Antonio Negri
Encyclopedia
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist
sociologist and political philosopher
.
Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire
, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua
, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university. Negri founded the Potere Operaio
(Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia
. As one of the most popular theorists of Autonomism
, he has published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
He was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing terrorist
group Red Brigades
(Brigate Rosse or BR). Negri emigrated to France where he taught at the Université de Vincennes (Paris-VIII) and the Collège International de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida
, Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze
. He was ultimately convicted of a lesser charge. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was incarcerated. He now lives between Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel.
, Italy in 1933. He began his career as a militant in the 1950s with the activist Roman Catholic youth organization Gioventú Italiana di Azione Cattolica (GIAC). He joined the Italian Socialist Party
in 1956 and remained a member until 1963, while at the same time becoming more and more engaged throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s in Marxist movements.
He had a quick academic career at the University of Padua
and was promoted to full professor at a young age in the field of "dottrina dello Stato" (State theory), a particularly Italian field that deals with juridical and constitutional theory.
In the early 1960s Negri joined the editorial group of Quaderni Rossi, a journal that represented the intellectual rebirth of Marxism in Italy outside the realm of the communist party.
In 1969, together with Oreste Scalzone
and Franco Piperno
, Negri was one of the founders of the group Potere Operaio
(Workers' Power) and the Operaismo (workerist) Communist movement. Potere Operaio disbanded in 1973 and gave rise to the Autonomia Operaia Organizzata (Organised Workers' Autonomy) movement.
, Pino Nicotri, Alisa del Re, Carmela di Rocco, Massimo Tramonte, Sandro Serafini, Guido Bianchini, and others). Padova's Public Prosecutor Pietro Calogero accused those involved of being the political wing of the Red Brigades, and thus behind left-wing terrorism
in Italy. Negri was charged with leadership of the Red Brigades
, masterminding the 1978 kidnapping and murder of the President of the Christian Democratic Party Aldo Moro
, and plotting to overthrow the government. At the time, Negri was a political science professor at the University of Padua and visiting lecturer at Paris' École Normale Supérieure
.
A year later, Negri was exonerated from Aldo Moro's kidnapping after a leader of the BR, having decided to cooperate with the prosecution, testified that Negri "had nothing to do with the Red Brigades." The charge of 'armed insurrection against the State' against Negri was dropped. Therefore, he did not receive the 30-year plus life sentence requested by the prosecutor, but only 30 years for being the instigator of political activist Carlo Saronio's murder and having 'morally concurred' with Lombardini's murder during a failed bank robbery.
His philosopher peers saw little fault with Negri's activities. Michel Foucault
commented, "Isn't he in jail simply for being an intellectual?" French philosophers Félix Guattari
and Gilles Deleuze
also signed in November 1977 L'Appel des intellectuels français contre la répression en Italie (The Call of French Intellectuals Against Repression in Italy) in protest against Negri's imprisonment and Italian anti-terrorism legislation
.
In 1983, four years after his arrest and while he was still in prison awaiting trial, Negri was elected to the Italian legislature as a member for the Radical Party. Claiming parliamentary immunity, he was temporarily released and left for France. There he remained for 14 years, writing and teaching, protected from extradition in virtue of the "Mitterrand doctrine
".
In France, Negri began teaching at radical institutions, the Université de Paris VIII (Saint Denis) and the Collège International de Philosophie
, founded by Jacques Derrida
, François Châtelet
and Gilles Deleuze
- the latter's radicalism came immediately under attack by the French analyst school, Jacques Bouveresse
for instance. Although the conditions of his residence in France prevented him from engaging in political activities, he wrote prolifically and was active in a broad coalition of left-wing intellectuals. In 1990 Negri with Jean-Marie Vincent and Denis Berger founded the journal Futur Antérieur. The journal ceased publication in 1998 but was reborn as Multitudes
in 2000, with Negri as a member of the international editorial board.. In 1998 he contributed an essay on Deleuze and "political space" to philosophy journal Rue Descartes, a special issue dedicated to Deleuze, along side Guy Lardreau and Alain Badiou
.
Negri was released from prison in the spring of 2003, having written some of his most influential works while behind bars.
