+++
title = "Maddening Rhythms"
has_sections = ["americandepartment.md", "faintinginjections.md", "whoarethesewomen.md", "radiogabinetto.md", "stillnotrobots.md"]
aliases = ["/zine"]
+++


# Maddening Rhythms: Healthcare struggles at the intersection of technology, environment and refusal of work

![](static/images/piu_macchina.png)

# About Maddening Rhythms Zine

Maddening Rhythms is the name we gave to the experimental publication you are holding between your hands or reading on your screen. It is a growing, mutating zine that accompanies our research exploring the links between healthcare, environmental and work-related struggles from an Italian standpoint. The title we chose for this zine is our English translation of the one of a newspaper article - RITMI DA PAZZIA - which denounced how in the factory workers are subjected to a constant accelleration in the name of profit. These rhythms are maddening in the sense that were making people furious and push them to organize for change, while at the same time they also provoked many to experience negative mental health conditions. As we shall see, burnouts, depression and psychosis were widespread experiences linked with chain work. The story of Lebole workers' and their resistance to the MTM method became for us a red thread to be able to navigate the intricacies of these epochal changes in governance, technologies and methods of exploitation, as well as changes in the subjects, places, and modes of doing politics.

The zine comes complete with its own library of resources, some of which are documents taken from the Luigi Firrao archive at Fondazione ISEC, which we are making available here for the first time in digital form. In its digital version, Maddening Rhythms runs on Sandpoints, a still-in-development digital platform for collective writing, learning, and experimental publishing. This free software tool allows readers to easily copy onto a USB drive a single folder that contains the whole website, alongside a PDF library of all included references, and to read it offline in a browser or move it to another server. Furthermore, in situations that call for paper, it is possible to automatically export the publication into a PDF that is ready for on-demand print. The use of Sandpoints is a small step in embedding our work in a more susteinable technopolitical infrastructure, specifically relevant here perhaps, as we are critically discussing the evolution of  exploitation via technologically-driven processes.

# Structure of the zine

Maddening Rhythms is organized around 5 'factors' or chapters, each centering on one aspect of the experience of the Lebole workers and using it to introduce a broader reflection on their struggles at the intersection of health, environment and refusal of work and gender stereotypes. 

[**The American department**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/americandepartment/) collects documents on the history of managerial techniques known as 'scientific management' and the circumstances that lead to the introduction of MTM (Methods-Time Measurement) in Italy.

[**Fainting & injections**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/faintinginjections/) gathers fragments on the rising levels of toxicity brought about during the fast paced industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s and of the struggles to defend workers' health and environmental conditions.

[**Who are these women?**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/whoarethesewomen/) offers insights that highlight the importance of bringing a gendered perspective to the analysis of the intersection between the automation of productive process and the history of women's struggles for emancipation. 

[**Radio Gabinetto**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/radiogabinetto/) focuses on the many inventive and original techniques of organizing that accompanied the rise of healthcare struggles in the 1960s and 1970s.

[**Still, we are not robots**](https://maddeningrhythms.sandpoints.org/factor/stillnotrobots/) concludes by connecting the past stories gathered in these pages with the present time.


We believe that reactivating some of the stories, techniques and imaginaries that came out of the struggles for health that took place in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s can be a useful exercise in our present days, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 syndemic, an event with a death poll that could have been, in large part, preventable. Connecting with the struggles that first obtained a public healthcare system might help us sharpen our demands for the future. 



# The story from which we start: Lebole, c. 1964

In 1964, the all-female workforce of the apparel manufacturer Lebole in Arezzo, Tuscany, were among the first ones in Italy to experience the transformation of their workflow according to the teachings of MTM (Methods-Time Measurement), a new methodology for analysing and organizing chainwork imported from the USA.  In the span of less than a decade, these women, many of whom were accomplished tailors before entering the factory, went from a semi-artisanal organization of labour, to a progressively more fragmented and repetitive segmentation of tasks, to a fully scripted repetitive performance with maddening rhythms.  With the introduction of the MTM method, their movements were measured and minutiously analysed by a team of experts, who then "choreographed" the execution of each motion in a new, time-saving manner. In short, the workers were expected to behave like ROBOTS. 

The impact of the new MTM method on the health conditions of the Leboline (this was the nickname of the workers) was enourmous. Many experienced faintings, nervous breakdowns and other symptoms of exhaustion, conditions which the factory doctors tried to cure with cycles of "vitamin" injections. One of these women also chose to take her own life, many were forced to take frequest sick leaves. 

The confrontation with the technical violence of MTM also led the Leboline to become an incredibly active force in the political struggles of the 1960s and 1970s in Italy. They not only rejected the new technical violence of the method, insisting on slower rhythms and more frequent breaks, they also fought with (and within) workers' unions and communist party for the recognition of their specific labour as women, engaging in battles for municipal kindergartens, for instance. 

