the Italian politico-economic field is helpful in contextualizing insu^tv’s work, as well as that of other activist projects. In fact, in a context in which conflicts of interest, violent repression of dissent and the outright violation of human rights take place in the name of an assemblage that includes private and criminal interests as integral parts of a process of accumulation, the forces activists are up against cannot be confronted only through appeals to legality or democracy nor through practices that are completely autonomous (Ch. 4–7). Experimentation becomes key in finding ways of engaging the power of creorder effectively. The following chapter starts taking a closer look at media activism, drawing connections among the development of communication guerrilla and other activist practices from the perspective of informational dynamics and technological innovation. The focus on information and the non-linear character of emergence enables an important transition in the analysis of activism. Specifically, we can move from thinking about media activism as circulating alternative content to thinking through new practices of socialisation and resistance that emerge from engaging media, technology and information proper. Herein 128 lies the power and importance of projects like Telestreet, and especially insu^tv. The focus on Italian and on global activism will help us make connections between the micro and macro dimensions of resistance to social injustices caused by political-economic powers and to explore some of the solutions that have emerged in the last fifteen years. At the same time the discussion of information theory bridges my analysis of the rise of finance capitalism and the entertainment/communication industry with a discussion of how projects like Telestreet use information and communication to function outside of the logic of capital (Ch. 5). It is the engagement with information from different angles that will help us gain new insights about contemporary media activism. Ultimately, in societies of control, it is information itself that takes on a role of a structuring force in processes of emergence of resistant social formations. 129 Chapter 5 Guerrilla Communication against the Information Glut: Contemporary Italian Activism Tens, hundreds, thousands Aguascalientes, we would say out of habit from past movements (Laboratorio Occupato SKA and C.S. Leoncavallo, 1995) Person 1: They are in the courtyard! Person 2: the police […] they are trying to take down the door behind which we are barricaded. We are like trapped mice […] calm down, calm down, stay seated with your hands up […] Person 3: here they come, they are inside […] they have just entered the radio studios holding their batons…(silence). (A/Traverso, 2007) Despite an uncanny likeness, this transcript is not from Radio Alice’s final moments during the riots in 1977 but from another raid at Radio Gap. Only, this raid happened in Genoa in July 2001, during the notorious protests against the G8 summit, where this radio station and the Independent Media Centre (IMC) were documenting the widespread police abuse that led to the killing of activist Carlo Giuliani. Commonalities aside, these two events should not lead us to consider the history of 25 years of Italian media activism as a smooth progression from the free radio movement in the seventies to the alterglobalization movement’s guerrilla communication (and little progress in police tactics). Rather, looking at the connections among past and current struggles for the circulation of independent information can provide us with a multilayered map of micro-political 130 practices that engender social change. The shifts foregrounded on this map are not simply related to the meanings and discourses sustained by the circulation of information, instead, they refer to the actual emergence or changes in social structures and formations that are triggered by the ‘side-effects’ of informational dynamics (Simondon, 2006). As discussed in chapter three, the years following the crackdown on the Autonomia, marked the crisis of the movement, producing an overall climate of depression and disillusionment. The 80s in Italy saw a general recoiling from politics, especially from grassroots political activism, however, by the early nineties people started waking up to the changes in the social structure brought about by the liberalization of the economy. As in many other countries, parts of the national infrastructure had been privatised, the welfare state was weaker, and industry had been outsourced to make space for a serviceoriented economy. The precarization of life was the unforeseen, dystopian outcome of the autonomist dream of flexible employment (Berardi (Bifo), 2004). Furthermore, after the fall of communist regimes and the crisis of communism as a doctrine, there surfaced a renewed need for different modes of political critique and struggle. Some of the autonomous centres squatted in the seventies became more lively, and new ones appeared on the scene. A new (minor) wave of student unrest swept some Italian cities, opposing a reform of the education system. The panther and the fax December 1989 inaugurated a series of protests against the privatization of research funding and the inclusion of companies and private stakeholders into the university administration councils. By early 1990 the student protest movement had rapidly spread throughout Italy under the name of La Pantera [the panther]. It took its name from an uncatchable mysterious feline sighted at the outskirts of Rome. Like the runaway animal, feared yet secretly admired by the Italians following its escape from captivity, the Pantera movement seemed to come out of nowhere. It raised troubling memories from a not-so-distant past of politically motivated terrorism. 