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From: Richard Bailey <rb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:34:36 +1000
Hi Arianna,
Thanks for the links, I have visited G-O many times, it is a wonderful
resource. My thoughts on Negri and Foucault are necessarily tentative..
But I refer specifically to the following passage in Empire:
"What Foucault fails to grasp finally are the real dynamics of
production in biopolitical society… In the biopolitical sphere, life is
made to work for production and production is made to work for life. It
is a great hive in which the queen bee continuously oversees production
and reproduction. The deeper the analysis goes, the more it finds at
increasing levels of intensity the interlinking assemblages of
interactive relationships."
I read this as reconfiguring Focuault's work on biopower in the light of
work on the social factory and real subsumption that has come out of
operaismo. I would be interested to read your interpretation of this
passage.
I have another question that I keep coming back to as well. Your wrote
"the main issue with operaismo and foucault is that resistance comes
first". I agree with this assessment but wonder what then is the basis
of resistance?
Richard
Arianna wrote:
I wonder what others here think of the work of Hardt and Negri and Paolo
Virno? They argue that Foucault did not sufficiently comprehend the link
between biopolitics and the development of labour as commodity. Their
work is derived from Italian operaismo that began with Tronti and
others. Deleuze makes reference to Tronti in his book on Foucault and
speculates that Tronti may have developed similar insights to Foucault
in the 60s. I see their work as an essential addition to Foucault (or
perhaps as a Foucauldianised Marxism) which returns retains the
materiality of power.
Richard
Hi Richard,
I dont think they argue what you say. but since you are interested in
this topic, I hope you wont mind me bombarding you with the resources on
generation-online. the latest addition is an interesting article on
Foucault's lectures published last year by Gallimard on security
territory and population, and the birth of biopolitics (by m.
lazzarato). http://www.generation-online.org/p/fplazzarato2.htm
the main issue with operaismo and foucault is that resistance comes
first. there are obviously other common elements at play - such as
perspectivism with respect to political epistemology; relational notion
of subjectivity in terms of social ontology; diffuse idea of power and
of refusal in terms of micropolitics; primacy of language in production;
I dont wanna go on and on. I wrote something on this here
http://www.generation-online.org/other/acop/acop_postfordism.htm
but there are also other articles on our site on foucault by operaisti,
such as negri's 'a contribution on foucault', 2004
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri14.htm
ciao
arianna
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