The Leaning Tower of Pisa occupied by students, November 24, 2010

«It could be interesting to look closely at the classics the students chose to put on their shields. Let’s look at the frontline.
Boccaccio’s Decameron, which is about people sharing stories while waiting for the plague to end.
Asimov’s The Naked Sun, which is the description of a world where humans no longer touch each other.
Melville’s Moby Dick, which is an epic tale of obsession. (more…)

Students and teachers on the war path. Riots and demonstrations all over the country. High schools and universities occupied by the students. Violent clashes with the police in front of the Senate. Berlusconi’s education reform is encountering blatant opposition, and the fact that the government is in crisis makes the movement raise its multifarious head even more. This afternoon, in Rome, students confronted the cops while carrying shields with book titles on them. The meaning was: it is culture itself that’s resisting the cuts; books themselves are fighting the police. It was in this incendiary midst that our novel Q showed up, and in good company to boot: Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Plato’s The Republic, A Thousand Plateaux… These pictures appeared on the websites of the most important daily papers. It goes without saying that, whatever will happen, we’re proud of what our novel is doing in the streets. Omnia sunt communia! (more…)

Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini

The London Review of Books blog published an article we wrote to dispel some dangerously hopeful fantasies on Berlusconi’s decline.

People ask us: Is this the end for Berlusconi? And we answer: No, it isn’t. Not necessarily. And even if it were, it wouldn’t be the end of Berlusconism as a fetishistic mass cult, an ideological current in Italian life and a certain way of using the media.
The most likely outcome is Berlusconism without Berlusconi. His former allies who are strong-arming him into resigning as prime minister are preparing a continuation of Berlusconism by other means. Gianfranco Fini, the former neo-fascist who is now being idolised even by some left-wing amnesiacs, is yet another Man of Destiny pretending to have come to town this morning. People seem to forget that Fini is still the man who was in alliance with Berlusconi for 16 years; who took advantage of Berlusconi’s conflict of interests; who voted for every shameful bill on employment, the environment, the judiciary and so on; who supported the police in every case of brutality against demonstrators, strikers or prison inmates; and who personally devised two very repressive pieces of legislation: the Bossi-Fini Act on immigration and the Fini-Giovanardi Act on drugs. In Italy, amnesia rules.

Read the rest on the LRB blog.

Manituana nominated for IMPAC International Literary Award (Dublin).

“A Choral, Polyphonic World”. WM1 and WM4 interviewed by 3AM Magazine.

Altai will be published in Greece by Exarchias Press.

WM4′s solo novel Stella del mattino [Star of the Morning] will be published in Spain by Machado/Acuarela.

Q‘s film rights were acquired by Fandango.

by Wu Ming 1

1. THE NAME OF THE FATHER HAS EVAPORATED

The latest wave of pseudo-scandals and false events had the merit of making unmistakably clear what the «Discourse of Burlesquoni» is and how it operated for all these years. Do you hear the discourse? Everybody does. It goes:

«Italians who voted for me, this is my message: do whatever the fuck you want to! Do like me! You want to drive at 150 kmh on the highway? I’ll abolish speed limits! You want to evade taxes? I’ll pass yet another tax amnesty! When you told me you needed to cook your company’s books, I decriminalized accounting fraud. Wanna hang out with young whores? I’ll join the party! Wanna swear and use cuss words? All together now: MERDA, CAZZO, FICA, ORCO DIO! Do whatever the hell pleases you (as long as it doesn’t damage the interests of the rich) and I’ll also do what I please. Above all, I’m goin’ to issue decrees that are exclusively and blatantly (BLATANTLY, ’cause I can afford it!) to my advantage. You know that, I know that you know, and YOU KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW!»

(more…)

by Wu Ming 5

Quite often, what passes to history as the end of a story is just an intellectual construction, a conceptual invention. The reality is more like a process than a collection of facts. It is difficult, even arbitrary to define a beginning and an end. Perhaps it would be more correct to speak of rise and decline, appearance and dissolution. Certainly it would be difficult to review the events of human history without defining any coordinates. Without an idea of beginning and end, we would find it impossible to apply notions of morality. We need an end because ends are exemplary.
Take Ernesto «Che» Guevara‘s mission to Bolivia: Che fought guerrilla warfare alongside his comrades, then he was captured, and finally he was assassinated. The tragic end causes the appearance of the Christological icon. We all agree in saying that Guevara’s end is also the beginning of his legend. This dynamic – an end which is a beginning on another level – is known to us, we perceive it as obvious, it is almost a cliché.
And yet, in the story of Ernesto Guevara and his comrades there is something concrete, something alive that escapes death (this concept which we mistake for a fact and consider The End par excellence). Something, or rather someone: Pombo, Benigno, Urbano. (more…)

by Wu Ming 1

In October 1978, Michel Foucault (hereafter cited as MF) visited Iran. The country was already shaken by street protests against the Shah. The regime was brutally repressing demonstrations, with the only result of strengthening the people’s determination. The overthrow of Reza Pahlavi looked imminent, many felt that a revolution was around the corner, but nobody knew what revolution it would be. In those autumn days the rallying cries were few, focused and clear; all political movements and social classes converged into a single, urgent request: «Down with the Shah!». There were already some who demanded an “Islamic government”, but the Ayatollah Khomeini was still in exile in Paris, and the movement was manifold and “in fusion”.
MF got enthused by all the energy circulating in the social body, and wrote several articles for the Italian newspaper «Corriere della Sera». He had brilliant insights but was also the victim of his own “oversights”. Such oversights were partly intentional: MF declared himself unable to «write the history of the future», and never posed himself the problem of what regime would be born of the revolutionary event. He just felt the need to analyze the event itself as a historical fracture, the rupture of an order, the end of a political and social model. MF interpreted what he was seeing as an ongoing «strike against politics» entailing the rejection of any compromise, of any traditional pattern of negotiation. Where there is one and only purpose declared to all and sundry with crystal clarity («Down with the Shah!»), there can be no mediation. (more…)