From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Explications of The Savage Anomaly
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 13:01:20 -0400


Hi Scott-
To my knowledge no one on this list has advanced the idea that call center 
workers are not workers. I certainly wouldn't. If anything, I like the ideas 
of Negri and others because they expand the category of worker rather than 
limit it (see the recent argument about students Commiee00 and I had w/ 
Harald, Chris, and Tahir for an example.) None of the more Negri-an comrades 
I've met have read the book the way this professor did (to say call center 
workers aren't workers). So the claim that she'd be more comfortable here 
doesn't seem very interesting or correct to me, if by that you mean that the 
consensus here is one of bourgeois sociology. (Of course she way still 
prefer aut-op-sy. That's a pretty uninteresting hypothesis though, and may 
be due to the fact that the reading group failed, having collapsed as you 
noted, whereas we frequently have discussions here which I at least find 
quite educational.)

As far as this comment of yours -

>I'm not suggesting, of course, that Negri was trying
>to write a manifesto for Blairism and academic snobs,
>but I do think that the people who seem most
>interested in his book show up some of its
>shortcomings. Give me the theory of imperialism over
>Empire any day!

It's funny. I've actually got exactly the same experience regarding the 
theory of imperialism! The people I've met who are most interested in it are 
by their own actions the best argument I've encountered against the 'theory 
of imperialism'. Now, perhaps the believers in the 'theory of imperialism' 
in Chicago, Edinburgh, and Cambridge (the three places I've had the most 
contact with folks like that) are particularly thick headed, undemocratic 
and boring. I doubt it, but none the less my experiences w/ these folks has 
definitely turned me off to the folks they like to quote.
In my experience the more Negri-an comrades I've met are very interesting 
and committed revolutionaries and intellectuals. They're also much more fun 
and have better political positions than the 'theory of imperialism' types, 
even if they do tend to say things that I at first don't understand (a 
result of my not having read much of the same books and thinkers as them - 
Deleuze, Foucault, Spinoza, etc.) Again, perhaps I've just been lucky and 
have met only the cream of the crop of folks interested in Negri. It could 
be. Also, the bulk of the folks I know who are into Negri are outside of 
academic institutions (or I've encountered them in an extra-institutional 
setting), which makes for a much different environment than a reading group 
at a university.

Hopefully you do recognize that very few people if anyone on the list will 
have their minds changed regarding their assessment of Negri by the collapse 
of your reading group of the misreadings of Negri by a few academics.

best,
Nate

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