, democratic globalization
, anti-capitalism
, postmodernism
, neoliberalism
, democracy
, the commons, and the multitude
. His prolific, iconoclastic, cosmopolitan, highly original and often dense and difficult philosophical writings attempt to reconcile critical terms with most of the major global intellectual movements of the past half-century in the service of a new Marxist analysis of capitalism
.
Negri is extremely dismissive of postmodernity, whose only value, in his estimation, is that it has served as a symptom of the historical transition whose dynamics he and Hardt set out to explain in Empire
. He acknowledges the influence of Michel Foucault
, David Harvey
's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), Fredric Jameson
's Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991) and Gilles Deleuze
& Félix Guattari
's Capitalism and Schizophrenia
.
Today, Antonio Negri is best known as the co-author, with Michael Hardt
, of the controversial Marxist-inspired treatise Empire
(2000). The thesis of Empire is that the globalization
and informatization of world market
s since the late 1960s have led to a progressive decline in the sovereignty of nation-states and the emergence of "a new form of control, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule." Their discussion is also concerned with the forms that affective labor
takes within this context. The authors call this new, global reconfiguration of control "Empire." This shift both enacts and results from "the real [as opposed to formal] subsumption of social existence by capital," wherein there is no longer any outside to capital—everything is always already "subsumed" into the capitalist network. In order to resist and oppose what they identify as the injustices resulting from imperial control, the authors call for the kind of autonomous constitutive resistance epitomized by the Wobblies, the 1999 WTO protests
in Seattle, and other loosely structured, autonomous resistance movements—of what they call "the multitude."
The book has had widespread influence in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, but many activists and scholars have been critical of the work. It has inspired many initiatives including No Border network
, Libre Society
, and D-A-S-H
. A follow-up to Empire, called Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
, was published in August 2004. Unlike Empire, which was only published by Harvard University Press
and was therefore targeted at a predominantly academic audience, the paperback edition of Multitude was released by Penguin Books
and addresses a much less specialized readership. Whereas Empire, despite its explicit political orientation, is largely focused on describing the conditions of globalization, Multitude evinces a more activist bent.
Now in his 70s, Negri continues to teach and write. He divides his time between Rome, Venice and Paris, where he delivers political seminars at the Collège International de Philosophie and the Université Paris I.
In March 2008, Antonio Negri, who had been incarcerated from 1997 to 2003, abandoned procedures to obtain a visa for entry into Japan where he planned to give lectures on labor and other issues at the International House of Japan in Tokyo, Kyoto University
, and the University of Tokyo
. The Immigrant Control and Refugee Recognition Law bans entry to Japan by a foreign national if he has been given a prison sentence of one year or longer, except for political prisoners.
In 2009 Negri completed the book “Commonwealth”, the final in a trilogy that began in 2000 with “Empire” and continued with “Multitude” in 2004, co-authored with Michael Hardt. The book is a "witch’s brew of contemporary radicalism," according to conservative cultural critic Brian Anderson. "Capitalism deserves to die, Messrs. Hardt and Negri believe, for it has abused and corrupted “the common.” The common isn’t just “the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty,” they tell us; it is the universe of things necessary for social life—“knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects.” Under capitalism, nature is ravaged, society brutalized." According to The Independent
, the book describes "a borderless cosmopolis in which sovereign states were obsolete", but does not address the "real impact, which is to recreate a decentred world of several great powers competing with one another".
Marxist philosophy
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
sociologist and political philosopher
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
.
Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire
Empire (book)
Empire is a text written by post-Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book, written in the mid-1990s, was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.-Summary:...
, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university. Negri founded the Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1968 and 1973. Among the group's leaders were Antonio Negri, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone and Valerio Morucci, who led its clandestine...
(Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia
Autonomia Operaia
Autonomia Operaia was an Italian extra-parliamentary leftist movement particularly active from 1976 to 1978. It emerged in 1972 not as a party but rather as a place of encounter among various extra-parliamentary and revolutionary left-wing tendencies opposed to reformism...
. As one of the most popular theorists of Autonomism
Autonomism
Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...
