Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 242: Island School of Social Autonomy — with Srećko Horvat
Speakers: Samantha Walters, Am Johal, Srećko Horvat
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Samantha Walters 0:03
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Srećko Horvat, a philosopher, author, and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. Am and Srećko discuss the journey behind launching the Island School of Social Autonomy on the Adriatic island of Vis. ISSA is a place for imagining, experimenting with and cultivating forms of knowledge-production and knowledge-sharing for the “age of extinction”. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:46
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted you could join us again. This week we have a special guest, Srećko Horvat. Welcome, Srećko.
Srećko Horvat 0:55
Hi, I'm really glad to be here. And to talk to you today.
Am Johal 0:58
Why don't we start with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Srećko Horvat 1:02
Yeah, so my name is Srećko, which means, in my language, it would mean the lucky one. By education I'm a philosopher and linguist. But besides just writing and publishing, I've been also, let's call it an activist or better to say an organizer for the last two decades, of various social movements, but also various cultural events in the Balkans across Europe. Well, besides my work here, on the School of Social Autonomy on an island in the Adriatic Sea, I'm also very active in internationalist struggles across the world.
Am Johal 1:41
I'm wondering, maybe we can start with this new project, this new experiment, the Island School of Social Autonomy, and I got in touch with you after hearing about it. I've had a number of entanglements with various free schools and educational interventions outside of the university, although I'm located inside one now, but wondering if you could just give a little context for some of our audience who might not have heard about it or know about kind of where the project came from, and some of the ideas behind it. I know it's located on Vis.
Srećko Horvat 2:15
Yeah, so maybe best is to start from the location itself, from geography. So it's located in the middle of the Adriatic Sea, which is part, of course, of the Mediterranean. So somewhere in between Italy, and Croatia on an island, which is called Vis. Which two and a half thousand years ago was called Issa. It was the first polis founded by the ancient Greeks in this part of the Adriatic Sea. Funnily, it was founded by Dionysius of Syracuse, the same guy who imprisoned Plato on Syracuse. So there is a theory also that Plato might have been there or not, who knows. But in any case, it's been a polis, then it was an autonomous polis. It's a very interesting place, which is also one of the reasons why we took the name Issa, as the acronym for the Island School of Social Autonomy two and a half thousand years later. Basically, we started from buying three hectares of land, 30,000 square meters, and the very old stone house, which in the last year, we succeeded to reconstruct, build a roof, a gallery, turning it slowly into an island library, into the headquarters of the school. So now, of course, the question is, yeah, what's the school and why a school in the 21st century, why not another conference, another workshop, another seminar, a university or whatever? You said it already, we are placed outside of the academy, although we have many people on board who are academics or who have studied or who are still teaching at various universities in the world. But the idea was that we try to critically examine what's wrong with higher education today with universities, but at the same time, modestly, to try to create a different model of education. And when I say a different model, then of course, this model I think, cannot be just constrained by classical education, in the sense of you know, the typical classroom, usually with neon lights, with a very structured program, very structured syllabus and so on. What we are doing is actually creating a classroom— turning the island itself into an open air classroom. This summer already we had various activities across the island from lectures by for instance, Franco Berardi, Bifo, leading Italian philosopher who was part of the autonomous movement in the 70s, who founded the legendary pirate radio station Radio Alice. Then together with our dear friends and co-founders of the school !Mediengruppe Bitnik who are artists from Germany and Switzerland and the Balkans. We also experimented already this summer with our own pirate radio station.