131 Despite this spectre, it also pointed to new, creative directions for organising that could work outside of the framework of political violence. The Pantera students declared themselves political, without party affiliation; democratic; non-violent; and anti-fascist. Their protests consisted of occupations, self-managed classes and research groups in collaboration with professors. Overall, the movement tried to foster experimentation and interaction, rather than the hierarchical knowledge transfer and organization reinforced by the reform. Pantera’s image campaign was the first example of non-violent activist practice that made mainstream headlines after the Years of Lead. In Italy, activism is often called militanza politica [political militancy], a term that calls forth the idea of belligerence, and that is viewed by many non-activist citizens as a form of extremism, rather than as the action of groups of citizens. The idea of a ‘public relations campaign’ was a way of addressing this problem by appropriating not only the language but also the strategies of advertising, for the sake of self-promotion. Two former settantasette [seventy-seven] student activists turned into successful advertisers created a logo and an advertisement for la Pantera. They donated it to those occupying Rome’s university to clean up the students’ image, help them attract attention, and even raise some funds (Garbesi, 1990). Their intention was to explain to the new generation that posited itself on the new front lines of struggles in the 90s how to use the “infinite resources of mass communication” for fundraising and for the effective circulation of ideas (Garbesi, 1990). Drawing on the actual figure of the run-away panther, the ad juxtaposed images of harmless individuals ––students, poor people and social justice activists–– to those of politicians like Craxi, media owners like Berlusconi and big industrialists like FIAT’s owner Gianni Agnelli. Playing on catchy puns like the one on Agnelli’s name–which literally means ‘lambs’–the ad grouped together all those who should be afraid of being eaten and claimed that all the rest are indeed the panther waiting to strike. La Pantera siamo noi [the panther is all of us] was the slogan trying to reinforce the link between communities in struggle and those watching (somewhat fearfully). 132 Despite the help from the older generation, the Pantera had already jumped on the information guerrilla bandwagon incorporating emerging information technologies into its communication strategies. The ad donation offer took place via fax, and this was not an isolated incident. Dubbed “il movimento dei fax” [the fax movement], these students created an internal fax grid to circulate information and updates about the protests and occupations. In 1989-90 faxes were fundamental in the coordination of actions among faculties and universities across the country, as well as to interface with the government and the press. In addition to this, students tapped into the DECnet grid – a system similar to Facebook that used (VAX) computers to connect worldwide science departments. This system was turned into Okkupanet: a social network to discuss politics. Okkupanet became a particularly important point of connection and information exchange with China, where students were protesting against their government in Tiananmen Square. When it shut down all communication and blocked every source of information about the events, Chinese state censorship seemed to be unaware of DECnet, which remained active during the unrest. Every day, Pantera students cleaned up the messages from their masking headings and passed them on to the mainstream press, together with their own communiqués (Mazzucchi, 2009). While this link became important to bypass censorship of the Chinese protests, the fights at Tiananmen also resonated with the movement. The use of Okkupanet created a direct and immediate link with other protests, anticipating some aspects of contemporary global activism. One of the social centres squatted that year in Naples was indeed named Tienament (1989 – 1997)–as homage to Chinese students and as a pun on a Neapolitan dialect expression meaning ‘remember, or keep in mind.’ Okkupanet disappeared with the end of the protests, leaving very little information behind. Fragmented as soon as the government gave in to some of the students’ requests, the Pantera was incapable of giving the newly emerged student movement enough momentum to develop sustainable political solutions to the crisis of the university and branch off into new socio-political spaces. However, it is fair to say that the Pantera (and its later resurrection in 1994 under the name of Sabotax) pumped some new energy into a rather dormant activist scene, bringing new individuals into political action, prompting 133 new occupations of social centres and generally creating the space to socialise and rethink the political, both with and against the old Autonomia movement (Ch. 6). My own introduction to politics took place in 1990, through the involvement of high school students in the Pantera, which in Naples mainly gravitated around the occupied faculty of architecture, and later, the CSOA Tienament. Importantly, these new waves of protests were characterized by two elements that were becoming a mark of activism all over the world. As in the examples above, one was the attention paid to the use of new communication technology, and the other was a new form of internationalism. Of course, attention to and solidarity with struggles abroad has often been a marker of social justice movements. Yet, movements like Autonomia and their foreign counterparts influenced each other across borders, but mainly acted at the local level. They conceived of their action as aimed at modifying the socio-political conditions within the nation state. New communication technologies opened up the possibility of new forms of exchange, support and, above all, intervention. Translocal assemblages: the Zapatistas of Chiapas By 1994, while Berlusconi was getting ready for elections to the football-like cheers of his new party (Ch. 3), and Italian students were once again in the streets, another important political event was taking place further away: the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) was fighting the Mexican government in the region of Chiapas. Following a series of unsuccessful peaceful protests, on January 1, 1994, upon implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agreement, the Zapatistas had taken up armed struggle. For the (mainly indigenous) peasants struggling to keep their land, NAFTA finalized their oppressive condition (Castells, 2004: 78). Hence, while clearly opposing the oppression of their colonialist past, much of the EZLN critique targeted the new forms of injustices deriving from the State’s efforts to modernize the country in accordance with neoliberal policies. These forms of economic discourses and reforms, epitomized by agreements such as 134 NAFTA, not only become the mechanisms that enable capital accumulation of a powerful few while leaving behind minority groups like the indigenous populations of Chiapas, but they also present themselves as the inevitable and necessary result of progress and economic growth. The EZLN was one of the first groups to connect and fuse anticolonial, local struggles with a clearly articulated critique of global oppressive economic mechanisms. The novelty of this approach was accompanied by another innovation: as soon as the struggle began, they enacted a quick move from guerrilla warfare to guerrilla communication. Previous work by NGOs had facilitated the construction of Internet networks to connect groups in Chiapas. By way of the Internet, as well as through letters and communiqués, news about the rebellion quickly spilled over the borders and offset the official government version on the uprising as foreign infiltration that needed to be suppressed. The guerrilla-like circulation of information brought the case of the Zapatista to global attention, it stimulated the emergence of a solidarity movement and prevented the violent repression of the EZLN (Castells, 2004: 83–4). In particular, the stories of the Zapatista leader (the masked, pipe-smoking Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos) spoke to minority groups all over the world. These stories bridged the gap between an isolated problem in the jungle of Chiapas and global civil society by making visible the direct connections between neoliberal policies and their effects on the territory. In January 1998, in solidarity with the Zapatista struggle, an Italian group of activists, the Anonymous Digital Coalition, called for a globally coordinated Net Strike, i.e. a virtual sit-in at five Mexican financial institution's web sites (Anonymous Digital Coalition, 1998). The sit-in consisted of continuously clicking on the browser’s reload button for the websites to bring down the servers. Within a few hours, the sites were shut down, wreaking havoc among shareholders. Inspired by this action, the Electronic Disturbance Theatre, a US-based group of media tacticians specializing in Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD), developed Flood Net, a software that sent an automated reload request every few seconds, blocking websites more efficiently. This software has become 135 a fundamental resource in the process of swarming, not only of Mexican websites but also of other targets of social justice struggles. Flood Net and similar ECD practices have been such successful tools for social justice movements that the US Army commissioned RAND corporation to research the use of such information technologies during the Zapatista struggle (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1997a: 369–95, 2001: 171–199, Ronfeldt et al., 1998: xi–xii). The Zapatista movement stimulated the imagination of students, workers, independent journalists, activists and people from all walks of life who flocked to Chiapas to show their support (and were sometimes jokingly called the Zapaturistas). For EZLN rebels, the idea of community is not only the basis for better local subsistence but also a model of global resistance and