Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:20:37 -0400
From: Legba Carrefour <papalegba-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: [VT_THEORY] on empire and negri


Hey can people who went to the Life After Capitalism conference make
some comments about it? I heard this struck a rather different chord
from the traditional activist conference.

legba

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:20:12 +0200 (CEST), stevphen shukaitis
<stevphen-AT-greenpeppermagazine.org> wrote:
> i was talking to hardt this weekend after the life after capitalism
> conference - and he was making this argument that lenin, if alive, would
> support the model of non-hierarchal networked models for organizing on the
> basis that the organization of resistance should be consonsant with the
> means of production (ie the whole thing about the rise of imaterial labor
> and such). my initial response to this was a big "so what? it doesn't
> really matter to me whether lenin says" - but after dropping the issue of
> lenin, it seemed more intriguing, the relation between organization of
> work relations and resistance to them needing to have some degree of
> consonance. now such could be taking to ridiculous levels (ie that
> resistance to feudalism should have taken the form of the leadership of
> counter-feudal lords, or that resistance to slavery would be best
> accomplished through alternatuve forms of slavery, etc . . .), but it did
> strike me as being somewhat interesting - so I wanted to throw that out
> there.
> 
> cheers.
> stevphen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Nate Holdren wrote:
> >
> >>Virno talks about the multitude as an ambivalent form, just like the
> >>proletariat, and talks about 'postmodern fascism' as being a form the
> >>multitude can take in addition to the radical forms Negri identifies.
> >>I know Virno and Agamben and others worked on a journal called Luogo
> >>Comune (sp?) dedicated, among other things, to exploring postmodern
> >>fascism. Bits of the journal are around the net in Spanish, probably
> >>in Italian as well. I think points about fascism can be overstated but
> >>I think the idea might be helpful for understanding the religious
> >>right and fascists in our country, and maybe the Lega Nord in Italy
> >>etc.
> >>
> >>On thing that's often not clear to me is how the term multitude
> >>applies (and whether Negri and Virno have different uses of the term)
> >>- whether it means 'class in itself' or 'class for itself'. Sometimes
> >>one, sometimes the other I think. The new Negri/Hardt is clearer on
> >>some of this, but not conclusively to my mind.
> >>
> >>best,
> >>Nate
> >>
> >
> > This rendering of 'the multitude' seems closer to that of Balibar, who
> > in _Masses, Classes, Ideas_, _Spinoza and Politics_ and a couple of
> > other places tries to rethink Marx's use of 'the proletariat' as a
> > 'class for itself' along the lines of Spinoza's concept of the multitude
> > as he understands it.  In Balibar there doesn't seem to be a multitude
> > in itself, only a potentiality existing in forms of subjectivity
> > inherent to the diverse practices of domination in class societies.
> > Maybe the real issue is a shift in Negri's work on the multitude post
> > _The Savage Anomaly_ or even _Insurgencies_?  Certainly Balibar, Montag,
> > Macherey et al seem to have been much more sympathetic to the 1980s and
> > 1990s material than to  _Empire_.  See, for example, Montag's very
> > appreciative comments on Negri in _Bodies, Masses, Power_ and his review
> > article on _Insurgencies_ in HM a few years ago.  There are also
> > discussions of what seems similar to 'postmodern fascism' as you
> > describe it in the books of Balibar and Mike Hill that appeared this
> > year (i.e., _We, the People of Europe?_ and _After Whiteness_
> > respectively).  Thanks for posting the link to the Virno book, I will
> > certainly read it when I find time, as what you have said here of it
> > sounds very promising.
> >
> > I hope to publish an interview with  Warren Montag (which has already
> > appeared in Greek) in the next few months (in the next issue of
> > borderlands) that has some critical comments on _Empire_.  We will
> > certainly publish an interview with Mike Hill in that issue on
> > whiteness.  Hopefully at some point in the future we will have some
> > papers discussing _The Multitude_ if that text generates sufficient
> > interest; certainly comparative discussions of that text with that of
> > Virno could be interesting.
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> >
> 
> 
> stevphen shukaitis
> Guest Editor, "Life Beyond the Market" issue
> www.greenpeppermagazine.org
> 
> Greenpepper Magazine
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> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 


-- 
::Legba Carrefour::(alsoAIMname]

"Papa Legba, ouvri barrič pou nous passer..."
"Papa Legba, open the gate so we may pass..."


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