Storia di un comunista

Storia di un comunista #1

by Antonio Negri, Girolamo De Michele (Editor)

Dall’infanzia negli anni atroci della guerra all’apprendistato filosofico alla militanza comunista, dal ’68 alla strage di piazza Fontana, da Potere Operaio all’autonomia e al ’77: la storia di Toni Negri, uno dei filosofi italiani più noti nel mondo e uno dei motori di un’avventura collettiva del pensiero che ha sognato e tentato l’assalto al cielo dell’ingiustizia e dello sfruttamento. Ma anche la storia di un italiano – e di un veneto, legato da un grande amore alla sua terra – che attraversa l’Italia della ricostruzione e giunge fino al cosiddetto miracolo italiano, per mostrarlo dal punto di vista di chi quel miracolo lo ha davvero costruito, e ha rivendicato con le lotte il diritto di goderne i frutti: il racconto di una generazione che attraversa ed è attraversato da eventi grandi e drammatici, ma anche piccoli e misconosciuti, e da una miriade di altre individualità che condividono, intersecano, contribuiscono a formare e scrivere il romanzo di formazione di un soggetto al tempo stesso individuale e collettivo. Dopo essere stata distorta, deformata e strumentalizzata per scopi politici e giudiziari, oggi questa storia viene raccontata dalla viva voce del suo protagonista, attingendo a una vasta documentazione e a una memoria che la restituisce alla sua verità umana, storica e politica.

644 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2013

About the author

Antonio Negri was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of Empire with Michael Hardt and his work on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio (Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
Negri was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 1979, he Negri was arrested and charged with a long list of crimes including the Moro murder. Most charges were dropped quickly, but in 1984 he was still sentenced (in absentia) to 30 years in prison. He was given an additional four years on the charge of being "morally responsible" for the violence of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The question of Negri's complicity with left-wing extremism is a controversial subject. He was indicted on a number of charges, including "association and insurrection against the state" (a charge which was later dropped), and sentenced for involvement in two murders.
Negri fled to France where, protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, he taught at the Paris VIII (Vincennes) and the Collège international de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was behind bars. He hence lived in Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel. He was the father of film director Anna Negri.
Like Deleuze, Negri's preoccupation with Spinoza is well known in contemporary philosophy. Along with Althusser and Deleuze, he has been one of the central figures of a French-inspired neo-Spinozism in continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after a well-known rediscovery of Spinoza by German thinkers (especially the German Romantics and Idealists) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Reviews

[Pepe Del Amo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Después de haber las casi 600 páginas a letra pequeña, solo puedo decir que es uno de los mejores libros que he leído últimamente. Un auténtico golpe para todas las simplificaciones sobre su pensamiento, tan habituales por parte de la charlatanería. No es sólo la primera parte de su historia, la de un intelectual comunista, sino la historia de la Italia revolucionaria de finales de 50 hasta el gran proceso de represión del compromesso storico. Absolutamente genial ❤❤

[Ararat Gocmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s probably not best to take this book as a fully credible account of the extremes of Italian politics during the 1960s and 1970s, but it’s nevertheless a fascinating account from the perspective of one of its main protagonists.

[Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prima parte dell'autobiografia di Toni Negri, interessante anche per il quadro sul contesto del Paese e della sinistra nel periodo considerato.