an alternative to the capitalist machine (Pacos & Rio, 1997: 12). In 1996, they hosted the first Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and Against neoliberalism (27th of July-3rd of August 1996), also known as the “Intergalactic Meeting” (EZLN, 1996). The event took place in the Lacandon jungle and brought together 5000 participants from over 42 countries. Although its outcome confirmed the difficulty of translating different realities into a common language, it also sowed the seeds for new events, including the Second Intergalactic Meeting a year later in Spain (in which the Zapatistas also took part). These kinds of meetings, and their later incarnations such as the World Social Forum and European Social Forums, can be seen as instrumental in the assembling of what is now called the alter-globalization movement, or global social justice movement. The meetings at Aguascalientes also spurred a number of collaboration projects, among which many were set up by Italian CSOAs like Leoncavallo in Milan and the Laboratorio Ska in Naples. These projects of collaboration played an important part in supporting the rebel groups in the construction of more infrastructure, including medical facilities and economic resources (e.g. a chicken farm) that facilitate autonomy and self-determination. (Laboratorio Occupato SKA and C.S. Leoncavallo, 1995, Pacos & Rio, 1997). Yet, the exchange between Italian activists and Zapatistas was by no means a one-way affair. 136 Aside from the inspirational force that the group transmitted, the Zapatista practices of resistance left an indelible mark on the activism of the social justice movement, while they also resonated with past Autonomist practices. In particular, their orientation towards community building, and their subversive use of the dominant language of neoliberalism to expose the effects of its discourses and policies on individuals, are now part and parcel of contemporary Italian and global activism. Ultimately, the EZLN critique helped draw the connection between forms of oppression through neoliberal economic policies in rich as well as poor countries. As explained in chapter three, the link between governments and dominant capital has become indissoluble, to the point that powerful corporations can often influence and shape a state’s social and economic policies in more efficient ways than ever before. This has always been the case in most developing countries, where colonial and post-colonial structures facilitate economic subjection to richer countries, where external actors consistently affect economic restructuring programs, and where development is dependent upon foreign investment. In the case of Mexico, this process relied on financial speculation through government bonds, as well as on trade deficit and debt. Prosperity (or the illusion thereof) was entirely conditional on the confidence of foreign investors (Torres, 1997: 56). The EZLN’s use of informational guerrilla tactics became proof of the possibility to tamper with the relationship between government and investors that is key to the flow of capital, by affecting the dominant power’s potential to use information for economic gain. Beyond counter-information Leaking information about the Mexican unrest outside the country’s borders posed a direct threat to the economy, and forced the government to negotiate with the rebels: “copycat protests (spread via the Internet rather than CNN) in front of literally dozens of Mexican consulates in the U.S., Europe and Japan, were perhaps more effective at scaring the government than much larger protests on the Zócalo in Mexico City” (Torres, 1997). In this analysis of the Zapatista rebellion, Maria Torres rightly emphasises that, while information constitutes one of the most valuable commodities in the New World 143 capitalism to an attack on Berlusconi’s media control; from the streets of Bologna to those of Genoa. Ultimately, whether some of the Telestreet channels are connected to the hackers-social centres scene and/or to older traditions of media activism, or simply to some neighbours getting together, Telestreet itself is an event that draws from the virtual potential of a metastable system of possibilities to actualize new practices (Ch. 5). The present analysis of the use of technology and information has described some forms of activism as tapping into, and aiming to expand the virtual field from which to develop new practices of resistance. The following chapter discusses the Telestreet project as one example of the ways in which technology and information enable the emergence of assemblages whose social function reaches past the production and circulation of information, to the creation of alternative modes of sociability. In particular, we will unpack the model and role of television within semio-capitalism from the perspective of information and sensory stimulation. 