Posthegemonic Comments
Here I am not an expert but it seems that all too often in reading Negri, at least the more recent one, most are led to look for theology were there isn't any. "What guarantee is there that the multitude will not, as ever hitherto, simply call forth a new state form, perhaps all the more repressive and insidious?" Here the answer, or at least the only answer that seems possible to me, is that there is no final guarantee that the moltitude will not give birth to a new Leviathan, a new vampirized constitued power. After all if there was such a guarantee very little autonomy would be left to the creative power of the moltitude and very little originality to the thought of Negri. Here is where I think the thinking of Negri could and should take a Schmittian turn following Alan Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. Only the event, it seems, can save the moltitude from itself and from the continous return of the same. Only if Badiou is right in telling us that "miracles" in Zizek's words "indeed do happen" the smooth continuum of burgeois society can be broken. No guarantees are visible here.
Amedeo, interesting. I'd be pleased to hear more on how you think the "event" can "save the multitude from itself" or on miracles (have you a reference there?).
I'm not sure that the miraculous takes us far from theology, though...
And for Negri himself, I hardly think that theological readings are impositions: the militant as Francis of Assissi, the poor as God on Earth etc.
Ops, no. Here my English trumps me. In the first sense I said theology when I wanted to say theleology. Bad mistake indeed since surely Negri, as you say, is part of a larger theological turn that is visible in much recent radical thinking. Interestingly enough though theological as rather different meanings for Negri or Badiou or even Zizek. While, as you say, Negri points to Francis of Assisi as model for the (post)modern revolutionary; Badiou and Zizek point on St.Paul to reconstruct the Universal from the necessarily particular. This is the point where Badiou, and indeed Zizek, show a Schmittian tendency. The Schmittian decision is indeed visible behind Badiou's conception of the event. All the thinking of Badiou is indeed moved by the effort to show how the end of Universality as neutrality do not sign the end of the Universal itself. In this sense his analysis of the French Revolution is the best reference possible I can think on the event as miracle. This for the theology even if, I have to admit, Negri himself seems rather skeptical of the work of Badiou and the Schmittian turn in much of the French and Italian left. Regarding more specifically the historical changes that makes Negri think that the time are changed for the moltitude I was just reading this morning this recent article...
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/articl...6-
934621,0.html
hace mucho que no leía el blog. je la multitud, me voy acercando. mmm acuerdo en que plantear algo eterno es clausurar cualquier acción que transforme ... no sé si muerte es exactamente esto.
y me encanta la entrada anterior, es casi de blog de chica quinceañera (jeje, hacete un blog violeta que se llame "alegrías indomables"). pero en serio, me parece necesarias las dos formas de hablar de la multitud y de teoría en general.
Amedeo, thanks for your further thoughts. Of course, Negri cites Schmitt a fair deal, too: I'm reading Fin del invierno right now, which has a bunch of references, and then the first third of Multitude is basically Schmittian. On the other hand, I can't offhand think of any place where Negri really engages with Badiou.
Ana, gracias por el comentario tuyo, por lo ambivalente que sea... blog de chica quinceañera, ¿eh?
a ver jon, a veces me olvido que no sos un amigo del barrio.
quise decir que me parece que esta bueno el quiebre de neruda y el contraste con las otras entradas. sabes que me resulta (el blog) un espacio mas que interesante. pero me sigue obsecionando como escribir-hablar con estilos que no creen circulos limitados de discusión. claro sabes que tampoco defiendo la simplificacion de las ideas que subestima a quiensea con quien hablemos. y claro que eso es una preocupación que podés no compartir.
nada, me dio risa que el quiebre, venía por un lado que podría proponer un lectura en común con alguien estereotipada en femenino y adolescente (dicho muy politicamente incorrectamente), y de golpe me dio mucha risa que sea la antitesis del blog en general (denso, de colores sobrios y de comentarios por hombres mayoritamente por ejemplo). era en serio que te decía que te abras otro blog. una idea nomas.
I think the concept of the multitude shoud be seen from Deleuze and Guattari call to create new concepts in order to 'call forth a new people and new earth' in What is Philosophy. The concept of the multitude therefore has a pure reserve that can move at infinite speeds despites its actualisations. This is maybe what is appealing about the concepts of the multitude, which refuses closing or determination.
In terms of seperating Empire from Multitude, I would suggest the two are the same at present, but the multitude has the capacity to create a line of flight, leaving Empire behind.
Commenting by HaloScan
