Subject: R: AUT: Putting Negri to the Test
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 11:12:28 -0000


That of course is true, but Negri is trying to reconnect it with a whole
tradition that reaches back at least to Machiavelli (see Insurgencies), so
that the notion of the multitude aims to be both programmatic, a demand for
struggle to produce a new antagonistic class subject, while on the other
hand also being an analytical tool. I don't think there's anything strange
about it. I simply think he wants the concept to do a double duty. So the
multitude undergoes numerous concrete instantiations determined in struggle
at different historical conjunctures... Both he and Hardt have said that the
notion of the multitude is insufficiently defined - and the second volume of
Empire, or the next book they're working on will, by all accounts, be an
attempt to remedy this...

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: owner-aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]Per conto di commie00
Inviato: giovedì 7 febbraio 2002 17.16
A: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Oggetto: Re: AUT: Putting Negri to the Test

> Negri is quite clear that he sees the multitude as a class concept, as is
> Hardt. It is meant to substitute, but not be reducible to, the traditional
> notion of the working class. I.e. N&H want to expand it beyond the bounds
of
> the factory and even beyond the wage-labour relationship, so that, for
> example, it includes the unemployed as well...

which is strange in and of itself since even for marx the unemployed were
part of the working class, and negri (along with lots of other people) have
long theorized about changing class composition, etc. with huge sections of
the working class outside of the "factory" and in the "social factory".



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