72 papers...
how boring!

 

Fabio Santin for the forty years of Arivista.

 

A bookstore
called Utopia

by Fausta Bizzozzero

The project was a bit 'crazy and our ingenuity as well.

The year was 1976 when I decided, along with Luciano Lanza, at that time my partner in life and militancy, to open a bookstore (some years later he decided to change jobs but other comrades joined me in time, especially Mauro Decortes arrived very young and still working in the library). No experience, no knowledge of the mechanisms of distribution and sales, no "trade".
Only a great love for reading and the profound conviction that it was necessary to exit from our clubs, our venues, our milieu and raise awareness of our books, our magazines, our ideas in the most vast and varied world that passes on the sidewalks of the city.
Our small group (Black Flag) was indeed found to deal with printed paper in 1971 published "A Rivista Anarchica" (born as a need to counter information after the massacre of Piazza Fontana) and had received a "legacy" by beautiful old comrades Anti-Stato Publishing House (later Eleuthera), the journal "Volonta" (now "Libertaria") and the quarterly magazine in four languages "Interrogations".
The project was a bit 'crazy and our ingenuity as well, but in February 1977 we opened the doors of Utopia Library in Largo La Foppa. It took years for us to be accepted in the neighborhood and it took years to learn the "craft" as a bookseller, for me the most beautiful in the world but also difficult, tiring (always standing still and only the iron is heavier than the books) and with ridiculously low profit margins. But the bookstore should be and has been even more: a place of meeting (of students, teachers, labor collectives, associations, study groups), libertarian cultural center by organizing thematic exhibitions and lecture series ( history / philosophy / ecology / education / science / arts / music etc..) with a libertarian cut, a place of encounter and exchange, of circulation of ideas, a cultural reference point.
Over the years (three decades) the editorial policy, which already pointed to the quantity rather than quality, to the creation of best-sellers and to the homologation downwards, has undergone a breathtaking acceleration fueling an economy based on artificial propagation of books published which resulted in the increasingly short life of each book (ie its presence and visibility in the bookstore) and make more difficult the daily work. But this "evolution", this acceleration, as we know, was part of a much larger process of the economy and society, of which, unfortunately, we see the daily disasters.
Over the years, the neighborhood has changed dramatically: gone the old craftsmen and historical inhabitants of the tenements refurbished and sold at a price the newly rich arrived, the local fashionable stores have proliferated. In this general massacre, however, the boobkstore Utopia still exists, the last bulwark against the rampant people of the new barbarians. I, for physical and personal problems, I gave the witness, but the adventure continues in the library.
If I had to take stock of my experience I would say that I consider myself lucky to do anarchist activity has helped me to grow, learn, acquire skills, I had a little dream (the dream of a different society is always in my heart, but alas I think more and more away!) that I could achieve as well as I wanted while paying prices, and finally I had the satisfaction of seeing recognized my / our work from both the public and the users of the readers' cultural activity.

 

Anarchy and religion

by Federico Battistutta

But the anarchists were not without God? Not all of them. And we are beginning to talk about it.

