Franco Bifo Berardi, FUTURABILITÀ, 2018

 «A long period of violence, war and dementia awaits us», warns Franco Bifo Berardi in one of the hardest pages of Futurabilità, and every day we have the confirmation: on the one hand, the institutionalized racism of mainstream politics; on the other, the shitstorm (literally «shit storms») that have turned online culture into a raging succession of resentments; in the background, the economic and existential precariousness of a generation doomed to jump from one job to another, while meanwhile the anxiety is rampant, depression and the consumption of psychopharmaceuticals.

And yet, «if we want to find a way out, we must look the beast in the eye». And this is what Bifo tries in his most merciless essay, already published in the United Kingdom in 2017 and here proposed in an updated and expanded version.

Because if it is true that at the moment we seem unable to produce those changes that we would desperately need, it is also true that a possibility still exists. To activate it, however, it is necessary that the hyper-connected generation of Silicon Valley Global becomes aware that, without solidarity and shared consciousness, no future is possible, and that to get out of the blackmail of the sad realism of our times it is necessary to dare the inconceivable. And in the end, it almost seems to intuit an invitation that sounds at the same time familiar and providential: «neuroproletarians of the whole world, unite!».

Writer and philosopher, Franco Bifo Berardi is one of the most important radical contemporary thinkers. He was one of the founders of Radio Alice and his latest books include After the Future (Derive Approdi 2013) and Heroes (Baldini & Castoldi 2015).