The Ateneo Libertario is conceived as a work in progress: a collective journey of personal growth and intellectual development that transcends disciplinary boundaries and institutional affiliations, both within and beyond academia. It emerges from an attempt to address the contradictions of the neoliberal university by responding to our need for community, and to challenge the fragmentation of knowledge by drawing on our shared desire to understand.
The Ateneo builds on the twenty-year history and experience of the Ateneo degli Imperfetti in Marghera (Venice). It seeks to give space and a voice to intellectual and academic perspectives that may appear marginal but have raised questions that international scientific and intellectual debate cannot afford to ignore. These perspectives can be situated within the broad and diverse tradition of “anarchist thought”: anti-dogmatic, non-hierarchical and characterised by a sustained commitment to critical inquiry.
This libertarian sensibility can be found in strands of thought that have gained prominence across a wide range of disciplines: David Graeber’s work in historical anthropology, Murray Bookchin’s contributions to ecological theory and practice, and Colin Ward’s work on education and architecture, to name just a few. These contributions share an anti-authoritarian, cooperative and radically democratic ethos. They offer a challenge that is at once theoretical and practical, linking intellectual work inseparably to social struggles. Nor are they meant to remain confined to the written page: they are intended to be explored through lived experience and put into practice in the field.
The Ateneo Libertario seeks to restore this conception of free thought to a position of centrality, bringing together, through a common thread, distinctly libertarian contributions from the humanities and social sciences, without diluting their substance or obscuring their political commitments. This is in contrast to what Catherine Malabou argues some of the most important radical philosophers of the twentieth century did: appropriate anarchism’s conceptual tools while concealing the traces of that borrowing. The Ateneo, by contrast, seeks to acknowledge these contributions as deserving full epistemological legitimacy.
The Ateneo’s activities aim to build, over time, a network of relationships and collaborations both within and beyond academia, bringing together individual scholars and researchers as well as universities in Italy and abroad. To this end, the Ateneo will organise half-day and full-day seminars, seminar series, practical labs and workshops, offered free of charge or for a voluntary contribution. The hope – or conviction – is that these initiatives will help foster new forms of active participation and community-building, particularly among young people and students. These forms of engagement remain to be defined and explored through practice.
The Ateneo Libertario is based at the historic premises of the Ateneo degli Imperfetti, at Via Bottenigo 209, Marghera (Venice, Italy).
Getting here: the map and directions by bus, tram and train are on our Contact page.