THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS LAB. RETHINKING RACE, SEX, AND CLASS

WORKSHOP
July 2, 4 and 5, 2018
2.00 - 4.00 pm

Coordinated by VERONICA GAGO, MICHAEL HARDT and SANDRO MEZZADRA

The three days seminar will present the project and activities of the Social Movements Lab, based at Duke University (Franklin Humanities Institute) and affiliated with the Academy for Global Humanities and Critical Theory. Approaching the analysis of movements beyond a theory/practice divide and focusing on their intersectional and international dimensions, the Lab has fostered in the first year of its activities a panoply of encounters as well as attempts to map the global landscape of social movements and the ensuing theoretical and political challenges. In the first session of the seminar, with the participation of Michael Hardt via Skype, the project will be presented both with respect to its conceptual scope and through a discussion of specific instances of social movement discussed in the Lab. In the second and third sessions Verónica Gago and Sandro Mezzadra will take inspiration from three specific social movements (the new international feminist mobilizations, with a specific focus on Latin America, the struggles of migrants and refugees in Europe, and #BlackLivesMatter in the US) to reflect upon the concepts of race, class, and sex in the contemporary politics of social movements.

Verónica Gago teaches at the University of Buenos Aires and at Universidad Nacional de San Martín. She is a researcher at the National Council of Research in Argentina. Her work is deeply influenced by active participation in such experiences as the Colectivo Situaciones and Instituto de Investigación y Experimentación Política (IIEP). Her book Neoliberalism from Below: popular pragmatics and baroque economies is forthcoming in English from Duke University Press (2017). She has published widely on issues of capital, social movements and popular economies.

Michael Hardt is Professor of Literature at Duke University, his writings explore the new forms of domination in the contemporary world as well as the social movements and other forces of liberation that resist them. In the Empire trilogy -- Empire (2000), Multitude (2004), and Commonwealth(2009) -- he and Antonio Negri investigate the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. They also study the political and economic alternatives that could lead to a more democratic world. Their pamphlet Declaration (2012) attempts to articulate the significance of the encampments and occupations that began in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and to recognize the primary challenges faced by emerging democratic social movements today.

Sandro Mezzadra works as an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bologna and is currently visiting professor at the New School for Social Research, New York (Department of Politics). He has been visiting professor and research fellow in several places, including Humboldt Universität (Berlin), Duke University, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris), University of Ljubljana, FLACSO Ecuador, and UNSAM (Buenos Aires) He has published widely on the areas of migration, postcolonial theory, contemporary capitalism, Italian operaismo  and autonomist Marxism. With Brett Neilson,  Border as method, or, the multiplication of labor  (2013, Duke University Press). Mezzadra's and Neilson's new book, The Politics of Operations. Excavating Contemporary Capitalism, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.