During the Summer of 2009, some comrades, thinkers and poets decided that we would like to hold a gathering, an intense seminar, to engage with the ideas raised by the writings of Franco 'Bifo' Berardi. It was only in that year that much of his work, spanning four decades and a wide variety of topics, had begun to be translated into English in a substantial way. But that is not to say that Bifo was unknown to us. Over those decades, his numerous shorter essays and commentaries were translated and circulated. Within a certain political and artistic milieu, Bifo was indeed quite a well-known figure, often associated with - and even held to be emblematic of - a certain kind of Italian radical politics, post-workerism (or autonomism, as it is often referred to in the English-speaking world), that mixed together an analysis of class focused on the primary of social struggles with an engagement with language, culture, media, subjectivity and the arts. It might be said that Bifo enjoyed the somewhat unfavourable status of being well known for his association with certain eruptions of social movements, and less so for his actual writing and analysis - although it is perhaps debatable whether that is a bad thing after all.
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