From: "michael goddard" <goddardmichael-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Negri and masks
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:04:29 +1200


It seems strange that Negri is being simultaneouly presented as both a 
fervent Catholic and a sniper in a ski mask. I found that jounalistic piece 
not only disgusting but dangerous: to blur the boundaries between 
alqueda-brigate rossi-potere Operaio is just a kind of delirium but one that 
can have real effects as in the case of CAE. It amazes me that that ski mask 
quotation even exists but what is really unexceptional and predictable was 
this journalistic attempt to subscribe entirely to war on terror rhetoric 
and even take it into new domains "Negri- terrorist/Stalinist precursor to 
Bin Laden."

This kind of stupidity is endemic but also in this era dangerous: thank God 
for the left/liberal press and its cheerful participation in Bush's war on 
terror!

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: AUT: RE: The "Multitude" and Rights
>Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:23:07 +1000
>
>Lowe, Harald, all,
>
>You know, it's not so much that I've been confused
>about what N&H are arguing for, so much as I'd
>rather they weren't and waiting for someone to
>actually convince me that perhaps they weren't.
>So, maybe I should be more clear about what I see
>as the stakes here.
>
>I don't know where N&H talk about the end in the
>most recent cycle of struggles; but it seems
>obvious to me and not surprising for anyone to
>argue that the cycle has passed.  The question,
>however, is what this actually means and how one
>responds to it.  I've always thought it meant the
>passing of the most visible peaks of resistance --
>and, here, I'm firmly with Bologna rather than
>N&H. (N&H have never, imo, grasped this
>consistently -- a critique of the forms of
>representation of fordism isn't the same thing as
>a critique of representation, of the relationship
>between, as Bologna puts it the elites and the
>movement, or as I'd put it,
>activists-intellectuals and movements.)
>
>In other words: it's not that resistance has ended
>per se, but that, in the failure of those
>struggles to actually challenge either emerging
>forms of exploitation (which include, among other
>things, the ways in which particular forms of
>immaterial labour make 'us' into the managers of
>'our own' exploitation -- yes immanence but what
>kind?) or the forms of representation and
>mediation that flow from this, what we are
>confronted with now is a combination of
>restoration and innovation.  The Leftisation of
>the 'new social subjects' began the day after
>Seattle, to put it bluntly, and can be seen in the
>articulation of demands for recognition.
>
>I think, far from actually generating any kind of
>antagonism to Empire, N&H argue for 'our'
>habituation to it.  What they argue for is an
>innovation in the forms of representation of
>abstract labour: global citizenship, income for
>all, etc. Ie: the forms of representation
>appropriate to immaterial labour, the multitude,
>etc.
>
>I think their motif of 'exclusion - inclusion' is
>all wrong. (Marx, Foucault, Agamben manage not to
>adopt a liberal critique of capitalism for its
>'exclusions' -- so, why do N&H?)
>
>Marxism has often oscillated between wierd
>versions of either a reactionary critique of
>capitalism (in its more communitarian, identity
>forms) and a cheering on of its progressive,
>destructive aspects (the RCP, wierdo maoist cults,
>Stalin, Lenin). (And both assume the perspective
>and fantasy of control, imo.)  In doing a version
>of the latter -- albeit creatively wrapped up in a
>Spinozian gloss about immanence and absolute
>democracy, and urged on by the usual leftoid panic
>merchandising about 'barbarism or Empire' -- N&H
>reverse the insights of an analysis of class
>composition which place movement before its
>instituted or visible expression.
>
>Global juridical structures are already emerging
>because of the inadequacy of the nation-state to,
>among other things, controlling population
>movements. No one needs N&H to argue for this for
>it to happen. It is happening. Ie: I don't think
>it would be wrong to argue that there is a
>tendency toward a global state (um, global
>citizenship).  But in cheering it on, in taking
>capital to task for not validating Empire as it
>were, puts them 'on the other side.'
>
>Angela
>_______________
>
><end message>
>
>
>
>
>
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