In the history of anarchism can be seen a substantially negative view towards the question of religion, dominated atheism and anticlericalism, unlike married. Exemplary in this regard has been the position of Bakunin, in expressed in God and the State: "Since God is everything, the real world and man are nothing. Since God is truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence and death. "
Having said that, in thought and practice of anarchism has existed in one form or minority trends differently oriented towards religion, while maintaining a strong denunciation of authoritarian and coercive component of organized religion and the opposition against the church hierarchy.
We may mention of Christian anarchists (Leo Tolstoy, Simone Weil, Dorothy Day, Ammon Ennacy and Jacques Ellul), Jewish (Gustav Landauer, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem), even Islamic (Henri-Gustave Jossot, Leda Rafanelli, Hakim Bey). It is good to add that each of the persons named has variously declined the relationship between religion and anarchy. Tolstoy, for example, did not ever declare to be an anarchist: "I consider myself an anarchist, but I'm not an anarchist, I am a Christian. My anarchism is only the application of Christianity to the relations between men," he wrote in his diary. In the case of Landauer, however, Judaism, although that is the background against which stands out all his reflection, does not assume the traits of their participation in a positive religion, while recognizing that even the more strictly political moment of his thought suffered a mystical-religious approach.
But the existence of a creative dialectic between religion and anarchism can also be seen extending our gaze to other religious lines, as well as outside of any confession. Were found points of contact - either explicit or implicit - in different Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists authors. To limit ourselves to a very well known character as M. K. Gandhi, besides he being greatly influenced by ancient Hindu spiritual tradition, also by the libertarian thought of authors such as Tolstoy and Thoreau. Gaining independence (swaraj), did not mean for him to create a state in imitation of the Western ones; power had to belong to the people scattered in villages: a divided and distributed power. Further, as regards the issue of private property, he had no difficulty in defining himself socialist: a socialist with "strong tendencies towards anarchy," someone called him.
The recognition of a possible relationship between the anarchist thought and some contemporary authors, made it possible to broaden our vision, making investigations and surveys to historical periods prior to the birth of the anarchist movement itself. To limit the scope to the Christian field, there were many points of contact, the vast area that consists of studying the phenomenon of heresy, both within early Christianity (which thundered against the Apostle Paul: "There is no authority except from God "), which in medieval times (such as multi-faceted movement of the brothers of the Free Spirit) or in later times, closer to ours.
The ongoing debate on revision of the paradigms of historical libertarian tradition (see the post-anarchism), which sink most of their roots in the culture of the nineteenth century, can help new openings and new possibilities to build dynamic and unpublished relationships between anarchy and religion. In any case, this is a field yet to be explored.
(Cf. on these issues.www.liberospirito.org).

 

The deception of the words

by Felice Accame

“A”. The only magazine that (for now) decided not to do without my writings.

The fact that none of the magazine - or almost - accept my writing makes me write in journals, mostly, I co-founded or otherwise cooperate since the first issue. It is not the case with "A" and, therefore, I feel like I rose in a chariot race already. The fact that - like all those on which I wrote - "A" is not dead or, more simply, have long since decided to do without my articles, I am surprised.
I'm not surprised, however, by the fact that, in my long association I failed to affect one iota the progress of the magazine. I feel at very least irrelevant. Here let me explain why.
Let me take care of cinema -if I will be ghettoized in a special category - or that I can take of anything - if I was heading cuisine it would be the same -, my kind of problem is always the same: I look at the methodological aspect of things, I tell myself that something is not the direction it should go, I try to trace the origin of the fault that inevitably leads back to the theories of knowledge - all theories of knowledge, without exception - from produced by philosophy during its history.
What do wrong the theories of knowledge? That they are not standing, that they are the result of a misunderstanding of words and well concealed that, despite all the complaints about this misunderstanding, things continued to go as they have always gone: the philosopher is an epithet of respect - even among anarchists, alas - philosophy is taught in high schools consciously mainly in the form of "history of philosophy" and is taught in high and unknowingly unavoidable doses in kindergartens and primary schools.
Here it will be good that I give some examples. How can stand a theory that predicts that knowledge consists in being your "inside" an exact copy of something that would be your "outside"? When and how this accuracy can be guaranteed? It is obvious that whatever perceived - even if it was perceived to be tools, such as can be expected to provide results the same for anyone who uses them - will always be perceived by someone - like any tool, however, it will still be done by someone. It is obvious that anything said - yesterday, today and tomorrow - it will always have been told by someone. It is obvious that if the foundation of knowledge is the outcome of this process it is the foundation of anything.
Less obvious is to detect deception in the words used. "Esternal" and "internal", for example, what do they refer to? To the body, the skull, the brain, the neurons, the synapses, the neurotransmitters? To the "conscience"? There are two - say two - who agreed to tell us what is that blessed conscience. And "knowledge"? Yeah, the same word "knowledge" mean? In the early sixties, I learned from Silvio Ceccato that two very different processes are designated by the word: the first is when comparing the two results in the perception of the time - like, yesterday I was presented to Charles, now I meet him in the street and say "Hello, Charles," I recognized him. The second is where the comparison - or say to compare - two of my results in space perception and space divided into a very special way in the "inside" and that "outside", that as we have seen, the result is metaphorical. It goes without saying that the comparison is impossible to perform - for lack of terms to be compared - and it goes without saying, then, that this "knowing" is metaphorical. And it's about philosophy.
A knowledge given by the handful from the earliest age - in the principles of grammar, in the bases of arithmetic and geometry, in the apparatus and methodology of science in religion - a of mysterious, transcendent knowledge, always in need of mediation by the powers that be - magician, priest, scientist, philosopher or artist you want to call it. Any justification for the use of this power is consolidated rhetoric. And myself, dismayed enough, look at the use of this consolidated rhetoric - I do not speak of a mere "language", but also the thought that this is about - not only, of course, by those who want to participate in that power and says he wants to participate, but - alas - by those who opposed or, at least, is convinced of countering it, contributing instead to the nth breath of fresh air.

