Mataroea Summer Seminar:
Disobedience, Counter-Conduct and Political Imagination in the new Mediterranean
Island of Ikaria, Greece
17 - 27 June 2012
The Mataroa Summer Seminar is an experiment in creating an expansive political experience. Its ambition is to combine the arts of debate, analysis, and aesthetic engagement about pressing global and local socio-political issues with the acts of participation, learning, exchange and active immersion in the life of the island of Ikaria. It seeks to bring together a dozen scholars, artists and thinkers from a broad interdisciplinary background, willing to participate in ten days of both intellectual and affective activities. Apart from their presence in these events, the participants are expected to contribute to the exchange by sharing work in progress with the rest of the group on the seminar topic. The discussions are public, self-organized and do not comprise the bulk of the program, which includes lectures by researchers of Ikaria, visits to a host of local sites and a considerable amount of free time.
The seminar is named after the ship that in December 1945 took a number of young leftist thinkers, artists and other professionals from Piraeus to France via Italy, and thus effectively saved them from the perils of the rampaging Greek Civil War (1945-48). In Paris, these refugees became important part of an exile generation of intellectuals and heavily contributed to the advance of global radical political thought, both before and after May 1968. One of them was Cornelius Castoriadis, co-founder of Socialisme ou Barbarie and author of the ‘Imaginary Constitution of Society.’ Mataroa’s name and history is part of the modern political mythology of Greece. The seminar takes up the name as a sign of recognition of the complex trajectories of civil war, exile, resistance, the role of intellectuals in political struggles and in the imagination of a more just, free and egalitarian society.
The principal aim of the 1st Mataroa Summer Seminar aim is to provide a congenial environment within which participants will approach the cataclysmic political events and the subsequent transformative processes that have shaken - and continue to do so - both the Southern and the Northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2011, the entire region is undergoing unique political processes that bring to the forefront multiple practices of disobedience and distinct forms of the foucauldian concept of ‘counter-conduct’. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria have witnessed popular revolts that demanded the “fall of the regime;” Greece, Italy and Spain have experienced massive movements that sought direct or “real democracy.” In the seminar, we will take on the ideas, practices and prospects for direct democracy, civil disobedience and the political imagination that have been witnessed within these movements. The seminar topic and format are conceptualized broadly enough to allow for different kinds of contributions (papers, book and film ideas, political projects).
Ikaria is known as the ‘Red Island’ of Greece. Today, most of its inhabitants support leftist politics. Yet, the island has a complex and distinct history that includes the ancient cult of Dionysus and the cultivation of some of the first vineyards in the Aegean Sea, the intense commercial links to Egypt and Asia Minor during the Ottoman reign, the emergence of the Diasporic working class communities in the USA in the late 19th century, the declaration of the Independent Republic of Ikaria in 1912, and the transformation of the island into an exile destination for thousands of leftists (anarchists and communists) during the Greek Civil War. Throughout this tumultuous history, Ikarians, drawing from the ages-old tradition of the commons, have been involved in diverse forms of self-organization for the provision of common goods, especially in periods of marginalization by the state. In a similar vein, Ikaria’s festivals, the so-called ‘panigiria’, are renowned not only for their distinct aesthetic atmosphere and rich musical tradition, but also as forms of ritualized gift exchange and as redistributive devices of the community.
The program includes collective seminar sessions (paper presentations, discussions on drafts and research ideas), as well as personal writing slots, tandem exchanges and considerable amount of free personal time. The collective part offers voluntary visits at a host of local sites, such as the museum in Cambos and the Mounte Monastery; “the house of the scorpions” (a museum site for the period of the exiles) in Vrakades and the Theoktisti Church; the city of Evdilos and the mountain city of Raches; the village of Agios Polykarpos, the “honey house”, the village of Pezi and the dam, and the village of Agios Dimitrios. At 24th of June, the day of the panigiri of Saint John, the program includes participation in the morning ceremony in the Saint John Church and then collective visit at the panigiri. The program also includes talks and presentations on the Ikarian history and society, as well as meetings with local photographers, artists and authors, such as Christos Malahias, a self-made ethnographer and photographer of Ikaria, and Konstantinos Vatougios, founder of Ikariamag.gr, an online socio-political portal on Ikaria. The seminar’s main site is the village of Nas, which takes its name from a pre-Christian, animist temple (Naos in Greek), which once reigned over the bay and now lies in ruins next to the river.
Invited Presentations
- Talal Asad (Distinguished Professor of Anthropology - City University New York)
Host researchers:
- Maria Bareli (Sociology Department - University of Crete): "The commons and the gift of the Ikarian Paniyiri: Issues of Space and Time"
- Christos Giogios (History Department - Panteion University): “Ikaria during the WWII occupation and the Greek Civil War”
- Elena Mamoulaki (School of Architecture – National Technical University of Athens): “The unexpected Hospitality: Life and memory of the exile period in Ikaria Island”
Organization
- Seminar organization: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos in cooperation with the Center of Documentation, Research and Action of Ikaria (http://ikariandocumentation.wordpress.com)
- Communication Sponsor: ikariamag.gr (www.ikariamagr.gr)
- Seminar Location: Thea Inn, Nas Village, Ikaria (http://onestopwebshop.wordpress.com)
Costs
The seminar fee for the 10 days includes accommodation, half-board, transport; It varies according to status of participants: 400 Euros (Global South Junior scholars) - 500 Euros (Global North Junior scholars) - 600 Euros (Global South Senior scholars) and 700 Euros (Global North Senior scholars). All participants are responsible for organizing their own domestic or international travel to Ikaria, Greece.
Application
Apply with a CV and a short abstract (max. 300 words) to mataroa.ikaria@gmail.com