The idea is that we combine modern technology with traditional technologies, all in the setting context of an Adriatic island, but also in the context of extinction, namely, in the context of a deep crisis, not only of education, but the deep crisis of meaning. Deep crisis of climate, deep crisis of social, economic and political relations and geopolitical relations today. We think— we are convinced that that's the reason why we started this project that we need to offer, not only a new analysis, but also some very concrete proposals in which way we could actually not just cope with the situation, with the catastrophe today, but in which way we can actually go beyond it. And in that sense, we are of course, influenced by a vast tradition of critical pedagogy, various models of education, schooling, or rather deschooling. For instance, one of the inspirations of ISSA, of our school is, of course, Ivan Illich, whose origin is actually from another island called Brač, which we can see from the school from the island of Vis. But then later, he ended up in Vienna, and then of course, in the United States. And then later in Mexico, where he opened, launched his famous school in Cuernavaca, which was then visited by Paulo Freire, by many others who are today considered, as you know, the teachers of if we can call them like that, of critical pedagogy. I'm saying, if you can call them, call them by that because of course, what critical pedagogy did and what we are trying— aiming to do is also to deconstruct this very relationship between the teacher and the pupae, or between someone who has the authority or, you know, if you wanted Lacanian psychoanalysis, the subjects supposed to know. And on the other hand, well, all of us who in various parts, of forms of our lives are teachers. But in this situation, I think we are all students who are together, learning something about not just mere survival in times of extinction, but also good life in times of extinction. So that's a very short introduction, but we can of course, go deeper into it.
Am Johal 7:21
Yeah. And I was gonna say, you know, you talked about the long history of Vis but also I went there many years ago, just for a few days, of course, has a very interesting history during the Yugoslav era with Tito and wondering if you could just sort of speak to it's more near history and why the— you spoke a little bit to the why have the school but in terms of building out the project, it's clearly a labor of love. And it takes a lot to build something new and wondering if you could speak just a little bit to sort of those histories and entanglements of, you know, why this type of school now?
Srećko Horvat 8:00
Well, the history itself is also a good response. Although we are not nostalgic towards the history, we are also trying to critically examine it. But we are, of course, inspired by emancipatory histories, not just of our parts of the world, but across the planet, in various times in various geographies. But more specifically, the island of Vis was, as you said, in the 20th century, a crucial place for the liberation of Europe, not just what would become socialist Yugoslavia, but of Europe, from the fascists and from the Nazis. So at that time, in, that was summer 1944, most of Europe was still occupied by the Nazis, all the surrounding islands around Vis were occupied by the Nazis. And the island of Vis was never occupied by the Nazis. There was a successful local and anti-fascist resistance, which succeeded to kick out the Italian fascists. And then since the capitulation of Mussolini in September 1943, the island would remain free. And of course, at that time, there was very hectic anti-fascist struggle taking place where the Nazis were trying actually to kill Tito. Tito was the leader of the anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia. And they attempted already an assassination plot in the mountains of Bosnia with parachutes who tried to kill him, wounded him. But he succeeded to flee, ended up in Italy and then after Italy, by boat, by a ship came to the island of Vis. Where you already had, as I said, very strong local resistance. You already also had some of the allies there, namely the Brits. And with Tito's arrival, the island actually becomes a headquarters of the antifascist struggle. He himself for the first month was hiding and operating at the same time in a cave on the top of the island. Our school is in fact, some 10 or 15 minutes walking from this cave. Incidentally, it happened like that. But it's, as you can see, also grounded in this very long, very important legacy of antifascist struggle, which of course, isn't just something which characterizes Europe, but it's of importance for the rest of the world.
