Vabljeni na predavanje o aktualnosti Louisa Adamiča. Andrea Olivieri bo predstavil rezultate svojega študija o pomembni osebnosti zgodovine delavskega gibanja in migracij. Predavanje bo v angleščini in konsekutivno prevajano v transnacionalni jezik SC Rog. V torek 7. oktobra ob 18.30 v SC Rog.

Evviva il creolismo e la liberta!

Louis Adamic emigrated to the United States when he was fifteen, in 1913, leaving from Grosuplje, his native slovenian village. In America he lived the life of millions of other immigrants, he traveled were jobs and his young spirit attracted him, and finally became a particular and notorious figure of self-educated journalist and writer. In this role he never stopped traveling around the North american continent, taking closeups of the people he met and detailed accounts of the conditions of life and work of millions of American workers and their families, both aliens and old stock anglo-saxons.

In the years of the depression of the 1930s and of the crisis of political and economic legitimacy of the anglo-saxon élites, Louis Adamic contributed, with his books and articles and with hundreds of lectures, to spread the fact that a new conception of America was necessary, one in which Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island were equally important in the formation of a genuine American identity and in the development of a society freed from injustice and exploitation.

Hence Adamic was a short-term pluralist but in the long term he believed in the possibility of a universal or pan-human culture: America for Adamic, with its contradictions and its human richness, was not only a place, but first of all a never ending process that could have been effective in the construction of a new world.

In the 1940’s he became more involved in the issues of World War II and in the destiny of his native land. An admirer of Jugoslavian resistance, of self-managed economy and of Tito, he became a sort of bridging figure between socialist Jugoslavia and America, trying to avoid the tragedies of Cold war of which he probably was one of the first victims because of the ignorance of American red-baiters.

The work and ideas of Louis Adamic had a strong impact in the so-called American ethnic revival in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but have been once again smokescreened by the Jugoslavian implosion and by the affirmation, in the United States and in the world, of the neoliberal ideology. Avoiding forced historical parallelisms, I believe that the personal story and work of this fighter of Slovenian descent gives us the possibility of an actual and urgent reflection upon our world. The violence of neoliberal economics and politics is the weapon attacking the (re-)emerging idea of a global citizenship, the possible dream of a genuine transnational society. Institutional racism and exclusion promoted by political and economical European élites give us a dramatic example of this: Europe is a Union only for bankers and exploiters, and the idea of a genuine European multi-ethnic identity is far from being promoted. A trans-national project and action, using also our own history and its standing out figures - and Louis Adamic is one of them - can be part of our radical counter-attack in the twenty-first century.