Papers by Pietro Autorino
Ecología política, Jun 10, 2022
Tras la masacre de más de ochocientos civiles en 1944, la zona de Monte Sole estuvo abandonada du... more Tras la masacre de más de ochocientos civiles en 1944, la zona de Monte Sole estuvo abandonada durante muchos años, considerada como un lugar de muerte perseguido por los espectros de la violencia extrema ejercida por las tropas nazifascistas. En 1974, Luigi Fontana fue el primero en volver a Monte Sole, seguido más tarde por una comunidad de monjes, que fueron a construir un monasterio: sus intervenciones en la zona allanaron el camino para que una comunidad mucho más amplia de actores antifascistas volviera a Monte Sole. En este artículo reflexionaremos sobre la labor de peregrinos, monjes, campesinos, activistas y trabajadores que elaboraron la memoria colectiva de la masacre al volver a habitar la zona. En nuestra opinión, es necesaria una comprensión ecológica de la historia de la militancia en Monte Sole tras la masacre, y también arrojar luz sobre trayectorias inesperadas de reparación ecológica (Centemeri et al., 2022). Concretamente, primero recompondremos la historia ambiental de Monte Sole después de 1944, enmarcando el esfuerzo restaurador de las comunidades militantes que volvieron a habitar este lugar durante las últimas décadas como reparación ecológica. Además, situando esta discusión en nuestra propia experiencia de toma de posesión de la granja de Luigi en Monte Sole, en la segunda parte del artículo, exploraremos cómo la reparación ecológica en las ruinas está haciendo vida en común en el «Parque Histórico del Futuro».
Ecología Política. Cuadernos de debate internacional
En este artículo, me refiero al caso de la oposición en Italia al Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Re... more En este artículo, me refiero al caso de la oposición en Italia al Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR, «Plan Nacional para la Recuperación y la Resiliencia») por su lavado verde de las políticas neoliberales de desarrollo. El objetivo es delinear la forma en que las luchas campesinas por la agroecología se están reposicionando en la insurgencia concurrente por una transición justa. Sugiero que el cambio discursivo de la soberanía alimentaria hacia la agroecología ha sido un motor de convergencia hacia el movimiento por la justicia climática, y observo cómo esto refleja a su vez un movimiento ontológico de justicia climática hacia las prácticas e imaginarios de la agroecología campesina. De ahí que proponga la política ontológica como lente teórico-analítica para interrogar la coexistencia de la política experimental y la prefiguración en las prácticas e imaginarios de las agroecologías campesinas insurgentes. En última instancia, y en una fase preliminar de la investigació...
Ecología Política. Cuadernos de debate internacional
Tras la masacre de más de ochocientos civiles en 1944, la zona de Monte Sole estuvo abandonada du... more Tras la masacre de más de ochocientos civiles en 1944, la zona de Monte Sole estuvo abandonada durante muchos años, considerada como un lugar de muerte perseguido por los espectros de la violencia extrema ejercida por las tropas nazifascistas. En 1974, Luigi Fontana fue el primero en volver a Monte Sole, seguido más tarde por una comunidad de monjes, que fueron a construir un monasterio: sus intervenciones en la zona allanaron el camino para que una comunidad mucho más amplia de actores antifascistas volviera a Monte Sole. En este artículo reflexionaremos sobre la labor de peregrinos, monjes, campesinos, activistas y trabajadores que elaboraron la memoria colectiva de la masacre al volver a habitar la zona. En nuestra opinión, es necesaria una comprensión ecológica de la historia de la militancia en Monte Sole tras la masacre, y también arrojar luz sobre trayectorias inesperadas de reparación ecológica (Centemeri et al., 2022). Concretamente, primero recompondremos la historia ambie...
This article considers water scarcity as an expression of agrarian crisis in South India. It expl... more This article considers water scarcity as an expression of agrarian crisis in South India. It explores how the drought affects the everyday life of communities in the area of Kadavur, limiting their possibilities to choose what crops they can grow, what food they may eat, and what futures they will cultivate. Moreover, it draws from the framework of experimental practice proposed by Papadopoulos in order to understand how more-than-social movements engage in material organizing to transform their condition. In the first part, it constructs the biofinancialization of organic millet, in relation to the making of cheap rice. Hence, it presents an ethnography of alterontological politics through enhanced care and tinkering with food. Moreover, the article explores the role of water management technology in the troubled ecology of the drought. Finally, by discussing an ethnography of borewell repair, it sheds light on the odd entanglements between a global technology and this situated eco...