So why now? And what kind of school is it? Of course, it's a school which is influenced by various philosophies, various epistemologies, but also various resistance struggles. But at the same time, it's a school which is trying to look into the future. And to draw inspiration not that much from the past, but from the future itself. For instance, I mentioned that, you know, just to turn it a bit more into something more tangible and visible. I mentioned already that we were experimenting with a pirate radio station. I don't know if you watch these days, this movie with Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, Leave the World Behind. It's pretty famous. Everyone is watching it. It's a kind of post apocalyptic thriller, with some Hitchcockian moments, but the main premise is that suddenly, I will not reveal why, because then I will spoil it. But suddenly, all the communication means in the United States go down. So television, internet signal, mobile phones, and everything, which is connected to the internet. So basically nothing functions anymore in the sense of communication, you can't really know what's happening, you can't really reach anyone else, you're becoming quite isolated, again, although it was supposed to be the 21st century of hybrid acceleration and hyper communication. And why I'm mentioning this movie, because it's a nice movie. At the same time, it shows something which is quite realistic, which is not a distant future. It all already happens in war zones, in zones of protests, where you know, a government or a corporation can just cut down, shut down the internet and all communication means and what we are trying to approach with the school but not in a survivalist fashion, of course, is to deal with the question, what kinds of means of communication, what kind of forms of life would we need in a situation of the post apocalypse if you want? And as I said, you know, it's not a survivalist fetishism or whatever, or undertaking, but it's just, I think, a question which is becoming more and more realistic. Many of us who are part of the schools have been dealing with these questions for years and some two decades in various ways. You know, we have people who have been dealing with various sorts of questions of this kind of creation of a life in the midst of a catastrophe, but also the reflection on good life, many of us have been dealing with it either from the artistic point of view or philosophical point of view, or very practical points of view. So the idea of the school is to, on the one hand, provide, modestly, a theory of the current catastrophe and theory of change, which at the beginning, might look like something very locally grounded, which it is. But the whole idea is that we are hoping that something which is at this stage, locally grounded and will always stay locally grounded, as well, it's very physical, you know, it's the kind of work we do there is very physical, we are carrying tons of material uphill, building, reconstructing, destructing, constructing all sorts of structing, we are doing there uphill. That's very important for us.
So the idea is, on the one hand, to create a knowledge and analysis of the current situation, but at the same time through not just theory, but through praxis, through practice, to kind of try to materialize what we are theorizing about. To put it like that. And then hopefully, this very local experience, very constrained experience in one way, hopefully, it could be translated into other places, into other times in the same way we are translating different experiences from different similar projects from across the world into a very local specific Mediterranean context. And the idea is, which we are doing already, is to connect with various different projects like this all across the world with of course, partnerships with cultural institutions, universities, I mean, it's just the start, so we would really be happy to go even deeper and further in this kind of co-operations. But the idea is not just to build an isolated school, which sounds very romantic on top of the hill of a beautiful island. The idea is to really create... Well, a headquarters of critical thought and action in the midst of the Adriatic sea. But at the same time a school which is interconnected with various other projects, with various other radical theories, with various others experiments in forest gardens, solar energy, water collection, very material things which are crucial for facing the catastrophe, but also crucial for creating a sort of good life. And I mentioned it for the second time, I think, good life because it's a very important concept, I think, which, which has to be reflected. And it's not something new. I mean, if you look at the history of philosophy, throughout the last two or three thousand years, I mean, it goes back to Ionian philosophy and minor Asia, you know, nowadays, which is Turkey or Anatolia. Those first pre Socratic philosophers were also posing the question what is, what is good life. For instance, then— came to the response that good life has to be connected not so much to the polis, but to the Cosmopolis. So, you know, that was the time almost 3000 years ago, almost, of the origin of cosmopolitanism. And then of course, throughout Socratic years, you will have different responses on the same question. It was a crucial question. In which way can we lead a good life? Is good life just pure hedonism following the maximization of your own happiness or profit, or is good life something else? Or is good life leading a life which is connected to some sort of principles or ideals or some sort of values which are universal and which are not just connected to the human species, but can be connected to other species to the planet itself? So these are the kinds of questions we are posing ourselves and which we are trying to respond not just in theory, but also in practice.
Am Johal 16:56
It's wonderful that you had Bifo Berardi there. Of course, he's come to SFU, through our program at the University, and we just had Michael Hardt speak the other day. And of course, he wrote for many years with Antonio Negri who sadly passed away just a couple of days ago. Wondering, Srećko, in your broader involvement in the global left movement or building out a kind of progressive internationalism, have you been doing this work for a long time? Did you just come out of university on it? But wondering if you could speak just a little bit to your various involvements, and trying to build out what could be called International left or a global left, which has been, you know, sadly withered for so many structural reasons over the years?
