Disturbances lecture series: The 1980 Gwangju Uprising and South-Korean social movements
Submitted by A-ryhmä on 11 July, 2014 - 15:29
In Mannerheim-hall, Uusi ylioppilastalo, Mannerheimintie 5 A 5th floor
on Sunday 7th of September
Food available 4pm, Lecture 4.30pm
Korean social movements in the 20th century were some of the world’s
strongest and most successful—winning democratic reforms, opening
cultural space, and revitalizing the society. The central event in these
movements was the 1980 Gwangju Uprising — the “Paris Commune of the 20th
Century.” Join us to discuss South Korean movements and their outcomes.
Speaker George Katsiaficas has been active in social movements since
1969. A target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, he was classified
“Priority 1 ADEX” (meaning in the event of a national emergency, people
like him were to be immediately arrested). For 11 years, he worked in
Ocean Beach, California as part of a radical countercultural community
(described in Andre Gorz’s book, Ecology as Politics). He moved to
Berlin, after which he wrote two books: one on the global imagination of
1968 and another on European social movements. In these books, he
developed the concept of the “eros effect” to name the sudden and
synchronous eruption of insurgencies. For years, he was active in the
cause of Palestinian rights. Together with Kathleen Cleaver, he
co-edited Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party. A
graduate of MIT and UCSD (where he studied with Herbert Marcuse), he is
currently based at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and also
in Gwangju, South Korea, where he finished a 2-volume book, Asia’s
Unknown Uprisings. His web site is: http://www.eroseffect.com
George Katsiaficas will be joined by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos, a
political activist, ecologist an writer from Montreal, Canada. Dimitrios
has been active in the peace movement since 1959, and published 19 books
on the topic of peace movement, participatory democracy, Anarchism, New
Left, social movements and other topics.
In facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/791962077501388/?fref=ts
Disturbances is an open series of lectures and discussions at the
crossroads of society, philosophy, history, economy and resistance.
We are already aware that we can not live as before, but we do not know
what the future holds. Others are stuck in the past, but we only want to
understand it. Even a small disturbance of an initial condition can lead
a system into a completely different state.
Our speakers are Finnish and international anti-authoritarian
researchers and activists. Events are organized in cooperation with
A-ryhmä and AutOp, two student groups of the University of Helsinki. You
may also follow lecture online (both real-time and recording)
at http://bambuser.com/channel/A-ryhma.
Our program is created by the participants themselves, if you want to
join or simply get in contact, write a-ryhma@riseup.net.
http://Avtonom.org/A-ryhma
Children are welcome to any events of A-ryhmä by default! We have now
also a separate room from 4:30 to 7 PM in case children get tired of
lecture.
Follow our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/aryhma) or group
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/1472074276345164) in case you want to
keep updated on future activities!