Geography Notebooks, 2020
This article considers water scarcity as an expression of agrarian crisis in South India. It expl... more This article considers water scarcity as an expression of agrarian crisis in South India. It explores how the drought affects the everyday life of communities in the area of Kadavur, limiting their possibilities to choose what crops they can grow, what food they may eat, and what futures they will cultivate. Moreover, it draws from the framework of experimental practice proposed by Papadopoulos in order to understand how more-than-social movements engage in material organizing to transform their condition. In the first part, it constructs the biofinancialization of organic millet, in relation to the making of cheap rice. Hence, it presents an ethnography of alterontological politics through enhanced care and tinkering with food. Moreover, the article explores the role of water management technology in the troubled ecology of the drought. Finally, by discussing an ethnography of borewell repair, it sheds light on the odd entanglements between a global technology and this situated ecology. This brings the fieldworker into the picture and considers the emergent politics of communing with/in the field.
Drafts by Pietro Autorino
This reflection paper was submitted as coursework to Prof Ingrid Pohl's course on Mindfulness as ... more This reflection paper was submitted as coursework to Prof Ingrid Pohl's course on Mindfulness as a Global Practice at Heidelberg University in Summer 2019
This essay was submitted as coursework for Daniel Münster and Dominic Collet's course "Worlds of ... more This essay was submitted as coursework for Daniel Münster and Dominic Collet's course "Worlds of Food: Historical and Anthropological Perpectives".
Here I aim at contributing to Heather Swanson's theorization of feral geographies in domestication. By looking at cattle domestication during the White Revolution in India we follow
- disoriented, de-homed cows, straying across cities, farmers' crops, and conservation areas;
- their bodies smuggled alive across the border with Bangladesh;
- their dead meat cow-mouflaged as buffalo beef on the largest export sector of the country;
- and fewer aged ones rescued and encamped in gaushalas;
We re-inforce Swanson's thesis that Domestication has Gone Wild in the sense that it is "making the Wild". My contribution lies perhaps in the possibility to tackle this thesis from the perspective of border studies. Hence, I look at the socially constructed boundaries between holy and non-holy species, between beef eating and vegetarian nations, between pristine conserved nature and the wasteland. These border diagnose the disorientation of survival mechanisms, disrupting fertile assemblages, and perpetuate vicious cycles of extraction, that cattle face at the current state of the so called White Revolution, in India.
Assignment for Daniel Münster's Seminar "Anthropology of the Anthropocene: Introduction to Enviro... more Assignment for Daniel Münster's Seminar "Anthropology of the Anthropocene: Introduction to Environmental Humanities"
This paper was based on sporadic visits to the field in Salento, Southern Apulia (Italy), between August 2016, September 2017, February 2018, and June 2018.
For this I am heavily indebted and in fact strongly dependent on the work of my friends at the Collettovo Epidemia (see: www.collettivo-epidemia.org) who have been sharing precious ethnographic detail, sharp views, and enthusiasm whether rumbling around the olive fields /forests or sitting by the fireplace.
The paper is trying to trace the social and political construction of Xylella fastidiosa as an "emergency", from above; vis-a-vis a Hopeful tactics of "surviving with" the Xf bacteria, on the blasted landscapes at a grassroots level. I particularly look at the work of experimental agronomists who take a muktispecies approach to the trees' health and explore the arts of living on a damaged planet. I argue that this attempt from the bottom up is paradoxically blessed by Xylella s force in disrupting the industrialization of the landscape.
This paper was submitted as coursework for Dr Paolo Novak's course "Issues in Borders and Develop... more This paper was submitted as coursework for Dr Paolo Novak's course "Issues in Borders and Development" in the winter 2015, at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It presents an assessment of different practices of resilience and resistance at the border. Reece Jones' Spaces of Refusal at the India-Bangladesh borderland, are discussed in relation to practices of Contestation in Europe, and particularly in relation to the detention and deportation of Zimbabwean Asylum Seekers in the UK. The paper employs the idea of Taking Subjectivities from Nyers (2010), as in Taking Rights, in Rancière. Thus, it distinguishes the spaces of refusal, as a practice of 'taking space', from the contestation, as a practice of 'taking speech'.
The politics of loudness in resistance, are framed in opposition to the politics of silence in resilience; this point is better understood through a literary parallel, Vercors' 'Le Silence de la Mer'
This paper is the product of my Independent Study Project for the final year of my BA Development... more This paper is the product of my Independent Study Project for the final year of my BA Development Studies and History at SOAS.
I thank Dr Paolo Novak (SOAS), and two anonymous reviewers for their supervision and encouragement.
