Query on Negri to Michael Hardt

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Professor Hardt,

I hope that as a leading exponent of Negri-thought in the western 
hemisphere you can help us poor bronto-Marxists out. Your writing 
partner gave an interview to Clarin, an Argentine newspaper, that our 
comrade Nestor Gorojovsky--an ardent nationalist, bless his 
soul--interpreted as pro-USA. Now, as much as I detest Negri, I regarded 
his statement as follows:

 >>I don't think this quite adds up to an endorsement of the occupation. 
It is instead a kind of mandarin intellectualization of the issues, a 
clever playing with the question of whether the USA is like Victorian 
England.

Here's a statement that Negri made last November. Although it has his 
typical over-inflated and obsurantist manner, it seems fairly opposed to 
US foreign policy.

http://www.generation-online.org/t/negriwar.htm<<


Below is Nestor's take on Negri's statement. Which is closer to the 
mark? Mandarin obscurantism or imperialist apologetics?

Thanks, Louis Proyect
Moderator of marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: (Spanish) The actual words by Toni Negri and his interviewer on 
Iraq
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:27:44 -0300
From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Lou,

Support of the invasion is not so clear in the first answer, but what
about the second one?

Negri equates the American invasion of Iraq with a transition towards
democracy, like those that one can imagine in --Hungary and
Checoslovakia of all places!

If it is not an open endorsement, it is as open as Negri can afford
to explete.

Brief translation of the second answer by Negri:

For the time being, we are not dealing with a colonial administration
but with a classical "nation building" [in English in the original
comment by Negri through the telephone, then translated to Spanish by
interviewer]. Thus it is a transformation in a democratic sense. This
is the pretext of the United States. It is a military occupation that
overthrew a regime, but after that, the problem is "nation building",
that is an attempt at transition, not at colonization.  It would be
like saying that passing from dictatorship to democracy in Hungary or
Czechoslowakia is colonialism. There is not such an attitude in the
American administration. These Americans want to look worse than they
are.

Original in Spanish repeated below, for those who can't believe what
they read.

 > ... por el momento, no se trata de una administración
 > colonial, sino de un proceso clásico de "nation building"
 > (construcción de nación). Y por ende se trata de una transformación
 > de sentido democrático.  Ese es el pretexto de Estados Unidos. Es una
 > ocupación militar que derribó un régimen, pero después el problema es
 > "nation building", o sea un intento de transición, no de colonización.
 > Sería como decir que es colonizador el hecho de pasar de la dictadura 
a la
 > democracia en Hungría o Checoslovaquia. No hay una actitud de ese tipo en
 > la administración estadounidense. Estos estadounidenses quieren parecer
 > más malos de lo que son.

According to Negri, the invasion will bring about nation building
through democratization by American influence. And don't get him
wrong. Later on, on the same interview, he defies the idea that the
current Iraqi resistence can be assumed as an equivalent of the
Indian resistence against Britain --because in India, the élites
betrayed the popular struggles against the imperialists, that is: in
Iraq we are not confronting popular resistance...

I keep my stance: Negri is defending the American invasion.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


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