 

The free community
in friendship

by Filippo Trasatti

A community of equals, free to be different, can not accept any form and no predetermined order.

Sure, you know, it is not easy, nor so common. Yet a community of equals and friends is possible. You choose it, but not entirely, it's not enough just the will to create it, because fate plays an important role. Besides the similarities, mutual recognition, curious exploration of unknown territories of the other, the intersection of interests, passions, knowledge and practices.
It will not be forever (but what is?) Has rather the appearance of a temporary autonomous zone, frayed at the edges, with areas of more or less dense texture to it and it takes a kind of act of creation to continue to keep it in life.
This autonomous area may expand over time, but never stays the same to itself and each one from the outside (but also from the inside), depending on the perspective from which looks, like a cloud, he sees something completely different. On the other hand, a community of free, because equals, no predetermined hierarchies, roles that become asphyxiated, can only be changeable.
And a community of equals, free to be different, can not accept any form and no predetermined order.
It has no walls, but it is certainly a safe place from the hard existence and the rawness of the world gone mad. A place where you can experience weakness, no fear in response to the strength and joy, without fear of envy and malice. A fraternal space, based on mutual support, which may appear elitist, as when the singularities weave their own paths.
A precious peaceful anomaly, a different community, but not insignificant, a microworld in a world in which ordinary men, community identity, states have cut off in a few decades (and continue to exterminate) millions of human beings and continues the ' horror of the planned extermination of billions of living and helpless sentients.
Pacifica does not mean no conflict or transformation dynamics, tensions, but sometimes as agreed and in full freedom, to build a common more appropriate space. Considerable means it uses the heat and the strength produced inside to turn it outward, in joint projects, a shared creation, in struggles against the many forms of injustice and exploitation.
For me this has the delicate and fragrant perfume of anarchy..

 

Funny, wise, militants, educational, modern priest-eaters

by Francesca Palazzi Arduini

A valuable calendar chronicles anticlerical criticism and debate.

“A”anarchist magazine is a valuable schedule of news, criticism and anti-clerical debate.
Since 1974, Paolo Finzi: May 12, in fact, all citizens-voters (including cloistered nuns) go to vote to decide whether to keep or repeal the famous "law-Baslini Fortuna", by which the divorce, although in very small size ("little divorce"), made its first timid appearance in Italy, land of the priests, saints and Christian Democrats.
Unable to account for everyone. Just a few examples: the procession of Turin "sindonbusters" in May 1998 is masterfully told by Matteo Maria: In Turin, the 1998 becomes even subversive status Albertine ... The police of a city olive trees, olive trees in a country manages to give a charisma "progressive" even Camillo Benso di Cavour, with his very well known "free church in a free state."
Zelinda Carloni, on February 19, 2000 demonstration in Rome in Piazza Campo de 'Fiori for the 400 years by the burning of Giordano Bruno said of the grant of the square by the police authorities with the obligation ... to make them an insurance policy.
On October 13, 2001 in Treviso held the conference to found the Italian League against Concordato, Mario Coglitore report is available in class and critical questioning the adherence of the figure of the "progressive Catholic".
Luigi Veronelli, in October 2003, criticizes anti-clericalism exhibiting the "virtuous" work and the humanity of priests like Don Ciotti (that of "Free" Sicilian).
For my part, however, have contributed articles to feminist criticism (with a penchant for psychoanalysis) to Vatican policies, calling for it to leave out anti-religious hyper-rationalist and anti-clerical views to focus on new strategies of cultural resistance to the invasiveness of the Vatican.
Through the writings of Charles Oliva covering all the key stages of the eternal Italian clerical influence. These are summarized in major titles, from "The submissive Inquisitor" (1996) on a brief rehabilitation of Charles Darwin and evolutionism at the Pontifical Academy, to "A small clash of epochal scope" (2008) on the anniversary of breach of Porta Pia. Oliva ranges from small events, reflections on the symbolic ("The fountain pen of the old shepherd," on the official pen of the Jubilee) to basic questions, such as with "The roots of exclusion" and "Let's go back to Melchizedek" (2006) on the roots "Christian" Europe's and to the political power functionality of the three monotheistic religions.

