Paolo Virno

"Multitude between Innovation and Negation offers three essays that take the reader on a journey through the political philosophy of language. Virno unravels the infinite potential and wonders of everyday linguistic praxis and ambiguity. Wit, he argues, is a public performance, and its modus operandi characterizes human action in a state of emergency; it is a reaction, an articulate response, and a possible solution to a state of crisis. Virno challenges the distinction between the state of nature and civil society and argues for a political institution that resembles language in its ability to be at once nature and history."--book jacket.

Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude" is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people." Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories -- such as "the people" -- that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital."

El término "virtuosismo" tiene aquí varias acepciones. Una primera que se podría identificar plenamente con la virtud republicana de Maquiavelo, la pasión civil que anima la construcción de los asuntos comunes. Pero existe desde luego otra, una segunda, más extravagante, menos reconocida, que coincide con la buena ejecución, la good perfomance de los "trabajadores sin obra", de los músicos, los artistas, los intérpretes, pero también los vendedores, los publicistas, las trabajadoras del sexo, las cuidadoras sociales. La colección de ensayos de Paolo Virno reunidos bajo el título Virtuosismo y revolución remite a las condiciones de la virtud política de los "trabajadores sin obra". Precisamente cuando cantidades cada vez mayores de trabajo no tienen como finalidad exclusiva producir objetos materiales, sino más bien comunicación o interacción social (tal y como reconocen las nuevas categorías globales de sociedad del conocimiento o de la información) repensar las formas de acción política adecuadas al nuevo virtuosismo del trabajo deviene un propósito central. La obra de Virno es una apuesta teórica por la reconstrucción de una política radical, más allá del desencanto hegemónico y de la peligrosa amenaza de los nuevos fascismos e integrismos, a través de nuevas categorías ajustadas a las grandes transformaciones del trabajo, a eso que se ha dado en llamar postfordismo. Categorías extrañas a las principales corrientes de la tradición radical, pero que sin embargo se reconocen en su expresión más profunda: soviet, éxodo, esfera pública no estatal, intelectualidad de masas, derecho de resistencia.

"This book places two key notions up against each other to imagine a new way of conceptualizing historical time. How do the experience of déjà vu and the idea of the "End of History" relate to one another? Through thinkers like Bergson, Kojève and Nietzsche, Virno explores these constructs of memory and the passage of time. In showing how the experience of time becomes historical, Virno considers two fundamental concepts from Western philosophy: Power and The Act. Through these, he elegantly constructs a radical new theory of historical temporality"--