144 Chapter 6 Hacking the Sensorium: Telestreet and Communication in Italy Television unpacked European analogue television technology consists of scanning images with a television camera and reproducing them in a television receiver 25 times per second (30 in North America). The scanning process functions by dividing the images into two fields of horizontal lines and then interlacing them into a frame. Every second, 25 frames (or 30) are created and read as continuous movement, since the human eye cannot perceive fast changes of light and image. The television camera converts images into a field of varying electronic signal, stores the information and then sends out these signals representing the image. The television receiver reverts the process. Here, the phosphorous material that coats a picture tube in a television set is struck by a beam of electrons, glowing long enough for the human eye to perceive an image on the screen (Runyon, 2009). In 2001, the images that predominate on Italian television screens are those of Silvio Berlusconi during an election campaign, smiling to his potential–nearly certain–voters. In the background, members of his party sing the Forza Italia anthem while his waving silhouette glows with a rather supernatural halo, and the audience weeps in a trance-like state. The lights, the halo, the crowd, the sounds overwhelm the senses; the viewer is mesmerized. How does the mesmerized viewer make sense of this ‘data overload’ that no longer signifies ‘electoral politics’? The stimuli reaching her seem to originate from and recede into an undifferentiated flow of information that primarily targets the senses. The first part of this chapter discusses the role played by affect in securing Berlusconi’s place in politics. My argument supplements the better-known explanation that the media tycoon could win the elections thanks to his monopoly over the circulation of information and complements my previous analysis of his rise to power as part of a broader political- 145 economic setting in which figures like Berlusconi could thrive. As the field of advertising teaches us, public opinion is hardly steered by the content of messages, but audiences are still very sensitive to advertising’s very sophisticated forms, which appeal to their senses and desires. Since the affective character of television images is not limited to advertising, it is necessary to understand the general mechanisms behind the influence of television on the Italian imaginary. The second part of this chapter will analyse the role of affect in resisting the effects of the mainstream media on people’s subjectivities and socio-cultural frameworks. My argument is that looking at Telestreet only as a source of counter-information does not suffice to grasp its role as a practice of resistance. Instead, it is necessary to investigate Telestreet’s use of affective strategies to better understand how the relationship between an individual and her world unfolds through moments of affectivity and emotivity that are engendered when information is organised into perception (Simondon, 2006: 100–2). In turn, the resulting emotions and actions are made sense of according to the social and cultural frameworks that are available to us, and by those which Telestreet harnesses through its work. Affects are moments of intensity, which might resonate with linguistic expression but do not operate on the semantic or semiotic level. When decoding a message, affective responses primarily originate from a gap between content and effect. More precisely, if coupled with images, language amplifies the flow of images on another level. This creates a tension that may play itself out in any number of creative ways, causing a reconfiguration of the flow of meaning (Massumi, 2002: 20-25). Insofar as perception has to do with a selection and modulation of certain signals and the exclusion of the rest as noise (Ch. 4), each viewer picks up the loose strands of information contained in the new leader’s confident and contagious gestures (cum music and halo in the background), and gives them meaning. Here, affect turns into emotions: “No need to panic about the dwindling Italian economy and welfare state, Papì14 is looking after me.” 14 Papì is the nickname used by many of Berlusconi’s employees (especially young women on his television channels) to address him. While it literally means ‘daddy’ and points to his alleged father role for the country, it also has a very strong sexual connotation. For an excellent sociological analysis of the 146 In the constant, chaotic flux of data, unrealistic promises acquire a life of their own because they resonate with similar spectacular and benign visions of reality characterizing populist media culture. Television is the mirror of the world for many Italians, and Silvio Berlusconi generously gives it to them all as a personal gift. The reflected image is a shallow composition of artificial perfection, hyper-real narration, and a highly sexualized and aestheticized reality. Yet, it functions as a template for an imaginary that easily spills over from entertainment and fantasy into everyday life. Analyzing the 2001 election campaign, researchers have noted how its electoral battle established a new grammar for the language of Italian politics. No longer resting on a clash between opposing ideologies, the race relied on the images and appeal of two opposing leaders–Francesco Rutelli and Silvio Berlusconi– and their possible influence on voters’ opinions. Indeed, a case study of voters’ perceptions of these two politicians showed that, just before going to the polls in May 2001, the characteristics most associated with Berlusconi were: “he is a strong leader” (64,9 %); “he is enthusiastic” (60,2 %); “he is persuasive” (58,9%) (Grasso, 2003: 