Negri on Negri: in conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle

212 Pages·2003·1.44 MB·English

by  Antonio Negri

NEGRI ON NEGRI
NEGRI ON NEGRI
ANTONIO NEGRI

WITH ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE
TRANSLATED BY M.B.DEBEVOISE

ROUTLEDGE
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Published in 2004 by
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Ouvrage publié avec le concours du Ministère français
chargé de la Culture—
Centre National du Livre
Originally published as Duretour: Abécé-daire biopolitique,
© Calman-Levy, 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Negri, Antonio, 1933–
[Du retour. English]
Negri on Negri/Antonio Negri with Anne Dufourmantelle ;
translated by
iv
M.B.DeBevoise.
p. cm.
Includes bibligraphical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-96894-1 (Print Edition) (HB)—
ISBN 0-415-96895-X (Print Edition) (PB)
1. Communism—Italy. 2. World politics—20th century. 3.
Political science. I.
Dufourmantelle, Anne. II. Title.
HX289.N374L3 2004
335. 43′092–dc22 2003022839
ISBN 0-415-96895-X(Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-50810-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-58005-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION vii
A AS IN ARMS 1
B AS IN BRIGATE ROSSE 33
C AS IN CAMP 39
D AS IN DEFEAT 41
E AS IN EMPIRE 59
F AS IN FASCISM 73
G AS IN GLOBALIZATION 75
H AS IN HEIDEGGER 79
I AS IN I—THE SELF 85
J AS IN JAMAIS PLUS 97
K AS IN KANT 105
L AS IN LOMBARD 109
M AS IN MULTITUDE 113
N AS IN NAMING 121
O AS IN OPPRESSION 129
P AS IN PANIC 133
Q AS IN QUESTIONING 147
vi
R AS IN RESISTING 151
S AS IN SENSUALITY 157
T AS IN TEMPTATION 161
U AS IN UNITY 167
V AS IN VENICE 169
W AS IN WlTTGENSTEIN 175
X AS IN X 185
Y AS IN YET 187
Z AS IN ZENO 189
INDEX 193
INTRODUCTION
ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE: I propose that we
collaborate on a biographical and biopolitical
abecedary, isolating words for each letter that have
a particular meaning for you—thus, for example, A
as in Arms, B as in Brigate Rosse, C as in Camp, and
so on.

ANTONIO NEGRI: This would be a departure from
the familiar conventions of the interview—and one
that would give it a certain liveliness! It may also
permit me to express myself in a new way, and to
address topics I’ve never talked about before.

Since your thought is highly structured, this
alphabetical device might serve to introduce a
musical counterpoint.

I don’t know if I’d be capable of anything musical.
But there is a sort of polyphonic motif that I’ve been
living with for a long time, the motif of return,
which is now at the center of my biography. This
return has had different meanings: the first, quite
obviously, has been that of a physical return to Italy
after fourteen years of exile—and therefore in prison
after fourteen years of liberty; a dramatic return that
viii
once again put my whole life at stake. But there has
also been another return, another meaning that was
both intellectual and political: I reintegrated myself
into the vita activa. Exile, even when it is extremely
active—as mine had been—is draining. I lived for
fourteen years without papers. It’s hard to make
others understand how difficult it is to get by, how
much of a void this type of life ends up creating. In
coming back to Italy, even if I am deprived of my
civil rights and forbidden to hold public office, I
nonetheless have the feeling of being ence as having
been enriched by exile: I bring to the current a
citizen. In this new situation, I am able to think of my
experidebate a prior life that hasn’t been frustrated
by the sense of failure that many of my comrades
experienced after the catastrophic outcome of the
1970s and 1980s. Today there is a renewed hope of
transforming ourselves and transforming the world,
and so, ingenuously perhaps, I continue to believe
in the power of another revolutionary moment. I
recall Machiavelli when he speaks in the Discourses
of political and religious bodies, and affirms that
“those changes make for their conservation which
lead them back to their origins .”1And, after having
noted how much constituent activity is required to
maintain republics, he adds that the necessity of
such “renovations” is no less clear from “the
example of our own religion, which, if it had not
been restored to its starting point by Saint Francis
and Saint Dominic, would have become quite
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, edited with an
introduction by Bernard Crick, using the translation of Leslie
J.Walker, with revisions by Brian Richardson (New York:
Penguin, 1998), 385.
ix
extinct.”2 This renewal is—return! Physical return is
also a return to the physical passion of the past, to
the renewal of the spirit.

And so it remains for us only to set out on our way,
going back to the past in order to discover in it the
themes of the present.
2. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, edited with an
introduction by Bernard Crick, using the translation of Leslie
J.Walker, with revisions by Brian Richardson (New York:
Penguin, 1998), 389