This paper was submitted in April 2015. It builds on two months of fieldwork in Sicily, based in Catania, where I conducted participant observation at the Moschea della Misericordia, the largest mosque South of Rome, and amongst activists and human rights advocates active at the Southern Italian and/ or European borderland. First, in this paper I review different notions of "corridor" both as a political geography of escape, as well as a space that conceptualizes a larger psycho-somatic condition of living under threat of deportation. Moreover, I present ethnographic material from the Mosque in Catania, where Syrian asylum seekers found shelter during Ramadan, and the Catania's central train station, from where migrants could head North to Milan and Northern Europe.
Hence, in the third section, I wrap up a theoretical conclusion and construct the Informal Humanitarian Corridor beyond Lampedusa. I observe that informal networks of humanitarian actors have already produced routes of safe-passage (beyond sea). Hence, the potential of this suggestion is discussed.
This essay was submitted in March 2017 as coursework for "Readings in Political Ecology and Alter... more This essay was submitted in March 2017 as coursework for "Readings in Political Ecology and Alternative Agriculture".
I am grateful to Dr Andrew Flachs for reviewing a draft and generously sparing time for supervision. I also share this work with Charlotte, Coral and Lanlan, my colleagues during this course at Heidelberg University, who attended my presentation, read a first draft and gave me extensive feedback.
In the following, I analyze the vision of the Sonoran Desert as deadly environment, hostile to migrants, as produced through narrative "abstraction" of fewer elements of its flora and fauna. I argue that this narrative is produced and negotiated through a common project, by USBP bordering policy and practice, as well as conservation activism and critical migration scholarship. While I first understand the production of this discourse in terms of abstraction (see Scott, 1998), I then (re-)disentagle such, by drafting three ways out - by asking (or answering) the question 'what's left?'
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Papers by Pietro Autorino
Drafts by Pietro Autorino
Here I aim at contributing to Heather Swanson's theorization of feral geographies in domestication. By looking at cattle domestication during the White Revolution in India we follow
- disoriented, de-homed cows, straying across cities, farmers' crops, and conservation areas;
- their bodies smuggled alive across the border with Bangladesh;
- their dead meat cow-mouflaged as buffalo beef on the largest export sector of the country;
- and fewer aged ones rescued and encamped in gaushalas;
We re-inforce Swanson's thesis that Domestication has Gone Wild in the sense that it is "making the Wild". My contribution lies perhaps in the possibility to tackle this thesis from the perspective of border studies. Hence, I look at the socially constructed boundaries between holy and non-holy species, between beef eating and vegetarian nations, between pristine conserved nature and the wasteland. These border diagnose the disorientation of survival mechanisms, disrupting fertile assemblages, and perpetuate vicious cycles of extraction, that cattle face at the current state of the so called White Revolution, in India.
This paper was based on sporadic visits to the field in Salento, Southern Apulia (Italy), between August 2016, September 2017, February 2018, and June 2018.
For this I am heavily indebted and in fact strongly dependent on the work of my friends at the Collettovo Epidemia (see: www.collettivo-epidemia.org) who have been sharing precious ethnographic detail, sharp views, and enthusiasm whether rumbling around the olive fields /forests or sitting by the fireplace.
The paper is trying to trace the social and political construction of Xylella fastidiosa as an "emergency", from above; vis-a-vis a Hopeful tactics of "surviving with" the Xf bacteria, on the blasted landscapes at a grassroots level. I particularly look at the work of experimental agronomists who take a muktispecies approach to the trees' health and explore the arts of living on a damaged planet. I argue that this attempt from the bottom up is paradoxically blessed by Xylella s force in disrupting the industrialization of the landscape.
The politics of loudness in resistance, are framed in opposition to the politics of silence in resilience; this point is better understood through a literary parallel, Vercors' 'Le Silence de la Mer'
I thank Dr Paolo Novak (SOAS), and two anonymous reviewers for their supervision and encouragement.
This paper was submitted in April 2015. It builds on two months of fieldwork in Sicily, based in Catania, where I conducted participant observation at the Moschea della Misericordia, the largest mosque South of Rome, and amongst activists and human rights advocates active at the Southern Italian and/ or European borderland. First, in this paper I review different notions of "corridor" both as a political geography of escape, as well as a space that conceptualizes a larger psycho-somatic condition of living under threat of deportation. Moreover, I present ethnographic material from the Mosque in Catania, where Syrian asylum seekers found shelter during Ramadan, and the Catania's central train station, from where migrants could head North to Milan and Northern Europe.