Srećko Horvat 17:45
Yeah, all the names you mentioned Bifo, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, I know all of them. And I was also very saddened to hear that Tony Negri passed away. Luckily, he had, I mean, a difficult life, I think, one third of his life, he was in prison. But at the same time, he had a long and I would say happy life, you know, he reached 90 years, and he was definitely, and is definitely an important thinker of the radical left, who spoke together with Michael Hardt, Empire, but then also Multitude was really crucial after 1999 with the creation of the ultra globe— so called ultra globalization, movement, and so on. And that was the time actually this, you know, after 1999, the beginning of the 2000s when I actually started University, studying philosophy, linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. And at that time, already, I was pretty young, I started to organize various stuff. I think parts of my inhibition came that I was unsatisfied with what was being offered in the official curriculum at the university. So of course, we had a library where we could read Chomsky, Spivak, Roland Barthes, or Derrida or whoever. We were also visited, I mean in Yugoslav times, Jean-Paul Sartre had some major visits to Zagreb, there were many others as well visiting, but there was a like in the 2000s of I will say, radical theory. So, as usual in my life, I would reach out to people and start inviting them and start discussions and so on. And very early, we also started, I think it was 2008. Something which was called the Subversive Festival in Zagreb, which was on the one hand a festival of radical theory and the festival of radical films. So, for instance, we would have a retrospective of Chris Marker, a retrospective of movies of Jean Luc Godard. We were showing movies from China, from India, from Nigeria, which are all connected in a way or the other to social change, social movements and these kinds of topics. And then during those years, I had the luck to get in touch, not just with the mentioned troika, Bifo, Hardt, and Negri, but also with many others.
So we had as guests in Zagreb, giving keynote lectures, discussing with us, discussing also with the movements from the Balkans, various topics we had. It's a very long list from David Harvey, Slavoj Žižek, Zygmunt Bauman, Gayatri Spivak, many, many, many others. It actually helped, I would say, to bring a very lively and very important discussion into a post socialist context. It's very specific. It's not the same as Canada or United States because we had more than four decades of real existing socialism. And with the bloody war through which Yugoslavia collapsed at the beginning of the 90s. After that, of course, we had the introduction of the free market, everyone was dreaming about the end of history. Similarly to Francis Fukuyama, you know, this will now be the age of the final victory of liberal democracy and free choice, free speech and free whatever. But it turned out, of course, as a period of so-called transition from communism to capitalism, in which we had structural adjustments, massive privatizations of previously state owned, or even socially owned infrastructure, or public institutions and so on. And at that time, in a time of nationalism, in a time of turbo neo-liberalisation, there was a necessity, like a necessity for fresh air, for radical theories. And of course, we didn't just invite people from the world to teach us but we were also at the same time teaching them that, you know, there was an alternative in this part of the world, and that also, various contemporary alternatives are also coming from this part of the world. Which was very important for us, who come from a region, which by Maria Todorova, was called the imagined Balkans, you know, the Balkans as the dark heart of Europe, the darkness where everything can happen from rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and so on. And I think throughout years through this festival, this really succeeded in building up a critical mass, a critical scene in the post Yugoslav space, which also had a significant influence on the European level. So in 2013, some of our guests were, for instance, Alexis Tsipras, who would later become the prime minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, with whom I myself would found DiEM 25 years later, the Democracy in Europe Movement. So I would say, yeah, I mean, my kind of organizing practice goes back through the last two decades, something like that, although I'm not that old, I mean, I sound like grandpa, but what can I do?
