Saturday, APRIL 11th 2009 at 4:30PM to 6PM
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
Kimmel Hall, NYU Room 908
60 Washington Square Park South
‘Reading’ Struggles from Athens to Oakland
Midnight Notes will engage in a discussion of the current capitalist crisis and some of its most potent responses by reading the variety of struggles that have cropped up in recent months, such as in Greece, Oakland, and the Italian anomalous wave. How does organized refusal of capitalist command provoke crisis? How are movements able to circulate across the globe, short-circuit international divisions and hierarchies, and gain power?
Through a reading of current struggles, we will revisit key concepts in relation to self-activity such as the meaning of autonomy; how struggles connect themes of refusal, exodus and revolution; what working class composition means; how circulation and cycles of struggles operate; and how one ‘reads’ struggles politically and strategically.
Sunday April 12 from 10AM to 11:45AM
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
The COMMON ROOM of Judson Memorial Church
55 S. Washington Square Park
From Mutual Aid to Collective Reproduction in the Capitalist Crisis
The theme of mutual aid is important to the anarchist tradition, but how do we imagine cooperation in the time of capitalist crisis? Building collective forms of reproduction and understanding how we can overcome the divisions between us is a crucial task if we are to resist exploitation and oppression and create an equitable society.
These divisions are continuously recreated and are our fundamental weakness. Thus we need to develop the tools to overcome them. Sivlia Federici, author, scholar, and feminist, will draw out the significance of collective reproduction in our struggles against capitalism. We will discuss how our anti-capitalist struggles can foster forms of support and develop our ability to collectively organize our own reproduction.
Silvia Federici is a scholar, teacher and activist with roots in the Italian women’s liberation movement. Federici the co-founder (with George Caffentzis) of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, a member of the Midnight Notes Collective, a radical group that studies global political economy, and author of author of “Caliban and the Witch,” a groundbreaking study of the role of women’s oppression in the creation of capitalism.
George Caffentzis is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He has edited with the Collective numerous journals, pamphlets and two books published by Autonomedia: “Midnight Oil: Work, Energy War, 1973-1992″ and “Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles of the Fourth World War.”