• 00:23 Introduction
  • 01:49 “Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide”
  • 04:50 Heroes in the time of competition
  • 09:58 Irony and autonomy, the only way out
  • 14:20 Automatism, the new power
  • 19:36 Reprogramming the world with friendship
  • 26:27 Neuroplasticity
  • 34:14 Cinema, an imagination device
  • 40:51 Art as a way of reactivating the collective body
03/11/2015 45' 17''
English

In the book 'Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide', Italian writer and activist Franco “Bifo” Berardi examines the phenomenon of suicidal mass murders from a standpoint that combines linguistics, psychology, economics, entertainment and political analysis. For Berardi, the waves of massacres in schools, movie theaters and other public spaces provide clues not only about the perpetrators and their immediate backgrounds, but (especially) about the social and political conditions that trigger these acts of extreme aggression and monstrous heroism.

The book deconstructs the killings in order to expose some of the most pressing glitches in the hypercapitalist machine: the many forms of automatism driving the system, a workspace dominated by competition which Bifo has previously described as 'fractalized work', a permanent state of fear and psychological war, and the obscenity of self representation in what Adam Curtis called “The Century of the Self”.

SON[I]A talks to Bifo about mass killings in relation to cinema, mental health, neuroplasticity, friendship, irony and, ultimately, hope.

Son[i]aFranco Berardi "Bifo"neoliberalismOccupy Movementmalaise society

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