Hence, in the third section, I wrap up a theoretical conclusion and construct the Informal Humanitarian Corridor beyond Lampedusa. I observe that informal networks of humanitarian actors have already produced routes of safe-passage (beyond sea). Hence, the potential of this suggestion is discussed.
I am grateful to Dr Andrew Flachs for reviewing a draft and generously sparing time for supervision. I also share this work with Charlotte, Coral and Lanlan, my colleagues during this course at Heidelberg University, who attended my presentation, read a first draft and gave me extensive feedback.
In the following, I analyze the vision of the Sonoran Desert as deadly environment, hostile to migrants, as produced through narrative "abstraction" of fewer elements of its flora and fauna. I argue that this narrative is produced and negotiated through a common project, by USBP bordering policy and practice, as well as conservation activism and critical migration scholarship. While I first understand the production of this discourse in terms of abstraction (see Scott, 1998), I then (re-)disentagle such, by drafting three ways out - by asking (or answering) the question 'what's left?'
Here I aim at contributing to Heather Swanson's theorization of feral geographies in domestication. By looking at cattle domestication during the White Revolution in India we follow
- disoriented, de-homed cows, straying across cities, farmers' crops, and conservation areas;
- their bodies smuggled alive across the border with Bangladesh;
- their dead meat cow-mouflaged as buffalo beef on the largest export sector of the country;
- and fewer aged ones rescued and encamped in gaushalas;
We re-inforce Swanson's thesis that Domestication has Gone Wild in the sense that it is "making the Wild". My contribution lies perhaps in the possibility to tackle this thesis from the perspective of border studies. Hence, I look at the socially constructed boundaries between holy and non-holy species, between beef eating and vegetarian nations, between pristine conserved nature and the wasteland. These border diagnose the disorientation of survival mechanisms, disrupting fertile assemblages, and perpetuate vicious cycles of extraction, that cattle face at the current state of the so called White Revolution, in India.
This paper was based on sporadic visits to the field in Salento, Southern Apulia (Italy), between August 2016, September 2017, February 2018, and June 2018.
For this I am heavily indebted and in fact strongly dependent on the work of my friends at the Collettovo Epidemia (see: www.collettivo-epidemia.org) who have been sharing precious ethnographic detail, sharp views, and enthusiasm whether rumbling around the olive fields /forests or sitting by the fireplace.
The paper is trying to trace the social and political construction of Xylella fastidiosa as an "emergency", from above; vis-a-vis a Hopeful tactics of "surviving with" the Xf bacteria, on the blasted landscapes at a grassroots level. I particularly look at the work of experimental agronomists who take a muktispecies approach to the trees' health and explore the arts of living on a damaged planet. I argue that this attempt from the bottom up is paradoxically blessed by Xylella s force in disrupting the industrialization of the landscape.
The politics of loudness in resistance, are framed in opposition to the politics of silence in resilience; this point is better understood through a literary parallel, Vercors' 'Le Silence de la Mer'
I thank Dr Paolo Novak (SOAS), and two anonymous reviewers for their supervision and encouragement.
This paper was submitted in April 2015. It builds on two months of fieldwork in Sicily, based in Catania, where I conducted participant observation at the Moschea della Misericordia, the largest mosque South of Rome, and amongst activists and human rights advocates active at the Southern Italian and/ or European borderland. First, in this paper I review different notions of "corridor" both as a political geography of escape, as well as a space that conceptualizes a larger psycho-somatic condition of living under threat of deportation. Moreover, I present ethnographic material from the Mosque in Catania, where Syrian asylum seekers found shelter during Ramadan, and the Catania's central train station, from where migrants could head North to Milan and Northern Europe.
Hence, in the third section, I wrap up a theoretical conclusion and construct the Informal Humanitarian Corridor beyond Lampedusa. I observe that informal networks of humanitarian actors have already produced routes of safe-passage (beyond sea). Hence, the potential of this suggestion is discussed.
I am grateful to Dr Andrew Flachs for reviewing a draft and generously sparing time for supervision. I also share this work with Charlotte, Coral and Lanlan, my colleagues during this course at Heidelberg University, who attended my presentation, read a first draft and gave me extensive feedback.
In the following, I analyze the vision of the Sonoran Desert as deadly environment, hostile to migrants, as produced through narrative "abstraction" of fewer elements of its flora and fauna. I argue that this narrative is produced and negotiated through a common project, by USBP bordering policy and practice, as well as conservation activism and critical migration scholarship. While I first understand the production of this discourse in terms of abstraction (see Scott, 1998), I then (re-)disentagle such, by drafting three ways out - by asking (or answering) the question 'what's left?'