Am Johal 23:08
You've been in the trenches of growing a movement. So sometimes the wisdom comes with that, it's beyond something of age. I want to speak a little bit to some of your writing projects and books, I actually had a book of yours, The Radicality of Love, sent to me by artists and cultural theorist, Ania Malinowska, from Poland, who has been one of the guests on our show, and she sent it to me, she's a big fan of your work, and that particular one because of her own investigations into love. And you, of course, wrote After the Apocalypse and Poetry from the Future, What Does Europe Want? But wondering if you can speak a little bit, I don't know how you got the time to write. But of course, you're a philosopher, and an organizer at a number of things. But wondering if you could just speak to a little bit of your writing work in the past and kind of what you're currently working on.
Srećko Horvat 24:01
Yeah, currently, I'm mainly focused on building the school, which is, which takes a lot of time and unfortunately, not much writing. But fortunately, a lot of physical action, which I really love. And at the same time, you know, I'm a man of many hats. I'm also very active in a movement, which is called the Progressive International, which is an attempt to build a new international, many social movements involved, trade unions, intellectuals and practitioners from all across the world. So there's not much time left to write as much as I would love to and as much as I had in my past. I also don't know how, but I think one recipe was that I always combine theory and praxis. So for instance, you mentioned this book Radicality of Love, which will soon be 10 years old. You know, there is a chapter about the Iranian Revolution and Iran today and in which way totalitarian system from communism age with, you know, fundamentalism, in which way it has effect on the field of love on the so-called libidinal economy. For that book for instance, I was traveling through Iran. And that was also very inspiring. Also, it gave me a lot in the sense of thinking materials. And for many other books poetry from the future, I traveled to protests in Hamburg against G20. I traveled to visit communes in Catalonia, because I was interested in this kind of horizontal organizing, what maybe Hardt and Negri would call multitude.
But for all these books, in a way, I was also very, very much involved in a very— in something which is very material, in something which was also kind of fieldwork, if you want. For the most recent one, After the apocalypse, I traveled, for instance, to Chernobyl, to the— or to be more precise, to the exclusion zone, in Ukraine, and it was just one year before the war started. So I was actually lucky to have the chance to visit it, although, of course, I don't consider myself lucky to have seen what I have seen. Because you know, as much as you read about it, or watch the HBO series Chernobyl, which then influenced, of course, an influx of tourists, just before the war to the exclusion zone. As much as you read it, I think you cannot really grasp it. But the problem is, of course, even when you visit it, you still can't. There is still something which is beyond comprehension. Something which Günther Anders, the German philosopher who for a while works in the United States, because he fled. What Günther Anders called the Supra-liminal, you know, something which is, which is beyond the limit, beyond the limits of understanding and this kind of work, I think, for me is, I got kind of used to it, you know, that, first of all, I am not working in the academia. I, of course, give guest lectures to seminars and stuff when good people invite me somewhere. But I'm not constrained in that sense by the classical academic work, or the classic academic form, which gives me some sort of freedom that, you know, I can travel to places where I want, I can also use different forms of writing, which are not academic, although their role is grounded in you know, in a very broad bibliography and sources. But my kind of natural inhibition is always to try to write in a way which is accessible and to also talk in a way which is accessible to a broad audience. And not to get stuck in the silos, or castles or ivory towers of academia.
Am Johal 27:51
Yeah. We interviewed someone, Svitlana Matviyenko, Ukrainian theorist who teaches here at SFU, propaganda and cyber war. And she writes and has been visiting Chernobyl, even since past the Russian invasion. And it's just remarkable seeing some of the thinking going around that project and the ongoing impacts of it even right up until today. I was going to ask you about the current sort of socio-political context in Croatia, you know, the various countries of the post Yugoslavian context all have different nuances and contexts. And you, of course, have been involved in the underground and the left and the cultural contexts there. But wondering if you could speak a little bit to the present political context, and what you see as some of the issues or excitements or syndromes of the present moment?
