AUT: Re: more Negri on Althusser

["rc-am" <rcollins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,

hesitant I would think, but not entirely confusing.  Althusser is not a
leninist, even though he was often at pains to present himself as such, given
his  stubborn insistence on remaining a member of the PCF.  as is perhaps
Negri here adopting a similar manoeuvre in talking of marxism as a science,
putting his claims on the terrain of orthodox marxism/Lenin, and trying to
salvage a notion of the party as more than the veneration of a metaphysical
split between party (as the subject of history) and masses.  (I'm not myself
anti-party, though highly critical of the notion and the practice, so I don't
mention this last as a problem, but as the problem of trying to legitimate
one's discourse through the language of official doctrine that Althusser (and
Spinoza even) never really managed to avoid. though it's probably unavoidable
in any case.)

in the difference between the text and footnote, I think lies the possibility
of both a difference and an agreement, and I might even argue that a
remaining tension between the two is still a tension for autonomist politics.
that of the difference between an idealist concept of the revolutionary
subject and a materialist one, which even though I put it so neatly, can't
ever really be done away with as an ongoing tension.  what is the necessary
difference between empiricism (a replay of what is) and revolutionary
politics (being what is not) in a class composition perspective?  or, when is
that difference, in the designation of existent subjects as revolutionary, a
refusal to critique thoroughly the ways in which they reproduce what is?  I
think we've touched on this before, and in the most general of ways when
we've talked briefly about identity politics, in the discussions between
wildcat and john Holloway over the nationalism of the zapatistas, etc.  I
think what the latter predicament calls out for is some of Althusser's
insights  (i.e.., the ability to be critical of those we might designate as
revolutionary, as embodying a Telos beyond capitalism, the lapse into
veneration of what is).

perhaps the problem rests with a desire for a _theoretical determination_ of
the revolutionary subject in the first place?  perhaps that is not the role
of theory as we should practice it at all?

Negri's relegation of this point (and the ambiguity) to the footnote only
means that he was not entirely comfortable with any decisive reconciliation
of the tension, as perhaps no one should be.  but a discussion of it wouldn't
weaken anything.

Angela
_________


Steve wrote:

> Anyway, just to add to the confusion:

> A. Negri, (1977) _La Fabbrica della strategia. 33 lezioni su Lenin._
> Padova: CLEUP, pp.10-11.

> science of the revolutionary process refuses to render itself as the
> science of the revolutionary subject. ... how can
> this conception claim to be marxist, and leninist above all, when in Lenin
> -- as we have begun to see and as the analysis will better clarify -- the
> fundamental problem is that of the determination of the revolutionary
> subject

...
> ' (5)  L. Althusser, _Lenin et la philosophie_, but also _Response to John
> Lewis_. It remains to be said that other aspects of Althusser's thought is
> fundamental for us [va tenuta presente in maniera fondamentale]. In
> particular his negation of the 'idealist' category of the subject permits
> us to confront the history of the workers' movement in a non-ideological
> manner. As a particualrly effective pars destruens against all
> surreptitious [surretizie?] continuities, introducing in effect, to my
> mind, the concept of class composition itself - on all this see 'Ideology
> and Ideological State Apparatuses'.'





     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---