Wu Ming's Transmedia Activism

“…an excellent tool to capture Wu Ming’s multifaceted interventions without reducing the complexity of their participatory practices.” —Monica Jansen, Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands “…the first comprehensive analysis of the Italian collective’s transmedia activism. A stimulating guide for those who want to learn more about Wu Ming’s writing and how this is situated within a much broader web of social and political practices.” —Emanuela Patti, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland This book explores the activism of the Italian collective Wu Ming. Engaging in a dynamic conversation with critical theory, post-workerist philosophy and eco-criticism, Saporito illuminates how Wu Ming’s forms of protest radically challenge neoliberal models of subjectivity through a revived commitment to an eco-centric ethics. The book charts how Wu Ming’s interventions, combining embodied, literary and online activism, aim to performatively create life-rhythms, practices and ultimately a political subjectivity alternative to fast-paced anthropocentric models imposed by neoliberal apparatuses. In-depth analyses of Wu Ming’s participation in the 27th Genoa G8 Summit, literary texts and online presence define the trajectory of their interventions, which moved from a traumatic repudiation of neoliberal apparatuses in Genoa to a thorough exploration of how these apparatuses produce and control subjectivity. Wu Ming’s literary texts invite the reader to grasp the complexity of the human-non-human relations these apparatuses exploit, while affirmatively exploring eco-centric ethical relations to the non-human other. Wu Ming open their bodies to these relations via hikes, walks, and performances where they try out slow-paced life rhythms and experiment with the non-human affordances of multiple media. Wu Ming’s transmedia activism links these offline initiatives with online strategies that promote the collective creation of critical content, slow down online users’ fast-paced experience, and mobilise a network of human and non-human agents that re-energise embodied, street actions. Paolo Saporito is Research Officer at University College Cork. He has a PhD in Italian Studies from McGill University. His research focuses on the ethics and politics of literature, films and online media.