Maurizio Lazzarato is a Paris-based sociologist and social theorist and a member of the editorial group of the journal Multitudes.
Michael
Hardt
Paolo Virno
Franco Berardi (Bifo)
Toni Negri
Gilles Deleuze and Fèlix Guattari
Autonomist Marxism
Poststructuralism
Pirate
Radio (and T.V.)
Telestreet
Social Centres
Disobbedienti
Maurizio Lazzarato is best known in English-speaking theoretical and activist circles for his essay which appeared in 1996, “Immaterial Labour”. In it (the essay is an abbreviated version of the themes covered in his 1997 book, Lavoro Immateriale), he explores what he suggests is the hegemonic form of labour under post-Fordist capital and sketches a project which entails an analysis of the forms of subjectivity that inform and are informed by this labour. Immaterial labour is composed of two different parts, says Lazzarato: “as regards the ‘informational content’ of the commodity, it refers directly to the changes taking place in workers’ labour processes in big companies in the industrial and tertiary sectors, where the skills involved in direct labour are increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control (and horizontal and vertical communication)… As regards the activity that produces the ‘cultural content’ of the commodity, immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognised as ‘work’ – in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and more strategically, public opinion.” Thus Lazzarato extends the original autonomist notion of the expansion of work to waged and unwaged spaces and the resulting “social factory” in which virtually every activity we engage in becomes productive. His analysis has been a vital part of the effort of the group of autonomist marxists who have paid sustained attention to the role of language and communication in contemporary configurations of capital. Close to social movements, this critique has been picked up on by the increasing efforts to fight “precarious labour”, predominantly in Europe.
(1996) “Immaterial Labour.” In Hardt, Michael & Virno, Paolo (Eds.) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (pps 133-147)
(1997). Lavoro Immateriale: Forme di Vita e Produzione di Soggettività.
Verona: Ombre Corte
(1997) Videofilosofia: La percezione del tempo nel postfordismo. Rome: Manifestolibri
Struggle, Event, Media:
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/03/08/1253213&mode=nested&tid=22
European Cultural Tradition and the New Forms of Production and Circulation
of Knowledge:
http://www.moneynations.ch/topics/euroland/text/lazzarato.htm
Multitude and Working class: Maurizio Lazzarato interviews Paolo Virno
http://www.generation-online.org/t/multitudeworkingclass.htm
General Intellect: Towards an Inquiry into Immaterial Labour
http://www.emery.archive.mcmail.com/public_html/immaterial/lazzarat.html
From Biopower to Biopolitics (pdf file)
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/papers/lazzarato_biopolitics.pdf
Maurizio Lazzarato: Dialogism and Poliphony
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/papers/lazzarato_dialogism.pdf