2). While all these qualities were fundamental for Berlusconi’s entrepreneurial career, none of them directly relates to a politician’s required skills. Similarly, for 51% of Italians an important characteristic attributed to Berlusconi was his good looks. Only 38,4% of voters identified with his political mandate or that of his party (34%), and 25,5% and 24,7% believed respectively in the leader’s honesty and capacity to keep his promises (Grasso, 2003: 2–3). The same study found a direct correspondence between the time (and time slots) dedicated to each politician on different channels, viewers’ relationship with TV and votes. On the whole, (unsurprisingly) more time was clearly dedicated to showcasing Berlusconi (Grasso, 2003: 9), who was successful in reaching those voters who had not yet made up their mind (Grasso, 2003: 15). However, airing time is not the only factor that can steer voters’ sympathies, especially when political coverage strongly relies on affective strategies. The visual/acoustic relationship between Berlusconi as a (rather perverted) father figure and Italian patriarchal systems informing the social positioning of women, as well as social relations in general see “Papí and the Patriarchal State” (Anonymous, 2009). This anonymous samizdat circulated on academic mailing lists in 2009 after a series of sexual scandals that involved the Italian Prime Minister and a series of young women. 147 language used in advertising, and increasingly in televised electoral politics is so sophisticatedly sensory that even dedicating equal time to different leaders can affect viewers’ opinions and actions, according to “the light” under which the politicians are presented. Of course, the flows of information reaching the audience are not the sole factors for their choices but they harness and amplify a series of values and needs that sustain dominant power formations. For Simondon, there is an intensity of information, which presupposes a subject as a metastable system (of relations), where information is what allows her to situate herself in the world (see also Ch. 4). This is because every received signal triggers moments of intensity during which she rearranges her relationship to the outside (Simondon, 2006: 95). Perception here refers to the resolution of the relation of incompatibility between the subject and her environment, which is triggered by this intensity of information and solved by ordering the information into a (meta)stable arrangement of sensations. Perception is the act of increasing the information about a system. It enables the preservation or invention of an arrangement of stimuli that cannot be separated from the affects that polarize it (2006: 96–98). More precisely, from a sensory perspective, if the non-coincidence of sensations requires an active selection to engender perception, the non-coincidence of affects triggered by the perception of intense images (and sounds) engenders emotions. Affects and emotions actualize into the present what is still indeterminate for a subject and sustain her relationship to a collectivity. They refer to a transformation, which constantly orients action along this relation between what comes to be identified as an individual, and the collective (Simondon, 2006: 109). Importantly, an individual’s perceptions and affects are given meaning within a collective field of socio-cultural norms and institutions. Or, in Simondonian terms, personal and collective individuations take place with the emergence of new meaning within the transindividual field (2006: 185). In this sense, perception does not draw on some universal or innate structures, but addresses the relationship between an already individuated subject (with her value 148 systems and socialized practices) and her world–the pre-individual and the individual (2006: 14–15). Berlusconi’s confidence is harnessed within a social imaginary, which is strongly mediated by television and his electoral campaign’s capture of affect engenders emotions that successfully give sense to (or trigger) actions such as voting. Since affect functions within a pre-individuated field, an individual’s sense-making is influenced by processes such as learning and habituation to certain stimuli, which can act on the potential of affect itself to actualize certain actions (Simondon, 2006: 95). Similarly, Walter Benjamin discussed the crisis of perception, and its implications for action already at the dawn of consumer capitalism. In the Arcades Project, Benjamin writes about the standardization of perception deriving from visual (and acoustic) techniques that draw on new knowledge of the body of the observer, such as studies on colour perception (quoted in McDonough, 2004: 459). A few decades later, Benjamin’s phantasmagorias––the optical illusions that entertain a public by effacing its machine operation––were perfected into what Debord called Spectacle (Debord, 1983) and Jean Baudrillard defined as simulacra (Baudrillard, 1994). Flows of information are loosely harnessed on a plane that actualizes sense (if at all) as a function of perceptual consumption, capitalist axiomatics and conservative politics. Berlusconi’s halo and choirs may not be directly read as equating him to Padre Pio’s newly certified sainthood, but like many other disjunct spectacular images, they resonate together with