Re: AUT: more Negri on Althusser

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks: I'm tired of getting two posts from two lists. Can those on autopsy
agree to discuss negri on the toninegri list? I, for one, would appreciate
the specialization as it would cut down my delete time.
Harry

On Sun, 25 Jul 1999, Steve Wright wrote:

> I don't know if Michael Hardt is currently on either of these lists: it
> would be interesting to hear his views of Negri/Althusser.
>
> Anyway, just to add to the confusion:
>
> The following is just a passing reference, but since it is from a book that
> hasn't appeared in English, some list members may not have seen it.
>
> It's from a book published in 1997, but based on lectures written in 1972:
>
> A. Negri, (1977) _La Fabbrica della strategia. 33 lezioni su Lenin._
> Padova: CLEUP, pp.10-11.
>
> 'From this point of view we must immediately declare as unsatisfactory some
> other orientations which attempt to expunge the analysis of the proletarian
> subject within marxist theory. Typical of these is the position of L.
> Althusser (5) which, in the same measure in which it tends to define theory
> as the practice of intervention and the taking of a class position,
> insistently refuses to impute these activities to a material subject --
> charactersied by an internal dialectic between material discontinuity and
> subjectivity, between the various elements that compose it. Here the
> science of the revolutionary process refuses to render itself as the
> science of the revolutionary subject. And it is easy to understand the
> effects of this conception: exalting reflection and mediation (whether of
> the intellectual or the party) against dialectical immediacy, therefore
> against the marxian concreteness of the revolutionary subject. But 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 and of its temporal and spatial determination? Clearly constituting
> the party is different from gazing upon it in adoration! [vagheggiarlo]'
>
> accompanying footnote:
> ' (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 ---
>

............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
Phone Numbers: (hm)  (512) 442-5036
               (off) (512) 475-8535   Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................



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