From: "michael goddard" <goddardmichael-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: Marazzi's La Place des Chaussettes
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 18:46:20 +1200


Angela,

while I agree with these critiques of Empire to some extent ( that it ends 
up being an inadvertently Hegelian teleology, a dialectics of multitude and 
Empire), from my reading of other works by Negri, the sense I have is that 
the multitude is supposed to work in a more Spinozian way. In this sense the 
multitude and empire cannot form a dialectical opposition as two forces in a 
master vs' slave, proletariat vs. bourgeoisie model (to produce a Hegelian 
synthesis), since in a sense the multitude is not a sector of society but 
all of society in its productivity or even in its being: inasmuch as there 
is productivity, creation, innovation, existence there is the multitude: the 
multitude is all of society in its constitutive dynamic sense. The question 
then is how this constitutive power (potentia) becomes organised not 
according to its own power of constitution but by parasitic forces of 
domination (the state, capital in the sense of private property, 
accumulation, reterritorialisation etc.) of constituted Power. This 
parasitic relation cannot be a dialectics since the multitude does not need 
to be anything other than what it already is: it only needs to find ways to 
escape the channeling of its power of potential into consituted Power, more 
through processes of withdrawl or defection than any dialectical 
confrontation with capital or the state (what Virno calls exit), while 
finding means of effective self-organisation, which H and N were trying to 
indicate through such notions as the common (successes and failures of which 
can be seen in everything from autonomia to counter-globalisation 
struggles). In this sense the revolution is always already here, especially 
now (cf Virno on postfordism as the communism of capital) but completely 
diverted, distorted and betrayed. I don't think this is made very clear in 
Empire, and certainly the last section on the multitude is the weakest one 
(for me especially when they start talking about rights, when they should 
really be talking about powers.........). I think it's put much better in 
Negri's Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitude where the whole Spinozian/Lucretian 
underpinning of Negri's thought is made a lot more explicit as are many of 
the somewhat confused concepts in Empire including the Multitude. I'm 
certainly hoping that Hardt and Negri's new book will more fully articulate 
the multitude as power rather in terns of vague rights.

Of course, this raises the question as to with this Spinozian ontological 
politics might not have its own limitations.....

Michael

>From: ".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s-AT-optusnet.com.au>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>Subject: RE: AUT: Marazzi's La Place des Chaussettes
>Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:18:45 +1000
>
>: Steve, what's this what is to be done
>: article you're talking about?
>
>It's this Nate:
>http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri9.htm
>
>In _Empire_, N&H see multitude in terms of its
>prospects for being the subject of revolution.
>It's a fairly crude (and unfortunate) hegelian
>marxism, imo.  Lotringer's introduction to Virno's
>_Grammar_ is pretty astute, also imo.
>
>Angela
>_______________
>
><end message>
>
>
>
>
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