, he has published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
He was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing terrorist
Left-wing terrorism
Left-wing terrorism, sometimes called Marxist-Leninist terrorism or revolutionary/left-wing terrorism is a tactic used to overthrow capitalism and replace it with Marxist-Leninist or socialist government.-Ideology:...
group Red Brigades
Red Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
(Brigate Rosse or BR). Negri emigrated to France where he taught at the Université de Vincennes (Paris-VIII) and the Collège International de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
. He was ultimately convicted of a lesser charge. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was incarcerated. He now lives between Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel.
Early years
Antonio Negri was born in PaduaPadua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, Italy in 1933. He began his career as a militant in the 1950s with the activist Roman Catholic youth organization Gioventú Italiana di Azione Cattolica (GIAC). He joined the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
in 1956 and remained a member until 1963, while at the same time becoming more and more engaged throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s in Marxist movements.
He had a quick academic career at the University of Padua
University of Padua
The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...
and was promoted to full professor at a young age in the field of "dottrina dello Stato" (State theory), a particularly Italian field that deals with juridical and constitutional theory.
In the early 1960s Negri joined the editorial group of Quaderni Rossi, a journal that represented the intellectual rebirth of Marxism in Italy outside the realm of the communist party.
In 1969, together with Oreste Scalzone
Oreste Scalzone
Oreste Scalzone is an Italian Marxist intellectual and one of the founders of the communist organization Potere Operaio....
and Franco Piperno
Franco Piperno
Franco Piperno is an Italian former communist militant. He is currently an associated professor of Condensed Matter Physics in the University of Calabria..-Biography:Piperno was born at Catanzaro....
, Negri was one of the founders of the group Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1968 and 1973. Among the group's leaders were Antonio Negri, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone and Valerio Morucci, who led its clandestine...
(Workers' Power) and the Operaismo (workerist) Communist movement. Potere Operaio disbanded in 1973 and gave rise to the Autonomia Operaia Organizzata (Organised Workers' Autonomy) movement.
Arrest and flight
On April 7, 1979, at the age of forty-six, Antonio Negri was arrested for his part in the Autonomy Movement, along with others (Emilio Vesce, Luciano Ferrari Bravo, Mario Dalmaviva, Lauso Zagato, Oreste ScalzoneOreste Scalzone
Oreste Scalzone is an Italian Marxist intellectual and one of the founders of the communist organization Potere Operaio....
, Pino Nicotri, Alisa del Re, Carmela di Rocco, Massimo Tramonte, Sandro Serafini, Guido Bianchini, and others). Padova's Public Prosecutor Pietro Calogero accused those involved of being the political wing of the Red Brigades, and thus behind left-wing terrorism
Left-wing terrorism
Left-wing terrorism, sometimes called Marxist-Leninist terrorism or revolutionary/left-wing terrorism is a tactic used to overthrow capitalism and replace it with Marxist-Leninist or socialist government.-Ideology:...
in Italy. Negri was charged with leadership of the Red Brigades
Red Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
, masterminding the 1978 kidnapping and murder of the President of the Christian Democratic Party Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
, and plotting to overthrow the government. At the time, Negri was a political science professor at the University of Padua and visiting lecturer at Paris' École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
.
A year later, Negri was exonerated from Aldo Moro's kidnapping after a leader of the BR, having decided to cooperate with the prosecution, testified that Negri "had nothing to do with the Red Brigades." The charge of 'armed insurrection against the State' against Negri was dropped. Therefore, he did not receive the 30-year plus life sentence requested by the prosecutor, but only 30 years for being the instigator of political activist Carlo Saronio's murder and having 'morally concurred' with Lombardini's murder during a failed bank robbery.
His philosopher peers saw little fault with Negri's activities. Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
commented, "Isn't he in jail simply for being an intellectual?" French philosophers Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
also signed in November 1977 L'Appel des intellectuels français contre la répression en Italie (The Call of French Intellectuals Against Repression in Italy) in protest against Negri's imprisonment and Italian anti-terrorism legislation
Anti-terrorism legislation
Anti-terrorism legislation designs various types of laws passed in the aim of fighting terrorism. They usually, if not always, follow specific bombings or assassinations...
.
In 1983, four years after his arrest and while he was still in prison awaiting trial, Negri was elected to the Italian legislature as a member for the Radical Party. Claiming parliamentary immunity, he was temporarily released and left for France. There he remained for 14 years, writing and teaching, protected from extradition in virtue of the "Mitterrand doctrine
Mitterrand doctrine
The Mitterrand doctrine was a policy established in 1985 by French president François Mitterrand concerning Italian far-left terrorists who fled to France: those convicted for violent acts in Italy, but excluding "active, actual, bloody terrorism" during the "Years of Lead" would not be extradited...
