Born in Naples in 1952, Paolo Virno defended his dissertation on Theodor Adorno at the high-water mark of the so-called “movement of 77” in Italy at the "La Sapienza" University in Rome. During the late sixties and early seventies he was a member of Potere Operaio until it dissolved in 1973. Virno was arrested along with other members of the editorial board of Metropoli in the early eighties and accused of being a part of the Red Brigades. He spent a number of years in “preventative detention” before having all charges against him dropped, having dissociated himself from armed struggle. He was an editor of the journal Luogo Comune between 1990 and 1993, and has since been a lecturer at the University of Urbino (between 1994 and 1996, a guest lecturer at the Universitee de Montréal (in 1996), and a professor of the philosophy of language, semiotics, and the ethics of communication at the University of Calabria (between1995 and 2001).
Mario Tronti
Antonio Negri
Franco Berardi (Bifo)
Maurizio Lazzarato
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
autonomist Marxism
Disobbedienti
Social centres
telestreet
Major
works/concepts:
Paolo Virno’s work has spanned political
theory, linguistics, communication studies,
and philosophy. Although his early writing
in the late sixties and seventies was primarily
political and social movement-based, by his
own account he took advantage of the period
after his incarceration to pursue philosophy
more rigorously. His research of the last
fiteen years can be divided into two primary
theoretical areas of inquiry: (1) the role
of philosophy as understood and modified by
the philosophy of language, including the
analysis of subjectivity, the notions of “the
world”, “power”, “possibility”,
“historical time”, and the limits
of language, and (2) the ethical dimension
of linguistic communication. Both of these
fields are marked by his attempt to develop
a materialism that is not reductive but flexible
and open to the so-called “linguistic
turn” in theory. He has not abandoned
his political thought however, exploring and
refining a number of categories that are common
to the autonomist marxists. Amongst these,
some of the most important are “exodus”
as an act of resistance towards constituted
power ('social conflicts manifest themselves
not only and not so much as protest than as
defection... Nothing is less passive than
escape', 1993: 23, 16), the “general
intellect” described by Karl Marx in
the Grundrisse as a category through which
we can understand the fact that language has
been “put to work” under post-Fordism,
and the “multitude”, a concept
derived from Baruch de Spinoza which, in a
recent series of lectures published in Italian
and then in English (2004) he described as
the transformative subject under post-Fordist
production. Despite the fact that he has not
been translated into English more than a few
times, Paolo Virno is considered by many in
Europe to be one of the most important contemporary
philosophers alive.
1986. Convenzione e Materialismo, Roma: Ed. Theoria,.
1991. Opportunisme, Cynisme et Peur. Ambivalence du Désenchantement Suivi
de les Labyrinthes de la Langue, Paris-Combas: Editions de l'éclat.
1994. Mondanità. L'idea di "Mondo" tra Esperienza Sensibile
e Sfera Pubblica, Roma: Ed. Manifestolibri.
Parole con parole. Poteri e Limiti del Linguaggio, Roma: Donzelli, 1995.
1996. "Virtuosity and Revolution: The Political Theory of Exodus,"
in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. Pp. 189-209
1996. "The Ambivalence of Disenchantment," in Radical Thought in Italy:
A Potential Politics. Eds. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. Pp. 17-18.
1996. "Do You Remember Counterrevolution?" in Radical Thought in Italy:
A Potential Politics. Eds. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. Pp. 241-259.
1999. Il Ricordo del Presente. Saggio sul Tempo Storico. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri
2004. A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life.Translated
by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson. NY: Semiotext[e]
“Multitude/Working Class”: Maurizio Lazzarato Interviews Paolo Virno:
http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0302/2781.html