 

Libertarian education today

by Francesco Codello

This new air, from a simple and isolated testimony, is increasingly spreading through the net while stifling the dominant reality.

Between the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century many experiences and meaningful reflections have characterized the history of anarchism and libertarian in this sense, creating a real alternative to the traditional and authoritarian education. The value of this is demonstrated by the ability to penetrate over the years, the most progressive educational culture, all these theories and practices of these and its unquestionable relevance.
But it is mainly from the Summerhill School, founded by Alexander Neill in 1921 in England, this line of education has found new energy and new momentum spreading significantly in many parts of the world. There are now hundreds of schools, colleges, study centers and research networks, associations, on all continents, experiencing moments and places inspired to the libertarian education. These schools, with different gradually and feeding on different cultural influences of their context, however, are united by certain organizational characteristics, summarized below: decisions taken on an equal basis by all members of the educational community (from the smallest to the largest member), optional attendance at lectures, overcome the narrow context of school as a learning and constant immersion in the environment, the actual contribution of young and qualified in the selection of teachers, the organization focused on the times and ways of learning rather than in teaching, flexibility and individualization in the definition of objectives of education, the centrality of effective child and adult-centric culture.
To the irreversible crisis of the international school system, more and more popular groups of parents, educators, teachers, seek to oppose (in Italy too) not so much a sterile protest, but rather real reality experiments in which we can finally overcome the disasters that authoritarian and permissive educational culture (two sides of same coin) have produced, particularly in recent decades (See:www.educazionelibertaria.org).
This fresh air (which ideally is related to a historical tradition and important precursor of these ideas) from simple and isolated testimony, is increasingly spreading through the stifling net of the dominant reality. The educational system has collapsed and is unable to ensure, despite the strength and tenacity of many teachers, these spaces of creativity and autonomy necessary to make an educational anti-authoritarian action.
These "seeds under the snow" spread waiting to germinate and transform into real practical experience, available to those who believe that children and adolescents deserve to be left free to point out that infinity of expressions and those riches they bring.
In fact, the first duty of a school is to nurture a passion for learning (not to sacrifice or mutilate as is the case) and not to train children and young people in order to pass tests and exams. It is basically to give space to the kind of cross which Paul Goodman summed up so well: "Children do not need to be taught, but let's find out" rather than just listen to the answers that we expect from them, encourage them to ask new questions. Instead of systematically feed the competition between them, stimulate them to compete with themselves which is the best way to learn.
This education does not mean of course to be taken for granted as a starting point (genetic) and only look to its development, but, rather, assume in each individual stage of evolutionary development, the emergence of the authentic free nature. So it is to be educated in a continuous process that produces its own diversity as specificity.
The teacher's role is not to be the expert who knows the answers, but to guide and mentor who knows the questions to ask. The emphasis is not so much on the needs to be put in knowledge to be transmitted, absorbed and regurgitated, but on how to share the experience and meanings that they may generate. The teacher learns from the child and turns to him through the relationship and dialogue with the mediation of the environment, does not transmit a set of data acquired, but a relationship with life and become like the nature in which we exist.
Instead of teaching with the result, emphasis is placed on education libertarian.

