re AUT: Seeking info on Negri and Fortunadi

[Steve Wright <pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris, not sure if anyone has had a go yet at your questions.

I have no idea about Fortunati/Federici - but I do have a copy of a
recent interview with the latter, so I'll see if it says anything.

As for what I know about the Negri questions:

a) I don't know anything about his role as a teacher. But even Sergio
Bologna, who is hardly a fan of Negri's, suggested in a recent interview
that the latter was hardly a typical Italian academic. Interestingly,
Abse offers nothing in support of this assertion;

b) the quote on boots and 'the d of the p', as some of us used to call
it here, sounds like vintage Domination and Sabotage;

c) I've never heard the accusation about getting young comrades to steal
books for him - the Bocca book is in a nearby library, so I'll have a
look at it;

d) 'getting his ìreactionaryî colleagues kneecapped'. There's no doubt
that a number of academics were intimidated at the University of Padova,
and at least one (Angelo Ventura) was shot in the leg - pretty
disgraceful stuff (and one of those assaulted, G. Petter, has since
written an account of his experiences). There seemed to be a widespread
view that the perpetuators of both were in some way associated with the
local autonomist movement then, in part because of their hegemony over
the local radical left (where none of the armed groups could get a
footing). Not sure though if anyone was actually charged with shooting
Ventura - anyone else know? That said, the irony of the quote is that by
that stage, Negri had problems getting anyone to listen to him at all -
so even if he was directing people to do such things, which I strongly
doubt, no-one would do it on the strength of *his* say-so. After all,
his organisation in Milan (his only base) had collapsed at this time,
and his relations with the autonomists in the city where he taught was
not a close one. Some of his friends worked with the local fraction of
'organised autonomy' (i Collettivi Politici Veneti) in a few projects
(Radio Sherwood, the journal Autonomia), but were not a formal part of
the latter, who seemed to guard their independence jealously. Negri
later 'broke' with the CPV in 1981 over relations with the judiciary,
but even then he could never have said to have been a member, let alone
a leader of that organisation.

Where am I getting this all from? Apart from reading sources like
Autonomia and Rosso of the time, there is a balanced history of Potere
Operaio and the Collettivi Politici Veneti by the judge Palombarini.

By the way, does anyone know what specific convictions are the basis of
Negri's current sentence? Not that it's very important, or even that
they have any/much basis in fact ...

Finally, the Sherwood site (www.sherwood.it) has a link to a recent
debate with not only Negri, but also Mariarosa Dalla Costa ...

Steve



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