".
In France, Negri began teaching at radical institutions, the Université de Paris VIII (Saint Denis) and the Collège International de Philosophie
Collège international de philosophie
The Collège international de philosophie , located in Paris' 5th arrondissement, is a tertiary education institute placed under the trusteeship of the French government department of research and chartered under the French 1901 Law on associations...
, founded by Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, François Châtelet
François Châtelet
François Châtelet was a historian of philosophy, political philosophy and professor in the socratic tradition. He was the husband of philosopher Noëlle Châtelet, the sister of Lionel Jospin....
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
- the latter's radicalism came immediately under attack by the French analyst school, Jacques Bouveresse
Jacques Bouveresse
Jacques Bouveresse is a philosopher who has written on subjects including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Robert Musil, Karl Kraus, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mathematics and analytical philosophy...
for instance. Although the conditions of his residence in France prevented him from engaging in political activities, he wrote prolifically and was active in a broad coalition of left-wing intellectuals. In 1990 Negri with Jean-Marie Vincent and Denis Berger founded the journal Futur Antérieur. The journal ceased publication in 1998 but was reborn as Multitudes
Multitudes
Multitudes is a French philosophical, political and artistic monthly journal founded in 2000 by Yann Moulier-Boutang. It is thematically situated in the theoretical framework of the seminal work Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt...
in 2000, with Negri as a member of the international editorial board.. In 1998 he contributed an essay on Deleuze and "political space" to philosophy journal Rue Descartes, a special issue dedicated to Deleuze, along side Guy Lardreau and Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...
.
Negri was released from prison in the spring of 2003, having written some of his most influential works while behind bars.
Political thought and writing
The central themes in Negri's work are MarxismMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, democratic globalization
Democratic globalization
Democratic globalization is a movement towards an institutional system of global democracy that would give world citizens a say in world organizations. This would, in their view, bypass nation-states, corporate oligopolies, ideological NGOs, cults and mafias. One of its most prolific proponents...
, anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, neoliberalism
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
, democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, the commons, and the multitude
Multitude
Multitude is a political term first used by Machiavelli and reiterated by Spinoza. Recently the term has returned to prominence because of its conceptualization as a new model of resistance against the global capitalist system as described by political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in...
. His prolific, iconoclastic, cosmopolitan, highly original and often dense and difficult philosophical writings attempt to reconcile critical terms with most of the major global intellectual movements of the past half-century in the service of a new Marxist analysis of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
.
Negri is extremely dismissive of postmodernity, whose only value, in his estimation, is that it has served as a symptom of the historical transition whose dynamics he and Hardt set out to explain in Empire
Empire (book)
Empire is a text written by post-Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book, written in the mid-1990s, was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.-Summary:...
. He acknowledges the influence of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, David Harvey
David Harvey (geographer)
David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York . A leading social theorist of international standing, he received his PhD in Geography from University of Cambridge in 1961. Widely influential, he is among the top 20 most cited...
's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
's Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism is a 1991 book by Fredric Jameson offering a critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. The book started its life as a 1984 article in the New Left Review....
(1991) and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
& Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
's Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a two-volume theoretical work by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Its volumes, published eight years apart, are Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus ....
.
Today, Antonio Negri is best known as the co-author, with Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
, of the controversial Marxist-inspired treatise Empire
Empire (book)
Empire is a text written by post-Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book, written in the mid-1990s, was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.-Summary:...
(2000). The thesis of Empire is that the globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and informatization of world market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
s since the late 1960s have led to a progressive decline in the sovereignty of nation-states and the emergence of "a new form of control, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule." Their discussion is also concerned with the forms that affective labor
Affective labor
Affective Labor is a term identifying work carried out that is intended to produce or modify emotional experiences in people. Coming out of Autonomist Feminist critiques of marginalized and so-called "invisible" labor, it has been the focus of critical discussions by Antonio Negri and Michael...
takes within this context. The authors call this new, global reconfiguration of control "Empire." This shift both enacts and results from "the real [as opposed to formal] subsumption of social existence by capital," wherein there is no longer any outside to capital—everything is always already "subsumed" into the capitalist network. In order to resist and oppose what they identify as the injustices resulting from imperial control, the authors call for the kind of autonomous constitutive resistance epitomized by the Wobblies, the 1999 WTO protests
WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity
Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999 , when the World Trade Organization convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington,...
in Seattle, and other loosely structured, autonomous resistance movements—of what they call "the multitude."
