Last week I spent some time at the University of Calabria, near Cosenza. I had a wonderful experience thanks to my real generous host, Carmelo Buscema. The level of debate was quite amazing, and the level of critical inquiry was also deep, honest and generous.
I also had the privilege of spending some time with my friend Antonio Mazzeo – one of the few in Italy who has spent real energy and time in investigating the relationships between the military and our Schools and Universities.
Below, some random pictures from the sea at Paola, near Cosenza.
Today at the Georg Simmel Centre for Urban Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, I’ll give a talk on my work on the constitutive violence of the Italian home.
Thanks to Ignacio Farias and colleagues for the invite!
I am happy to be in #Melbourne for a number of things, thanks to the wonderful Alison Young – Deputy Director of the Melbourne Centre for Cities.
On Wednesday, I will be in a full-day workshop to celebrate and discuss Alison’s latest research project on Spatial Justice & the City. Many critical housing and urban scholars will be there, and I look forward to the conversation.
On Thursday morning, I will give a seminar for ECR researchers, and in the afternoon, I will present For a Liberatory Politics of Home (Duke University Press) at the Melbourne School of Design. The talk will be online too. Details: https://msd.unimelb.edu.au/events/informal/politics-of-home-homelessness
Venerdì 5 aprile, 3pm, al DIST avremo un confronto sul mio ultimo libro For a Liberatory Politics of Home(Duke University Press, 2023). Ci saranno Sandro Mezzadra, Margherita Grazioli, Francesca Governa e Silvia Aru.
Siete tutt* invitat* in Sala Vigliano. Allego il poster con preghiera di diffusione anche a dottorand* e post-doc interessat* a geografie della casa e dell’abitare.
The event took place on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. I introduced the book, followed by Professor Vanesa Castán Broto’s response at the Urban Institute. The recording of the seminar is available at the UI page, below and on our YouTube channel at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m8pUyxzM6I&t=31s
In the book, I question accepted understandings of home and homelessness to offer a radical proposition: homelessness cannot be solved without dismantling current understandings of home. Conventionally, home is framed as a place of security and belonging, while its loss defines what it means to be homeless. On the basis of this binary, a whole industry of policy interventions, knowledge production, and organizing fails to provide solutions to homelessness but perpetuates violent and precarious forms of inhabitation. Drawing on his research and activism around housing in Europe, the book attends to the interlocking crises of home and homelessness by recentering the political charge of precarious dwelling. It is there, if often in unannounced ways, that a profound struggle for a differential kind of homing signals multiple possibilities to transcend the violences of home/homelessness. In advancing a new approach to work with the politics of inhabitation, the book provides a critique of current practices and offers a transformative vision for a renewed, liberatory politics of home.
I thank the Urban Institute for making the registration of this book launch available to me and the Lab.
I look forward to joining the Radical Urban Lab at the University of St Andrews on Monday 5th, February, as part of their week of events.
I will take part in the VIVA discussion of Rowan Milligan’s wonderful PhD thesis, and then present an excerpt of my Duke University Press book For a #Liberatory #Politics of #Home to the Lab.
Thanks to my comrade Antonis Vradis for organising!
I am very happy to join new friends in Lisbon tomorrow, at the CICS.NOVA | Conferência de Primavera do Laboratório de Ideias | Ideas Laboratory Spring Talk.
