Chaosophy - autonomous learning

On July 11, Bifo was considered unsuitable for extradition and
recognized in France as a political refugee. Guattari and Bifo wrote
an appeal which condemned the repression of the movement in
Italy. This text also openly accused and condemned both the
Christian-Democratic power's and the PCI's politics of "historical
compromise." The initiative first generated a veritable defense
mechanism of national exasperation from the Italian side, where
intellectuals and politicians violently accused the French for
meddling with questions that they didn't understand and denying
them the right to emit a judgment. Mter his release from prison,
Bifo moved in with Guattari on the rue de Conde.
To counteract the politics of repression and to regain the initiative,
all the alternative and workers' autonomy collectives and
the entire extreme Italian left decided to meet for a large gathering,
a big conference in the city of Bologna from September 22-24,
1977. The PCI in charge of the city accused them of provocation,
and Enrico Berlinguer, its secretary general, publicly denounced
the "plague carriers" (Untorelli). They were expecting predators,
and instead they witnessed a three-day gathering of Dantesque
dimensions for a middle-sized city like Bologna occupied by
80,000 people showing the greatest restraint, with no looting or
violence. Given the tense atmosphere and the size of the crowd
gathered there, it was quite a feat. Bifo spent these three days on
the phone keeping appraised of what was happening in his city of
Bologna where he could not go without risking imprisonment. But
the entire Guattari gang was present in September 1977, stunned,
on the streets of Bologna. All the shades of the extreme Italian left
were there. Guattari had become a hero in Bologna. Considered as
one of the main inspirations of Italian leftism, he attended these
processions with the exhilarating feeling of watching his theses
take on social and political force. The following day, the daily
press and weekly magazines posted his photograph on their covers,
18/