The book has had widespread influence in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, but many activists and scholars have been critical of the work. It has inspired many initiatives including No Border network
No Border network
The No Border Network refers to loose associations of autonomous organisations, groups, and individuals in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and beyond...
, Libre Society
Libre Society
The Libre Society is a radical artistic and cultural movement that is committed to releasing free/libre/open-source art, music and literature. The Libre Society released a manifesto, called the Libre Manifesto, as its call to action....
, and D-A-S-H
D-A-S-H
D-A-S-H is a boutique chain predominantly for women. The Kardashian sisters Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian and Khloé Kardashian Odom own and operate the boutique which sells both clothing and accessories.-About the Boutique:...
. A follow-up to Empire, called Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire is a book written by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt published in 2004. It is a sequel to the 2000 book, Empire.- Context :...
, was published in August 2004. Unlike Empire, which was only published by Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
and was therefore targeted at a predominantly academic audience, the paperback edition of Multitude was released by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
and addresses a much less specialized readership. Whereas Empire, despite its explicit political orientation, is largely focused on describing the conditions of globalization, Multitude evinces a more activist bent.
Now in his 70s, Negri continues to teach and write. He divides his time between Rome, Venice and Paris, where he delivers political seminars at the Collège International de Philosophie and the Université Paris I.
In March 2008, Antonio Negri, who had been incarcerated from 1997 to 2003, abandoned procedures to obtain a visa for entry into Japan where he planned to give lectures on labor and other issues at the International House of Japan in Tokyo, Kyoto University
Kyoto University
, or is a national university located in Kyoto, Japan. It is the second oldest Japanese university, and formerly one of Japan's Imperial Universities.- History :...
, and the University of Tokyo
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
. The Immigrant Control and Refugee Recognition Law bans entry to Japan by a foreign national if he has been given a prison sentence of one year or longer, except for political prisoners.
In 2009 Negri completed the book “Commonwealth”, the final in a trilogy that began in 2000 with “Empire” and continued with “Multitude” in 2004, co-authored with Michael Hardt. The book is a "witch’s brew of contemporary radicalism," according to conservative cultural critic Brian Anderson. "Capitalism deserves to die, Messrs. Hardt and Negri believe, for it has abused and corrupted “the common.” The common isn’t just “the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty,” they tell us; it is the universe of things necessary for social life—“knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects.” Under capitalism, nature is ravaged, society brutalized." According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, the book describes "a borderless cosmopolis in which sovereign states were obsolete", but does not address the "real impact, which is to recreate a decentred world of several great powers competing with one another".
Quotes
- "PrisonPrisonA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
, with its daily rhythm, with the transfer and the defense, does not leave any time; prison dissolves time: This is the principal form of punishmentPunishmentPunishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
in a capitalistCapitalismCapitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
society."
Selected works (English)
- Negri, Antonio. Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, translated by Maurizia Boscagli. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Reprint by University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, CommonwealthCommonwealth (book)Commonwealth is a book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. It completes a trilogy which includes Empire and Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire....
, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-03511-9 - The Cell (DVD of 3 interviews on captivity with Negri) Angela Melitopoulos, Actar, 2008.
- Antonio Negri, The Porcelain Workshop: For a New Grammar of Politics Translated by Noura Wedell. California: Semiotext(e) 2008.
- Antonio Negri, Political DescartesRené DescartesRené Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project. Translated by Matteo Mandarini and Alberto ToscanoAlberto ToscanoAlberto Toscano is a cultural critic, social theorist, philosopher and translator best known to the English-speaking world for his translations of the work of Alain Badiou, including Badiou’s The Century and Logics of Worlds...
. New York: Verso, 2007. - Antonio Negri, Negri on Negri: In Conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle London: Routledge, 2004
- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of EmpireMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of EmpireMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire is a book written by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt published in 2004. It is a sequel to the 2000 book, Empire.- Context :...