other levels of Italian life (Ch. 3), acquiring ontogenetic potential–from emotions to actions through affects. What the television cameras are not transmitting in Italy in 2001 are the images of activist Carlo Giuliani being shot dead by a policeman during the infamous protests in Genoa. These, however, together with other footage censored or distorted by the Italian mainstream media, are stored in the media archive of New Global Vision, developed by Roman hackers and hosted by Isole nella Rete. Ngvision, the Italian activist predecessor to Youtube, is an archive that circulates video material through peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet, enabling low budget distribution to users with slow Internet connections. It is a DIY, open source platform for all independent media producers whose work is anti- 149 racist, anti-fascist and anti-sexist. The platform also functions as a repository for the material that Telestreet’s channels air directly into their neighbourhood’s households (Ch. 1). Peer-to-peer sharing cuts costs and facilitates exchange and collaboration among the different nodes of the network. Television repacked The sending and receiving of broadcast televisions images is made possible by assigning a specific transmitting frequency and operating power to a mass media channel, which will be used to transmit video and audio signals, as well as other specialized ones (Hartwig, 1995). The signal is carried through space by a wave according to the characteristics determined by the frequency assigned to it. The process used to carry the signal through a higher frequency wave is called modulation. Antennas receive the modulated carrier wave of a television station from a transmitter and irradiate the signal into space following a designated pattern. After removing all unnecessary signals, a television receiver amplifies and converts the audio and video that will reach the viewer through a monitor for pictures and sounds (Runyon, 2009). This is also how Telestreet’s DIY system functions. Video material is transmitted from a source (often a computer) through a small transmitter to an antenna. However, the DIY antenna connected to the transmitter works as a TV station, relaying the signal to other antennas in its proximity. Street television channels make use of areas where stronger transmitting carrier waves are not present (shadow cones), thus facilitating the reception and circulation of their own signals. By not conflicting with already occupied frequencies, Telestreet avoids getting into trouble for the infringement of communication regulations and reduces the white noise that could drown its own transmission. Curiously, what one of these squatted television frequencies carries are the signals transmitted from another electoral campaign. A series of small-scale political meetings has made its way onto the phosphorescent cathode tubes in many houses of the city of Gaeta, in central Italy. The creator of street TV Telemonteorlando (TMO), Antonio Ciano, claims the paternity of pirate television. He started transmission in 2001, before Orfeotv created the official Telestreet circuit in Bologna in 2002. Ciano immediately 150 joined the network, and enthusiastically supported it through a series of institutional attempts to legalize the project with help of some left wing politicians. To the telestrittari’s dismay, the proposed regulation came to nothing after the collapse of the centre-left government and the rise of a centre-right one. I interviewed Antonio Ciano in the summer of 2008. He had recently won a number of seats in the local council, with his Southern Italian federalist party il partito del Sud. For me, investigating the political strengths and social potential of Telestreet beyond its struggle against Berlusconi’s media monopoly, Ciano is paradox. His failure in the 2001 local elections, while Silvio Berlusconi and his party triumphed locally and nationally, led him to set up his own pirate television channel. He described to me how over 7 years of work with TeleMonteOrlando, which includes a broadcasting of his (as well as others’) political speeches, his party strengthened its roots in the town and eventually earned electoral seats. It is not by equating Ciano to Berlusconi, or by justifying his miniature success story that I can find useful answers to my research questions. Indeed, some unexpected differences emerge when looking further into this paradox. They are not differences in the degrees of perfection of mediatized politics, they are differences in the kind of relationship between media producers, viewers and TV. That is, they are qualitative, rather than quantitative, differences. In more concrete terms, the separatist politics signified by the flag of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (XVII-XIX cent.) filling the screen on TeleMonteOrlando’s first day of transmission, the revision of Southern Italian history through movies and political discussions have no pretence to imitate or contrast mainstream stylistic choices, or content. Rather, if the spectacle discussed earlier can be related to a habituation of the senses (and sense-making) to certain stimuli, TeleMonteOrlando and all other street TVs precisely upset those perceptual habits. This means that the effects of their attempts to “reinvent the language of