![](static/images/Lebole.jpg)

At the beginning of the 1960s, as political organizing was forbidden during working hours, the Leboline begun their political organizing as they could, invented a number of cunning ways to coordinate amongst themselves, in via endless word of mouth outside the factory gates, on the bus to work, and during the very few moments of rest. Crucially, important messages were communicated in a relay during bathroom visits, a practice named "Radio Gabinetto" (Radio Toilet). They also revamped the use of the contrafacta technique, modifying the lyrics of traditional but also popular hit songs of the time  to convey their political messages while singing at work and at the rallies. 

By developing in their own form of musical production, Lebole's workers intervened into the maddening rhythms that marked their experience in the factory, to compose other, more poetic, playful, counter-hegemonic rhythms and political horizons, as well as to "compose" themselves as an iconic posse within the political struggles that marked the Italian "long 1968". 

Finding their own voice and fighting for keeping it was more than a metaphor for the Leboline: with bitter irony, amongst the many health-related struggles these women carried on, one was against the indiscriminate use of formaldehyde, a compound used to augment the firmness of clothes, but which has a harmfull impact on the troath and vocal chords. 


# Fondo Luigi Firrao at Fondazione ISEC

We first encountered the story of the Lebole workers and the impact that MTM had on their lives and health conditions during our research residency at the archive of Fondazione ISEC in Sesto San Giovanni, near Milan. Their story was "told" to by Luigi Firrao, who followed it meticulously for a number of years. Firrao had a number of interviews with the Leboline, where he chatted with them about their experiences, as well as recording the powerful lyrics of their political choruses. He then wrote several newspaper articles denouncing the hidden violence of the new management techniques which were silently creeping in Italian factories since the early 1960s. Firrao also left us an exceptional collection of newspaper cut-outs, articles, and reportages on the theme of MTM and its impact on the life of the workers. 

![](static/images/firrao_pic.png)

Luigi Firrao was born in Rome in 1927 and died in 1975. In 1944, he joined the partisan Partito d’Azione and in 1946 became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Between 1948 and 1953, the PCI sent him to Viterbo to organize the struggles of agricultural workers, activities which led to his arrest and multiple convictions. 

He was then hired by Misal, a company that manufactured machine tools. Within Misal, despite his political ideas, he managed to make a remarkable career and assume a managerial position. During the 1960s, Firrao became interested in various issues related to his role as manager, and in particular the subject of work organization and, in parallel, the subject of working conditions in industry.

Together with Giulia D’Angelo, his life partner since 1962, he carried out research on popular culture, collaborating with the "Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano", with Nuova Scena, Nanni Ricordi, Gianni Bosio, Dario Fo and Franca Rame. In 1963-64, Luigi and his wife collaborated with ARCI (a national network of recreational workers clubs) to organize “comizi cantati” (political speeches that were sung rather than talked) and in Rome they set up a Sicilian storytellers show with Ignazio Buttitta, Otello Profazio, Vito Santangelo and Ciccio Busacca. In 1965, Luigi and Giulia organized the first Italian political cabaret, "l'Armadio", based in Rome in via La Spezia, in the San Giovanni district.

In 1969, after publicly taking position in favor of the student movement, he was expelled from the party and joined the "Manifesto" movement with his wife. From the years 1968-69 until his death, together with Giulia, he dealt with the capitalist organization of labor, interviewing numerous male and female workers. Firrao then organized a series of lectures on the subject at the University of Rome.

The text above is a modified translation of [*Luigi Firrao, un uomo dai molti talenti nelle carte del suo archivio*](https://archivio.fondazioneisec.it/percorsi/luigi-firrao-un-uomo-poliedrico-nelle-carte-del-suo-archivio), by Alberto De Cristofaro.


# Who we are

Maddalena Fragnito and Valeria Graziano collaborated for the first time on the research [Rebelling with Care. Exploring open technologies for commoning healthcare](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p1lYRdjZd0MsRJCMewelfdk9hnGGGz4E/view) (2019). A year later they were co-writing of the syllabus of [Pirate Care](https://pirate.care) (2019) and [Flatten the curve, grow the care!](https://syllabus.pirate.care/topic/coronanotes/), a project born with the outbreak of the pandemic (2020). With to the support of Memory of the World, in 2021 they collaborated for the digitization of the books series [Medicina e potere](http://medicinapotere.memoryoftheworld.org/#) (Medicine and Power), edited in the '70s by Giulio Maccacaro for the publisher Feltrinelli. Currently, they share the artist residence Matrice Lavoro (curated by Base Milano and the ISEC Foundation), which allowed them to dig into the archives in search for the forgotten stories related to workers' struggles for health in Italy (2022).


# [Printable PDF VERSION here](/print/publication/) 
(best in Chrome)