Srećko Horvat 28:55
We'd need a series of podcasts for this. Because as you know, I mean, you visited the region, but even if you haven't, you know, it's a very complicated region. I mean, like, what I'm talking about every part of the world is rather complicated, I will say because it contains layers of previous historical trajectories, it contains layers of previous historical tragedies or historical transformations, if you want. And, of course, it's already intertwined with various contemporary crises, which we are facing all across the world. So in that sense, the region of post Yugoslavia or ex Yugoslavia or this part of the Balkans, of course, is on the one hand, it has a very specific, of course I will say history. Goes back to, I'm simplifying now, to big empires, which from the Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, also Hungarian monarchy, Italian fascism, and then also Nazism, which tries to conquer this part of Europe. Which tries to conquer for various reasons for, you know, natural resources, for human resources, cheap labor force, and various stuff. So I would say this region through centuries, but also mean millenniums was a region which experienced peace. It's not necessarily a short break between two wars, but the war is actually a kind of permanent state. And when I say that, of course, it's impossible not to think about the current wars, which are still going on in the world, which also kind of amplify this thesis that, you know, it's maybe it's not peace which is something which is a normal state, but it's actually war. And if you look at this region, of course, you will see many proofs of this. But at the same time, this region throughout all these centuries and millenniums was also a region of resistance. It was a region of... A very vibrant culture, very vibrant tradition, which in various forms still lives today. But the problem, of course, after the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia is that now you have several countries which were previously part of socialist Yugoslavia, two of them are part of the European Union, which means also, they're part of Schengen, which means there are no borders between them.
But then Croatia, the country where I'm from, now has the longest outer border of the European Union, which is directed towards Bosnia and Herzegovina. And Bosnia and Herzegovina were also part of the same country once. It's a country which is, you know, complete mess, since the date on agreement, three entities, which was before the war, the most multicultural place in Europe with, you know, with Islam, Christianity, and Orthodox religion living door to door without big problems, but now it's a very complicated region. Then of course, you have Serbia, an autocratic leader, similar to Orban or some others who is, of course, in good touch with Orban, on the other hand with Putin. Where at the same time, also in Serbia, you have — they just had elections, you have a growing left Green Movement in Serbia. So in Croatia, that was already the case, they even won municipal elections. So the mayor of Zagreb, now the capital of Croatia, comes from the Green Left Party. In Slovenia, the left leg, it is part of the government. So I will say in the last 30 years, there was a lot of interesting developments. On the one hand, of course, it was the time of the shock doctrine, the structural adjustments, privatizations, this whole ideology of the end of history, liberal democracy, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, we also had a lot of resistance, a lot of attempts to critically examine this situation to provide different models of democratic governance, of economy, of a society if you want in the end. And so in the last, especially the last ten, fifteen years, some of these movements turned into a political party, some of them came to certain instances of power. So the situation is quite interesting, I would say. Now, of course, the problems are various. I mean, from economic problems, to political, social problems. Nationalism is still a big problem in this region, like, not just in our region, but everywhere in the world, right wing populism or extremism. At the same time, due to the global situation, and due to various wars which are happening, but also climate crisis, we are having the biggest numbers of migration in the last two years, both in Croatia and Serbia. In Serbia, it was mainly the Russians. In Croatia, now it's mainly Nepalese, and people from Bangladesh and Pakistan, which is also a result of the fact that most of the citizens of these countries have have already emigrated to other countries, mainly the West Germany, Austria and so on, where they mainly work in construction, in care work, or hospitals and so on. And now there is a lack of workforce. So you have all these interesting but also new developments in this region, which were not characteristic for this region, which was a rather monocultural region, I would say to a certain degree. And now with the global changes, planetary changes, we also have these changes which are affecting society, economy and so on. So I would say it's a very interesting region, which is somewhere between the West and the East, between the European Union and on the other hand, growing Euro-asian integration.
Am Johal 34:44
Thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Srećko Horvat 34:49
Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed it and I hope that next time we see each other, either on Vis or somewhere else in this region. And we continue our conversations
Samantha Walters 35:02
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Srećko Horvat. Head to the show notes to find out more about his work and ISSA. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.