Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

attention to us, and then in the summer of 1977, there were a hundred

or so persons imprisoned in Italy for different reasons. This is how

Guattari undertook an initiative that resulted in the September

meeting.^4 In July 1977, we wrote together the call that was distributed

and circulated in Italy and elsewhere, and so his attention to the

confrontations in Italy became increasingly a political awareness. In

September, when he came to Bologna, the newspapers kind of pre-

sented him as someone challenging Italian powers, such as Bologna’s

mayor. So his attention to Italy became increasingly politically moti-

vated, and this continued into the 1980s when after April 7, 1979, and

the criminalization of the intellectuals of Autonomia, Guattari became

• need I mention it? – a primary reference for anyone trying to escape
  Italy. I recall that the apartment on Rue de Condé where Félix lived,
  where I arrived in 1977, was that year a reference point for a sort of
  Italian-French Soccorso Rosso[Red Aid], and also for many Germans.
  Then came the attention for the communication issue: Radio Alice in
  1977 had constituted a reference for discussion, but it was still more a
  political reference than a communication reference. But at the start of
  the 1980s, Guattari committed himself to the Radio Tomate event in
  Paris^5 that returned to many of the themes and practices of the Italian
  free radios. In the following years, there was the Minitel and then
  growing attention to the media issue.
  So Guattari came to Italy in the 1980s many times. He had a very
  strong relationship with [the actress] Laura Betti and also with Tonino
  Guerra, Pasolini’s and Fellini’s scenarist. So he had these kinds of con-
  tacts that brought him often to Italy. Then at a certain point, I recall in
  1985, he came to a conference on schizoanalysis in a kind of social
  centre that we called Topia: Centre for the Ecology of Mind. This was a
  very lovely conference on these themes. So in the 1980s Félix was
  henceforth a public figure who represented in Italy this European
  dimension of Autonomist thought, really a reference point in the more
  difficult period of cultural retreat [riflusso culturale].

GM:For the Italian Left, yes, the famous retreat. And do you recall how

Michael Hardt arrived here, with Guattari, how they met?

Bifo:No, I don’t know anything about this. I know that Michael Hardt

was with Negri at the university in Paris, and I could be wrong,

but I think that Michael had met Toni [Negri] and then became

acquainted with Guattari. And then Michael wrote his book on

Deleuze.

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