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Theory

November 23, 2004 - 10:04am -- hydrarchist
Reviews
Theory

hydrarchist writes:

"Italian Operaismo Face to Face"

Enda Brophy

A Report on the ‘Operaismo a Convegno’ Conference, 1–2 June 2002, Rialto Occupato, Rome, Italy

The ‘Operaismo a Convegno’ conference took place
in Rome last summer during what was a transitional
moment in several respects. (1) The ‘movement of
movements’ seemed to be pausing, with its Italian
contingent caught between digesting the lessons of
Genoa and the need to consider objectives and
strategy in view of the European Social Forum which
was due to be held in Florence at the beginning of
November. In the meantime, the escalation of global
violence and rapid geopolitical swerves demanded
at the very least a rethinking of the theoretical and
practical categories that had seemed to suffice until
September 11. Adding to the sense of timeliness was
‘autonomist’ Marxism’s strong resonance outside of
Italy, due to the success of Michael Hardt and Toni
Negri’s Empire and the ability with which other
practitioners of the perspective (in North America and elsewhere) have
documented and translated its explanatory power. (2) Considering this, it was fitting that the legacies and contemporary directions of the diverse and dynamic
political tradition be rediscussed in its country of origin.

November 22, 2004 - 7:57am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Trashing Georges Bataille, 'Accursed' Stalinist"

Not Bored!

Born in France in 1897, Georges Bataille was a very
creative, controversial and strange person. A
librarian by profession, he wrote a great many poems,
essays and books during his life (he died in 1962).
Some of these writings were novels; most were works of
critical theory (non-fiction writings on society and
politics). Bataille's name is often closely associated
with Freudian psychoanalysis, Surrealism, Marxism and
the occult.


Because of the very strong and mostly acknowledged
influence of Bataille's various concepts and
methodological approaches on the writings of such
younger and sometimes better known critical theorists
as Guy Debord ("potlatch"), Jean Baudrillard ("gift
exchange"), Michel Foucault ("the order of things"),
and Jacques Derrida ("nonlogical difference"), almost
all of Bataille's many books have been published in
English translations by university presses in America.
No doubt many of these books are required reading in
courses in literary theory, the history of modern art,
sociology, political economy, psychology, and
ethnology.

November 19, 2004 - 11:42am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Evolution and Revolution"

Elisée Reclus


These two words, Evolution and Revolution, closely resemble one another, and yet they are constantly used in their social and political sense as though their meaning were absolutely antagonistic.  The word Evolution, synonymous with gradual and continuous development in morals and ideas, is brought forward in certain circles as though it were the antithesis of that fearful word, Revolution, which implies changes more or less sudden in their action, and entailing some sort of catastrophe.  And yet is it possible that a transformation can take place in ideas without bringing about some abrupt displacements in the equilibrium of life?  Must not revolution necessarily follow evolution, as action follows the desire to act?  They are fundamentally one and the same thing, differing only according to the time of their appearance.  If, on the one hand, we believe in the normal progress of ideas, and, on the other, expect opposition, then, of necessity, we believe in external shocks that change the form of society. 

November 15, 2004 - 9:49pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Henri Lefebvre’s Youthfulness of Heart"
Andy Merrifield, The Brooklyn Rail


I never met Henri Lefebvre, the French Marxist philosopher, nor saw him lecture. Some of my friends who did said he was a real knockout. Others who had contact with him recall his warm, slow, melodious voice, his boyish passions, his virility—even in old age—and the posse of young, attractive women invariably in his train. Portraits cast him as a Rabelaisian monk and Kierkegaardian seducer all rolled into one. I’m sorry I missed this act, missed the man himself, en direct, live. But I did see him on British TV once, back in the early 1990s. The series, “The Spirit of Freedom,” was strictly for insomniacs and appeared in the wee hours. Each of the four programs tried to assess the legacy of Left French intellectuals during the twentieth-century. The cynical tone throughout wasn’t too surprising given that its narrator and brainchild was Bernard-Henri Lévy—BHL, as the French media know him—Paris-Match’s answer to Jean-Paul Sartre. The night I watched, an old white-haired man sat in front of the camera, dressed in a blue denim work shirt and rumpled brown tweed jacket. In his ninetieth-year, it was obvious to viewers Lefebvre hadn’t long left to live. Even Lévy described his interviewee as “tired that afternoon. His face was pallid, his eyes blood-shot. I felt he was overwhelmed from the start and clearly bored at having to answer my questions…I’d come hoping he would play a certain role, and this he did with a show of goodwill I hadn’t expected. I have to admit he also did it with elegance and talent.”

November 12, 2004 - 11:31am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

The following is extracted from A Grammar of the Multitude by Paolo Virno, published last year by Semiotext(e).The text is in two parts, the second of which you can find here.