 

Memory and history:
some thoughts

by Franco Bertolucci

The power we have become accustomed to the manipulation of memory and to a massive process of cancellation of the same.

OForgetfulness and memory are two inseparable terms, their constant weaving is an integral part of individuals and society. Both the oblivion and the memory, are natural phenomena, but they can also be induced artificially. Power, in its different facets, we have become accustomed not only to the manipulation of memory processes but also to massive setting aside of the same. Therefore, cultivating the memory is a necessary exercise for us not to be homogenized, and above all not to lose part of our self-awareness. For anarchists, but we could widen the scope to all people of good will who respect the principles of individual and collective freedoms, there are dates and events that can not be forgotten, it is a social obligation towards the "suffering" community and for a recognition of those who sacrificed their lives to the cause of freedom and social justice.
The history of political and social movements since their emergence has been marked by the memory of dates and anniversaries that have been generations of revolutionaries. The internationalists around the world for decades jealously preserved the memory of March 18, the anniversary of the Paris Commune and May 1 was consecrated by the workers to the memory of the martyrs of Chicago and the claim of reduction in working hours. For anarchists other dates marked on their long journey through history, from October 13, 1909, the date of execution of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, 8 January 1911 day of the disappearance of Peter Gori, until the fateful July 19, 1936, when in Spain a group of generals wanting to stifle the freedom and the republic started one of the most brutal civil wars of the modern age, causing thousands of casualties and destroying an entire country. A date this has meant that for anarchists, however, a watershed in their history, an event, the Civil War, where it shattered against the wall of the totalitarian vision of a libertarian revolution that was thought inevitable.
After World War II control of memory and history has taken for the political and economic power, with all forms of domination, a major strategic value supported in this by the development and spread of media technology.
The public use of history and its timetable has now become an affair of state. By law is enacted the historical dates on which to base the identity of the nation, in Italy as in many countries around the world. For example in our country by Law No 56, 4 May 2007, it was established the "Day of Remembrance, dedicated to the victims of terrorism" and the choice fell on the May 9, 1978, the day of discovery of the body of Aldo Moro in via Caetani. This selection from a historical point of view is full of contradictions and even amnesia. Certainly played a role in choosing the trivialization and the simplification that was made in the last two decades of that season, often referred to incorrectly, with an effective summary, as the season of "years of lead '. The public and political use of this "institutionalized" date by the current ruling class obviously has a function of 'indoctrination' of the younger generations. Quite different meanings would have the choice of the "December 12, 1969," On the massacre of Piazza Fontana in Milan and the beginning of the strategy of tension, but this did not happen.
If history and the memory of the human community "is nothing but the present that becomes aware of his past" (Sartre), then we must agree that by the institutions there is a natural tendency to "manipulate" and "distort" the history in order to justify the term "reason of state" their political choices: how do we not interpret this effect as the long season of "emergency legislation" for acts related to terrorism, violence and political dissent of the sixties and seventies? Today, therefore, the struggle for memory against forgetting induced calendars and institutionalized is important and opens new scenarios.
In this context, some stories and some biographical dates are essential for anarchists today as December 15, 1969 (death of Giuseppe Pinelli) and May 7, 1972 (death of Franco Serantini). Thanks to many "anonymous citizens" the memory of Pinelli as well as that of Serantini is not lost, it resists and rises, like an underground river, on the city walls, in songs, theaters, books and web pages and the independent press such as those of "A"; it lives in the hearts of women and men who continue to believe and fight for the ideals of social justice and freedom for a world that respects the environment and other living things.
That is why the anniversary of "A" - the magazine that devotes many pages to the history and memory of the anarchists - is integral and important part of the history of anarchism in the last decades of the nineteenth century and today has a special meaning that can be summed up the words of Luigi Fabbri written to Max Nettlau on May 9, 1933: "The memories of a past that had so much light, are also a haven for our spirit troubled by visions of this present, and helped to revive hope in the future."

All Translations by Enrico Massetti ("The other Fabrizio" + "Pinelli-Piazza Fontana")