"Between Disobedience and Exodus"

Flavia Costa Interviews Paolo Virno

Perhaps it is distance, combined with a doubtlessly original thought,
that allows Paolo Virno to see a link, a principle of
comprehension, that unites the Argentinian cacerolazos with
antiglobalization protests. "There is a line that connects the
Argentinian revolt with the protests in Seattle and Genoa in 1999 and
2001", he affirms. And he adds that, beyond the singular, the
Argentinian case shares with the antiglobal movement the eruption of a
new political subject, the multitude, which emerges with the
postfordist mode of production and resists delegating its powers to
the state.

"Unlike the people," explains the Italian philosopher, "the
multitude is plural, it refuses political unity, it does not transfer
rights to the sovereign; its resists obedience and is inclined to form
non-representative democracy."Currently a professor at the University of Cosenza, Virno was formed
in the intersection of the philosophy of language and political
theory, poetic experimentation and Marxist workerist militance.
Together with Giorgio Agamben he founded the journal Luogo Comune.
Today he is a referent for the "new left" together with Toni Negri and
Michael Hardt, the authors of Empire, the poetic political manifesto
that has already had over a dozen editions. Here Virno responded to
questions from Cultura.

Flavia Costa: In your last book, Grammatica della moltitudine
(Grammar of the Multitude), you affirm that to
understand contemporary social behaviors it is necessary to return to
the notion of "multitude", which today replaces the "people" as
fundamental historical subject. When and why does thus mutation from
people to multitude occur?

Paolo Virno: The decisive fact was the end of the fordist factory and
its assembly line, and the arrival of intellect, perception, and
linguistic communication as the principle resources of production.
Saying that work today as become communicative means that it absorbs
the generic human capacities that, until recently, unfolded during
time outside of work. Aesthetic tastes, ethical decisions, affects,
and emotions converge today in the world of work, and thus it becomes
difficult to distinguish between "producer" and "citizen", "public"
and "private". In this indistinction the multitude affirms itself.

FC: You followed events in Argentina attentively. Do you believe that
the prostests, with a strong anti-political sentiment, are an example
of "multitude in action"?

PV: Certainly: multitude in action. The Argentinian revolt laid bare
the most sensitized zone of so-called globalization. The other side of
the moon. A line connects Seattle and Genoa, through an anti-state and
anti-political sentiment that is proper to the multitudes. On the
other hand, certain images remind me of the Paris Commune of 1871. Not
because there are comparable events, but rather because they make me
think of a phrase from Marx: "This is the political form finally
discovered". He warned that they were at the time facing a form of
atheist, materialist miracle: the advent of something absolutely
unforeseen, a new form of life. And he saw also that it was necessary
to create a thought and a praxis equal to the task of this new
reality. Thus the revolts of Seattle, Genoa, or Buenas Aires reveal
the existence of new forms of life and subjectivity, and challenge us
to create new political forms that harmonize with them.

FC: What does a "non-representative democracy" mean? Put differently,
what political exit are you beginning to see for these multitudes?

PV: In speaking of non-representative democracy I am not referring to
a form of simplified democracy, of direct democracy, of assemblies. I
think for example of the post-Genoa social forums of citizens, that
assemble diverse collectives and individuals that organize themselves
to think about alternatives to problems; I think of the laborious
avenue of re-appropriation and re-articulation by the multitude of the
knowledges and powers that until now have been congealed in the
administrative apparatuses of the State.

FC: If the key to the epoch is the passage from fordism to
postfordism, what happens in countries like Argentina, where fordism
was precarious; where today, more than communicative work, the
dominante trait is a dreadful level of unemployment?

PV: Yes, each case is particular, my impression is that where fordism
was precarious there was a passage to postfordism without the fordist
precedent. A central element of the new mode of production, as much in
the Third World as in Germany, is the existence of a chronic
unemployment that trains a large mass of workers for flexibility, the
availability that the just-in-time system demands. The true training
for postfordist production does not take place in the school but
rather when the potential worker looks for work. It is there that he
or she becomes opportunistic, adabtable, not fixed: when the worker
acquires the aptitudes that the new mode of production requires.

FC: You say that the multitude is "ambivalent." What is the danger in
this ambivalence; what is the "salvation"?

PV: To say it is "ambivalent" alludes to those distinctive
characteristics of the multitude that can manifest themselves in
opposite ways: as servility or as liberty. The multitude has a direct
link with the dimension of the possible: each state of things is
contingent, no one has a destiny — understanding by destiny the fact
that, for example, no one is sure anymore that they will have the same
job for life. This contingency is structural in this epoch and can
have opposite developments: it can favor opportunism, cynicism, the
desire to take advantage of the occasion in order to prevail over
others; or it can express itself as conflict and insubordination,
defection and exodus from the present situation.

FC: What do you understand by exodus? Because today this word for us
has a special meaning: a great quantity of Argentinians leave the
country, and even immigrants from neighboring countries are returning
to their countries.

PV: No, I am not referring necessarily to a territorial exodus, but
rather to desertion in one's own place: the collective defection from
the state bond, from certain forms of waged work, from consumerism.
Some authors, like Albert Hirschman, affirm that sometimes protests,
the voices don't reach to manage a change and then they only are able
to leave the game, run away. For that it is not only necessary to
destroy certain things but also to construct, to have a positive
proposal, so that exodus will not remain a solitary act.

FC: In relation to the changes in subjectivity, you have written in
different texts that the human today is a stranger, a child, a lover
of "common places". How do these three modes of being and inhabiting
our epoch relate?

PV: The three things go together. Humanity no longer as a substantial
ethos available, or rather, a repertoire of repetitive uses and
customs that reassure us and order our praxis. Due to this, one no
longer feels "at home" anywhere. One is a permanent stranger. Thus
there arrives at the first level the biological condition of the
species: lack of specialized instincts, constant disorientation, a
high degree of uncertainty. As in infancy, this is a stage of learning
that today takes on a chronic character. Infancy, which loves
repetition (the same story, the same game), extends into the technical
reproducibility of art and of all experience. And we come thus to the
"common places". When we use this expression today, we understand a
banality, a stereotype. But is original meaning is different.
Aristotle called "common places" those forms of fundamental discourse
that are present in each enunciation, like the relation between before
and after, reciprocity. These logical forms are the skeletal structure
of the mind. To the "common places" there are opposed the "special
places", the discourses that function only before a specific audience.
Well then, the stranger as much as the child, in order to orient and
protect him or herself from the unforeseen counts only on the
generalized structures of the mind, which is to say, the "common
places". The "special places", over which the traditional ethics are
articulated, are today disappearing or becoming empty simulacra.

[A Spanish version of this interview is online
here.]