television” (Fieldnotes Eterea II) are most salient at the sensory-perceptual level, rather than simply in the practice of wresting cultural capital from the powerful hands of custodians of the mainstream media (Ch. 2: Prop. 3). As Telestreet contributes to an experimentation with the forms of content and expression of television, its undoing of the spectacle directly affects the emotions and actions of its 151 members/audience. More precisely, Telestreet’s productions and production processes intervene directly into the members’ and audience’s processes of individuation and into the emergence of alternative subjectivities. Yet, while innovative, DIY visual language (and some content) is routinely coopted by the mainstream to derive more profit through advertising campaigns and MTV-style programs, the political potential of micro-stations like TeleMonteOrlando persists in the ability to affect those who come into contact with them. There is no need for further sociological analysis of the relationship among the dominant Italian cultural and political imaginary, and the spectacular, hyper-mediated, hyperaestheticized rendering of the world in their media (see also Ch. 3). It suffices to add that most Italian female teenagers dream of becoming veline (the ubiquitous bikini-clad girls who frame male television hosts) and use their looks and micro-dance moves to secure a career in entertainment and a rich football player as a husband. In addition to this, the veline are becoming ministers and parliamentarians for the Berlusconi cabinet, redefining the skills and trajectories required for such roles. Eighteen year old Noemi Letizia, one of Berlusconi’s alleged sexual escapades has been quoted in the Italian press as saying: "[I want to be] a showgirl, I am interested in politics, too ... I'd rather be a candidate for the Chamber of Parliament. Papi [daddy] Silvio would take care of that" (Quoted in: Power, 2009). Meanwhile, Mara Carfagna, a former velina and topless model is already the new Minister for Equal Opportunities and four other girls have earned a candidacy for the European Parliament. For Alexander Stille, author of The Sack of Rome, a book on Berlusconi's power tactics, the media tycoon’s control of commercial television has facilitated a shift from a culture of austerity dominated by the Catholic Church to one of sex and luxury. Furthermore, Berlusconi appears to be “the only politician in the world who helped create and shape his own electorate before it elected him" (Quoted in: Power, 2009). One of the unexpected side effects of these shifts is the so-called velinization of Italy. As a counter-point, Telestreet’s affective stimuli can be embedded in and processed through a web of alternative discourses and practices that emphasize community building, the sharing of knowledge and an engagement with social justice and/or local 152 issues (Ch. 6). The heterogeneous character of the different Telestreet nodes, collaborating along lines of affinity with communities and organizations, provides fertile ground to harness the affects and emotions engendered through their work. Thus, Telestreet’s impact is noticeable primarily at the level of personal and collective individuation where it provides an alternative form of mediation between individuals, cultural-political formations and practices like the ones described in the previous chapter. These dynamics are present in the work of many channels. For instance, Orfeotv, a reincarnation of Radio Alice combining old free radio enthusiasts like Bifo and Ambrogio (Ch. 3) and younger media activists. Among other things, Orfeotv functions as the glue among some of Bologna’s neighbourhoods with an open storefront window that beckons people to stop by, bring their own work, or simply have a chat. Candida TV and Teleimmagini’s work, closer to the social movements scene, produce new media and DIY urban interventions as well as documentary projects like the very successful Fratelli di Tav [The TAV brotherhood]. The latter is a investigation into the recent implementation of high speed trains and their impact on people and the environment (Luppichini and Metallo, 2008). Telestreet’s impact on the processes of individuation is best exemplified by the success of Disco Volante TV and of TeleMonteOrlando. Disco Volante TV was successful not only in producing documentary work on disability that was officially acclaimed by professional journalists and used as template for architectonic improvements. Their work also established links with other minorities (such as local migrants) and with the local government and the citizens of the town of Senigallia (Renzi, 2006), breaking down assumptions and stereotypes on disability and other manifestations of difference. The Telestreet Disco Volante TV —flying saucer— was set up in 2003 as a project to empower disabled people through art and media and to connect the community through programs that focus on local social topics and events, broadcasting documentaries and reportage but also local fairs and cooking recipes. With Disco Volante TV, we have a situation in which the different individuals, aesthetic language and contents compete for ‘viewing space’ with mainstream shows. Especially in Italy, where very little, if no physical, cultural or social space is ever devoted to disabled (or other kinds of different)