We are an etereogeneous group that has been formed here in Calasetta and first to beh ere, share common pulsion and exigence yet.
All of us come from different contests and backgrounds. Allo f us has different competences: we are artists, curators and scolars of social science.
The reason that brought us here is a shared desire to put on question and investigate present. Throught the lens from a part of our generation of workers in the intellectual and artistical field.
Campo Sud brought us here. It is a call that had as guide lines Gramsci’s legacy , ecology and southern question; which aim to realised an experimental publication about those topics.
After an initial feeling of disorientation, due to not having a clear picture of what to do, we began to dissect through different practices the issues proposed by Campo Sud.
At the base of creative thinking, articulated in the different practices used, there is a sharing of tensions, impulses and needs - there is a co-habitation, a being together, which tends towards a change of course. It underlines the difficulties, the limits, but above all the potential.
In the context of co-habitation that we found ourselves going through, individual impulses dissolved and left room for collective needs, of which this product is the fruit and to which it aspires.
At the end of this experience, to let you enjoy all the suggestions contained in this publication, we can say that we have found neither the recipe nor the precise ingredients to make the exactly dish, but perhaps we have understood what it might taste like.
A spectre is haunting Calasetta – the spectre of CampoSud. This spectre comes to us after a week of collaborative writing and discussions, coming forth from the minds and hearts of the participants and materialized through the experimental software-based bottom-up process pioneered by the Pirate Care collective.The central point of our publication is collective authorship and overturning the general mode of writing through destabilizing the traditional and individualistic roles of author, editor, and reader. In this time
We developed a grassroots approach in which each authorial act served as the basis for the continued development of this publication. At the bottom, we created a series of daily highlights, drawn from citations, thoughts, and even photographs, drawing on our individual experiences, observations, and backgrounds. In this way, each of us was able to share with the others our own particular and unique views on the world and the events of the day. Some of these highlights are purely artistic, emerging from the creativity of the individual participants, while others are observations on the discussions throughout our time together, and others yet are citations drawn from the books, articles, and letters that inspire us. The highlights are of different types, ranging from the artistic and literary to the political, anthropological, and historical, thus creating not only an interdisciplinary approach but also an interdisciplinary final product.
These highlights served as the basis for a higher stage of collaborative writing. Using these highlights, groups of participants came together as editors, selecting particular highlights to serve as the basis for further reflection. Whether through establishing common themes and a “red thread” between sets of highlights or searching for contrasts and contradictions within them, these editorial groups brought together sets of highlights and used them as them as the basis on which they collective wrote Reflections. These reflections are not simply commentaries on highlights, but also the product of collaborative curatorial work in the selection of highlights. This was not done simply to organize the highlights into a more digestible form for readers, but also to provide food for thought for ourselves and others as we explore the fruits of our collective labor.
At the highest level, the Spectre serves as the big container of all these layers of production; the most important thing is that it is a material and immaterial work. While it is online, it is nevertheless possible create a unified and printable PDF document for offline viewing. As such, there is the possibility share this knowledge in free and heterogeneous forms that can reach everyone, regardless of their ability to connect to the Internet.
In Pirate Care’s footsteps we decided to do a free library; in to we have share our books, articles, and writing in order to provide an opportunity to deepen the topics addressed and share our collective knowledge. We believe in freeing knowledge from hegemony, speculation, and profit; and last but not least we believe that sharing books online can serve as an ecological way to disseminate such knowledge. As such, the books and article on which we drew on throughout this process have been included, in their entirety, in the accompanying library links throughout this document.
# Keywords, topics definitions
During the research week, a series of keywords emerged. They represent recurring topics, points of departure but also of landing, of a larger discourse developed in a dialogic way within the timeframe of CampoSud. They are presented here clustered into five sections: South, margin, cohabitation, environment, praxis.
## South / Mediterranean / Southern question / Gramsci
The South is the horizon of thought from which the discussion of the school originated. It is to be understood not only as a geographical reality with clear and clearly defined limits, but also as a fluid entity that lives on practices, imaginaries, and discourses that are located both in the everyday life and in the institutional one. A reflection on the South is linked to the so-called southern question (cf. reflection “Some southern questions”). That is, the never-ending debate on the apparent backwardness of the various southern parts of the world, with a focus on the Italian one around the Mediterranean. This focus derives from the place where the workshop took place - Calasetta, in southern Sardinia -, and also from the fact of engaging with a southern Italian thinker, namely Antonio Gramsci. His writings on the southern question and also some of his biographical events represented a key element for the discussion.
## Margin / border / confinement / island
The still widespread idea of the backwardness of the South brings with it a concept of marginality, which we understood as multiform. On the one hand, the margin is a confined space in which contradictions explode. On the other hand, it is a potentially creative space to overturn those same contradictions that arise from dynamics not localized only in the South (see reflection "Agire il margine"). The Gramscian confinement, i.e. his experience of isolation deriving from political imprisonment, represents an example of “bordering” in which originates a space for reflection towards the outside world, which Gramsci has developed through his writings and his letters. The island of Sant’Antioco is a delimited space of the South, linked to Sardinia by an isthmus, from which our thinking originated.
## Environment / contradictions / extractivism
Thinking of planetary ecology, one of CampoSud's starting points, has brought out the need to root our perspective also in the environment. An environmental reflection on Sardinia highlighted the presence of unresolved contradictions, which are also present in other south (cf. reflection “Agire il margine”, “Coabitation”). For example, those contradictions linked to the need for economic production versus environmental protection, even in post-production contexts. A case cited is that of Sardinian mines, which clearly shows the negative impact that an approach based on extractivism has had on the territory. This form of extractivism acted not only on a material level, but also on a more immaterial one. That is a cultural one, in a form of opposition between the cultural class of the North and the South. The logic of extractivism can perhaps be overcome through post-colonial thinking. Returning to Gramsci, it emerged that his thought was closely linked to the Sardinian landscape and the environment in which he grew up as a thinker and as a person (see Reflections "How to be practical").
## Cohabitation / alliance / dialogue
The complexity of the reality of the various South leads to questioning how to deal with the contradictions that inhabit them. One need that emerged is that of maintaining different points of view (see reflection “Cohabitation”). This translates into an idea of cohabitation, which has taken the literal form of writing together in the research school, questioning the value of a single authorship with a co-authoring development process. It is through forms of alliances of this type that contradictions can perhaps be confronted and resolved. For this reason, the dialogic form (see reflection "How to be practical"), based on the relationship, was one of the starting points of the work, which remains open to the outside thanks to the Sandpoints platform. Gramsci's thought developed in relation to the responses he received to his letters, not just as a form of self-referential writing.
Discussing the South, marginality, contradictions, environment and cohabitation, the need emerged to develop a form of thinking that could fall into praxis (see reflection “How to be practical?”). This is also linked to a theme of activism, which for many is declined in the plan of their daily life. Activism can be a good practice for acting on the margin by creating alliances (see "Agire il margine"). Every thought aimed at understanding the world we inhabit should aim to change it and love it (see reflection "cohabitation"). Once again, the link between theory and practice is at the heart of Gramsci's writings.