, New York: Penguin Press, 2004. - Antonio Negri, Subversive SpinozaBaruch SpinozaBaruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
: (Un)Contemporary Variations, edited by Timothy S. Murphy, translated by Timothy S. Murphy, Michael HardtMichael HardtMichael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
, Ted Stolze, and Charles T. Wolfe, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. - Antonio Negri, Time for Revolution. Translated by Matteo Mandarini. New York: Continuum, 2003.
- Antonio Negri, The Labor of Job: The BiblicalBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
Text as a Parable of Human Labor, (Forward: Michael Hardt; Translator: Matteo Mandarini), Duke University PressDuke University PressDuke University Press is an academic publisher of books and journals, and a unit of Duke University. It publishes approximately 120 books annually and more than 40 journals, as well as offering five electronic collections...
, (begun 1983) 2009. - Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2000.
- Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio.Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
- Negri, Antonio.The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics, translated by Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
- Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, New York: Autonomedia, 1991.
- Antonio Negri, Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects, 1967-83, trans. Ed Emery and John Merrington, London: Red Notes, 1988. ISBN 0-906305-09-8
- Antonio Negri, The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989.
- Félix Guattari and Antonio Negri, Communists like us, 1985.
- Goodbye Mr. Socialism Antonio Negri in conversation with Raf Valvola Scelsi, Seven Stories PressSeven Stories PressSeven Stories Press is an independent publishing company. Located in New York City, the company was founded by editor Dan Simon in 1995 after he parted company with Four Walls Eight Windows. The company was named for its seven founding authors: Annie Ernaux, Gary Null, the estate of Nelson Algren,...
, 2008 - Casarino, Cesare and Negri, Antonio. In Praise of the Common. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Online articles
- Multitudes quarterly journal (in French)
- Archives of the journal Futur Antérieur (in French)
- English translations of recent articles by Antonio Negri from Generation Online
- Hardt & Negri (2002), "Marx's Mole is Dead" in Eurozine
- Between "Historic Compromise" and Terrorism: Reviewing the experience of Italy in the 1970s Le Monde Diplomatique, August–September 1998
- "Towards an Ontological Definition of Multitude" Article published in the French journal MultitudesMultitudesMultitudes is a French philosophical, political and artistic monthly journal founded in 2000 by Yann Moulier-Boutang. It is thematically situated in the theoretical framework of the seminal work Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt...
. - Extract from Negri and Hardt's Empire at Marxists.org
- Football and class struggle from the French journal “Liberation” (in Italian)
Further reading
- The Cell (DVD of 3 interviews on captivity with Negri) Angela Melitopoulos, Actar, 2008.
- Empire and Imperialism: A Critical Reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Atilio A. Boron, London: Zed Books, 2005. (Publisher's announcement)
- Reading Capital Politically, Harry Cleaver. 1979, 2nd ed. 2000.
- The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, vol. 1: Resistance in Practice, ed. Timothy S. Murphy and Abdul-Karim Mustapha. London: Pluto Press, 2005.
- The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, vol. 2: Revolution in Theory, ed. Timothy S. Murphy and Abdul-Karim Mustapha. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
- Dossier on Empire: a special issue of Rethinking Marxism, ed. Abdul-karim Mustapha. London: T&F/Routledge, 2002.
- Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, ed. Sylvere Lotringer & Christian Marazzi. New York: Semiotext(e), 1980, 2007. (Includes transcripts of Negri's exchanges with his accusers during his trial.) ISBN 1-58435-053-9, ISBN 978-1-58435-053-8. Available online at Semiotext(e)
- Antonio Negri Illustrated: Interview in Venice, Claudio Calia, Red Quill Books, 2011. ISBN 9781926958132 (Publisher's announcement)
Films
- Marx ReloadedMarx ReloadedMarx Reloaded is a 2011 German documentary film written and directed by the British writer and theorist Jason Barker. Featuring interviews with several well-known philosophers, the film aims to examine the relevance of Karl Marx's ideas in relation to the global economic and financial crisis of...
, ArteArteArte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, April 2011. - Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends, ZDFZDFZweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
/ArteArteArte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, 52 min., 2004.