Wu Ming's Transmedia Activism : Ethical and Political Challenges to Neoliberalism

This book explores the activism of the Italian collective Wu Ming. Engaging in a dynamic conversation with critical theory, post-workerist philosophy and eco-criticism, Saporito illuminates how Wu Ming’s forms of protest radically challenge neoliberal models of subjectivity through a revived commitment to an ​eco-centric ethics. The book charts how Wu Ming’s interventions, combining embodied, literary and online activism, aim to performatively create life-rhythms, practices and ultimately a political subjectivity alternative to fast-paced anthropocentric models imposed by neoliberal apparatuses. In-depth analyses of Wu Ming’s participation in the 27th Genoa G8 Summit, literary texts and online presence define the trajectory of their interventions, which moved from a traumatic repudiation of neoliberal apparatuses in Genoa to a thorough exploration of how these apparatuses produce and control subjectivity. Wu Ming’s literary texts invite the reader to grasp the complexity of the human-non-human relations these apparatuses exploit, while affirmatively exploring eco-centric ethical relations to the non-human other. Wu Ming open their bodies to these relations via hikes, walks, and performances where they try out slow-paced life rhythms and experiment with the non-human affordances of multiple media. Wu Ming’s transmedia activism links these offline initiatives with online strategies that promote the collective creation of critical content, slow down online users’ fast-paced experience, and mobilise a network of human and non-human agents that re-energise embodied, street actions. Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: Mapping Wu Ming’s Transmedia Activism in Neoliberal Society 1.1 There Is No Alternative to Neoliberalism 1.2 Mapping Wu Ming’s Activism: Material, Linguistic and Discursive Forms of Intervention 1.3 The Materiality of Streets: “Tenere il culo in strada” 1.3.1 Wearing White Overalls 1.3.2 The Embodiment of Political Imagination 1.3.3 The Street in Literature: Between Language and Practice 1.4 Literary Paths: Imagining a Different World 1.4.1 Wu Ming: A Pseudonym to Challenge Individualism 1.4.2 A New Linguistic Arsenal to Challenge Mainstream Historical Accounts 1.4.3 The New Italian Epic: Towards a New Idea of Literature 1.5 Transmedia Networks 1.5.1 Making Content Circulate Across Media 1.5.2 Interactivity, Participation, Transmedia Storytelling 1.5.3 Twitter, Giap and the Wu Ming Foundation 1.6 One Last Look at the Map before Leaving: Content and Structure of This Book References Chapter 2: Performing the Multitude: Linguistic and Material Enactments of a Political Subjectivity 2.1 Introduction 2.2 From the Multitudes of Europe Rising Up Against the Empire and Marching on Genoa 2.3 The Concept of Performativity 2.4 Multitude and Empire: Face-Off 2.5 A Close Reading of the Manifesto and Its Material Embodiments 2.6 New Directions in Wu Ming’s Forms of Interventions References Chapter 3: The Production of Subjectivity in Wu Ming’s Literary Forms of Expression 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Plurivocal Dialogic Dimensions in 54 and L’armata dei sonnambuli 3.3 Don’t Say a Word: Affective Exchanges Between Humans, Animals and Technology 3.3.1 (Non)Human Synesthetic Intra-Actions 3.3.2 Hey, Commodity, How Does That Feel? 3.4 What the Hell Is That? Machinic Enslavement as a Narrative Entity 3.5 Walking: Exploring Existential Alternatives Beyond the Boundaries of the Text References Chapter 4: Machinic Assemblages of Political Intervention Across Transmedia Networks 4.1 Introduction 4.2 From Collectivities to Machinic Assemblages and Back Again 4.3 Sharing Is Caring: Wu Ming’s Implementation of Copy-Left Policies 4.4 Sharing Knowledge, Affects and Relations Through Transmedia Linguistic Practices 4.4.1 Giap: The Newsletter 4.4.2 Giap: The Blog 4.4.3 From Giap to Twitter and Beyond 4.5 Tenere il culo in strada 2.0: The #Renziscappa Campaign 4.5.1 Tracking, Sharing, Organising: The Uses of the Hashtag 4.5.2 A Space for Reflection: The Role of the Blog 4.5.3 Visualising the Campaign: The First Map 4.6 A Transmedia Assemblage of “Enunciation”: The Story-Map 4.7 Embodying (Non)Human Rhythms: A Molecular Challenge to Neoliberal Apparatuses References Chapter 5: Conclusion References Index