30.01.2020

Donnerstag, 30. Jänner 2020 | 18:00 Uhr
IAM Media Lab | Kronesgasse 5/III | 8010 Graz

Both growth advocates and degrowthers are obsessed by the phantom of scarcity: the former think that it has to be faced by intensifying the growth effort; the latter, prefer to cut consumption, adapting their lifestyles to the progressive depletion of the planet’s resources. But in the Bataillan wonderland, everything is upside down: the basic problem for him is abundance, the excess of energy that weighs as a “curse” on living beings, threatening to destroy them in a senseless way. So growth is not condemned for its voracity: it must be abandoned because it does not “eat” enough energy. Far from cultivating the ethics of temperance, parsimony and sobriety (shared by growthers and degrowthers), it is time to relearn the art of waste, or more precisely to regain familiarity with dépense practices and rituals. It is time to regain “sovereignty” and leave the servile domain where human activity is completely subjected to the mere reproduction of life.

Onofrio Romano is associate professor of Sociology at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Bari (Italy). He is member of the professors’ board of the Phd in Human Relations Sciences. His research ranges over social theory, post-modernity, degrowth, political participation, work and consumption, Balkan countries, Mediterranean and Adriatic societies. Among his recent works: Towards a society of degrowth (Routledge 2020), La libertà verticale (Vertical liberty, Meltemi 2019), Georges Bataille. Depensare la crescita (De-thinking growth, Jaca Book 2019), The sociology of knowledge in a time of crisis (Routledge 2014). He has participated in the collective work Degrowth. A vocabulary for a new era (Routledge 2014).