"Ten Theses on the Multitude

and Post-Fordist Capitalism"

Paolo Virno



I have attempted to describe the nature of contemporary production, socalled post-Fordism, on the basis of categories drawn from political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. I
have done so not as a professional exercise, but because I am truly
convinced that, in order for it to be described clearly, the mode of
contemporary production demands this variety of analyses, this
breadth
of views. One cannot understand post-Fordism without having recourse
to a cluster of ethical-linguistic concepts. As is obvious, moreover,
this is where the matter of fact lies in the progressive
identification between poiesis and language, production and
communication.

November 12, 2004 - 11:27am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

[The first part of the Ten Thesis is here.]

"Ten Thesis on Post-Fordist Capitalism (Part II)"

Paolo Virno

6.8. Thesis 7

In Post-Fordism, the general
intellect does not coincide with fixed capital, but manifests itself
principally as a linguistic reiteration of living labor.

As was
already said on the second day of our seminar, Marx, without reserve,
equated the general intellect (that is, knowledge as principal
productive force) with fixed capital, with the "objective scientific
capacity" inherent in the system of machines. In this way he omitted
the dimension, absolutely preeminent today, in which the general
intellect presents itself as living labor. It is necessary to analyze
post-Fordist production in order to support this criticism. In
so-called "second-generation independent labor," but also in the
operational procedures of a radically reformed factory such as the
Fiat factory in Melfi, it is not difficult to recognize that the
connection between knowledge and production is not at all exhausted
within the system of machines; on the contrary, it articulates itself
in the linguistic cooperation of men and women, in their actually
acting in concert. In the Post-Fordist environment, a decisive role is
played by the infinite variety of concepts and logical schemes which
cannot ever be set within fixed capital, being inseparable from the
reiteration of a plurality of living subjects. The general intellect

includes, thus, formal and informal knowledge, imagination. ethical
propensities, mindsets, and "linguistic games." In contemporary labor
processes, there are thoughts and discourses which function as
productive "machines," without having to adopt the form of a
mechanical body or of an electronic valve.

November 12, 2004 - 10:05am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Operaismo, Autonomia, Settantasette in
Translation: Then, Now, The Future" (1)


Steve Wright

Originally published in Strategies, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2003

Interest in the work of Antonio Negri is considerable these days, and can be
measured by a variety of means. For the past few years, the prestigious Italian
leftist daily Il manifesto has published the 30 most-searched-for terms within the
newspaper’s online edition. Of these, the word “Negri” ranked fifth in 1999, 14th
in 2000, ninth in 2001, 11th in 2002, and ninth again for the month of May 2003.(2)


Engagement with Negri’s work has also been on the rise in the English language
press, as reactions to the success of the book Empire (co-authored with Michael
Hardt) attest. Within the various circles active against global capital, interest in
Negri has also been marked, with his ideas concerning the changing nature of
the world capitalist system widely debated.

November 9, 2004 - 7:42am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

M.Kressi writes:

"I've Got You Under My Skin:

Digging Kerry Out and Burying the Bones(men)"

Morrissey Kressi, Co-founder, Jerry Fohn Kuck Society

A telling event happened in the theater a few months ago when I viewed "The Manchurian Candidate" remake. An audible gasp and bodily revulsion rippled throughout the audience during the scene where Raymond Shaw receives his updated brain implant. Now, this in itself is unsurprising, as an extreme closeup of such an invasive procedure often provokes such results. The event is odd, however, when juxtaposed with a succeeding scene in which Bennett Marco uses a knife to dig out an implant in his own shoulder blade. This scene produced some mild reactions, but remarkably subdued in comparison. The crude, awkward, bloody, and self-inflicted invasion of the second scene provided a stark counterpoint to the clinical, precise, bloodless, and other-inflicted invasion of the first.


So what can "The Manchurian Candidate," and especially these two scenes, tell us about the current stage of spectacular politics? For one thing, the film reminds us of the pageantry of the electoral process. "Let's put on a good show," says an anonymous spectacle planner just as the campaign victory party is about to get underway. Both the two-bit children's theater and the hyperreal victory pageant take place on election day, acting almost as a condensed history of the spectacle.

November 6, 2004 - 3:22pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"The New Historical Simultaneity:

The End of Modernization and the Beginning of Another World History"

Robert Kurz

The globalisation debate seems to have reached a state of exhaustion. This is not due to a weakening of the underlying process, but to the lack of air for new interpretive ideas. Almost nobody dares to speak of the end of the history of the modernization. It is certain that, meanwhile, whole libraries were already written on the fact of the globalisation of capital (the transnational dispersion of the economic functions) and the separation between the national economy and the world market, and the whole previous referential framework remains diluted. But the consequences to take out of that recognition were delayed most of the times up to now. The old concepts still go to tow, although they no longer correspond to the new reality.

November 5, 2004 - 9:01am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

sgb writes:

"The Right to Escape"
Sandro Mezzadra

Escape, as a political category, has always been suspicious. It seems to have close connections with betrayal, opportunism and cowardice, all categories that are both antipatriotic and foreign to the traditional virtues of political action. However, desertion, as a figure of civil disobedience, has had some success in the peace and environmental movements since the 1970s; and the massive exodus from the former German Democratic Republic that marked the end of Real Socialism was certainly a political movement.

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