Labor of Fire: The Ontology of Labor between Economy and Culture

228 Pages·2005·1.072 MB·English

by  Bruno Gulli

Gulli_FM_P3R1_10-05-05.qxd 5/10/05 4:43 PM Page i
Labor of Fire
Labor of Fire
In the series Labor in Crisis,
edited by Stanley Aronowitz
William DiFazio, Ordinary Poverty: A Little Food and Cold Storage
Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and
Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York
Jonathan Cutler, Labor’s Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW, and the Struggle
for American Unionism
Philip Yale Nicholson, Labor’s Story in the United States
Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II
Thaddeus Russell, Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the
American Working Class
Steve Martinot, The Rule of Racialization: Class, Identity, Governance
Randy Martin, Financialization of Daily Life
Joe L. Kincheloe, The Sign of the Burger: McDonald’s and the Culture
of Power
Joshua B. Freeman,In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York
City, 1933-1966
Labor of Fire
The Ontology of Labor between
Economy and Culture
BRUNO GULLÌ
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia
Temple University Press
1601 North Broad Street
Philadelphia PA 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2005 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2005
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements ofthe American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence ofPaper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gullì, Bruno, 1959-
Labor offire : the ontology oflabor between economy and culture / Bruno Gullì.
p. cm. — (Labor in crisis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59213-112-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-59213-113-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Labor—Philosophy. 2. Work—Philosophy. 3. Marxian economics. 4. Capitalism.
5. Economics—Philosophy. I. Title: Ontology oflabor between economy and
culture. II. Title. III. Series.
HD4904.G82 2005
331'.01—dc22
2005044023
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
FORMYMOTHERANDINMEMORYOFMYFATHER;
FORMYBROTHERSANDSISTERS
In fertility time grew.
—Pablo Neruda, Canto General

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Ontology of Labor: Problems of the Relationship
between Philosophy and Political Economy 17
REMARK:The Productive Power of Capital 50
2 On the Difference between Living Labor and
Productive Labor 61
REMARK:1 Dialectic and metaphysics 75
REMARK:2 Vulgar metaphysics and poetic metaphysics 78
3 Radicalizing the Ontology of Labor: Institution and Utopia 107
4 The Solitude of Labor: On the Relationship between
CreativeLabor and Artistic Production 147
Notes 191
Bibliography 205
Index 211

Acknowledgments
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE who, in many ways, contributed to the
makingof this book. First and foremost, I have to thank Stanley Aronowitz,
in whose 1996 seminar on Marx the first ideas of this study were formulated
and who provided the structure and the space for them to be developed and
printed. I need to remember the late Robert Dombroski, who constantly
encouraged me, and I thank Frank Rosengarten, who carefully read the man-
uscript as a doctoral dissertation. Michael Hardt read the manuscript for Tem-
ple University Press and gave me important structural suggestions, which I
almost entirely incorporated into the text. Sandro Mezzadra and Pedro Canò
also read the whole manuscript, at different stages of its development, and
especially to Sandro I owe thanks for many insightful comments and sugges-
tions. I wish to thank Micah Kleit, of Temple University Press, for his con-
stantly supportive comments. I also want to thank Peter Bratsis and Michael
Menser for reading an earlier version of Chapter 2, perhaps the most impor-
tant chapter in the book, for Found Object. Thanks are also due to Michael
Menser, to whom I owe my interest in Bookchin. David Siar also read an ear-
lier version of Chapter 2 for Cultural Logic.Sandra Luft gave me the oppor-
tunity to study Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche when I was a student at San
Francisco State University. A special thanks to my twin brother, Nino, whohas
read virtually everything I wrote; to my sister, Angela, and Nino Quaranta, with
whom I experimented, in the summer of1998 in the Calabrian countryside, the
viability of a different economy, geared toward the production of use-values;
and to Vera K., who provided an important structure of support and care over
the years.