Subversive Spinoza: (UN) Contemporary Variations

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Antonio Negri

In Subversive Spinoza, Antonio Negri spells out the philosophical credo that inspired his radical renewal of Marxism and his compelling analysis of the modern state and the global economy by means of an inspiring reading of the challenging metaphysics of the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza. For Negri, Spinoza’s philosophy has never been more relevant than it is today to debates over individuality and community, democracy and resistance, and modernity and postmodernity.

This collection of essays extends, clarifies and revises the argument of Negri’s influential 1981 book ‘The Savage The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics’ and links it directly to his recent work on constituent power, time and empire.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 2004

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

[Andrew]

It might not be my reading of Spinoza, but it is one that piqued my interest. While I radically disagree with so many of Negri's political ideas, including, most especially, what seems to be his willful misreading of Marx, he is right to attempt to mine the radical potential of Spinoza. Despite my immense admiration for his work Empire, one of the most important pieces of political theory of the past quarter-century, Negri seems, in this volume, to use Spinoza's ideas to inform an excessively optimistic, individual-attitude-oriented, autonomist left current that, while it is a beautiful idea, remains far too floaty to truly liberate the working class.

[تیهو · Rating 3 out of 5]

اولین مواجهه‌ی جدی‌‍م با اسپینوزا. خوندنش برام کمی سخت بود. ترجمه هم کمی مغلق بود. ولی هرجوری بود خوندمش. در واقع کتاب چهار مقاله از «آنتونیو نگری» فیلسوف ایتالیایی است که از مفسران اسپینوزا است. تو کتاب با ایده‌ها و خوانش‌هایی جالب از «اخلاق» اسپینوزا مواجه شدم که برام جدید و قابل تأمل بود. در نهایت اینو بگم که اسپینوزا بخونیم و «اخلاق».

[Dipa Raditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Singularity is consequently defined as: (1) nonindividuality, because (2) it is inserted into a common, eternal substance, (3) and yet, in this substance, on the basis of this ontological insistence there emerges something that is marked by an irreducible haecceity, by a singularity also irreducible, by a mark of eternity, and (4) it lives and transforms itself in an ethical movement, or more exactly, in an interindividual rapport.

This is the moment at which democratic expression and active consensus replace contract, the moment at which a method grounded in the common rapport among the singularities replaces any other possible rapport between isolated individuals: the potency to produce the Republic, the making of the multitude, take the place of contract.

Immanence comes to biopolitics , then politics would need to be collective management of common.

[MykÆ G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Negri's work on Spinoza is inspiring, but the collection gets a bit redundant. It's short, but I felt unmotivated to read essay to essay. The collection builds towards a coherent system and interesting thesis about the relevance of Spinoza's work for subversive and radically democratic politic projects, but it takes a while to get there. The collection is front loaded with some of the weaker essays and their dryness actively challenged my belief that Spinoza was an important Philosopher to revisit or that Negri had anything beyond academic minutia to say about Spinoza. It gets better, but life is short - there are only three or four especially interesting writings here.
If you are a fan of Negri's work in autonomous marxism and radical democracy or his collaborative work with Michael Hardt than at least a couple of these essays are must reads. The role of Spinoza and the multitude in Negri's thought is not entirely clear in Empire (or Multitude for that matter) but it sparkles here.
I am inspired, I just don't think I needed to read all of it to get inspired. Comment or message me if you have any interest in my opinion on which are the worthwhile essays. I'd go through my notes and post it here, but that's more work than I want to do for such a niche topic.

[August Denys · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the problem posed by this book is that it has some interesting insights, but it is limited by its length. Simply put, each chapter is relatively short, but the material presented in each chapter could be a book's worth of analysis in its own right. For example, the chapter I found most interesting was the second on Heidegger and Spinoza called "Potency and Ontology: Heidegger or Spinoza." This book is basing itself on the insights of Spinoza for our time, but this chapter seeks to place Spinoza against Heidegger. However, it is not just Heidegger that is present in this chapter. Negri first uses Hegel and Hegel's relationship to Modernity as a foil which both Heidegger and Spinoza are against. Furthermore, we then see that Negri places Heidegger and Spinoza as different paths which Nietzsche spoke of. Suffice to say, there are many things to account for, but the space given concerns us as to the adequacy of what has been said and will make one wish to read more to see if the comparison is apt.

But, perhaps that is the point of the book. Not to give something definitive, but to speak of these resonances that someone will find when engaging the Spinoza scholarship (where there is plenty in the French tradition that is not yet translated to English).

[not. antonimo. .exe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todos los Antonio aman a Spinoza

[Sinan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Negri’nin bu kitabına neden iki yıldız verdim?
İlk yıldız, Spinoza’yı ortodoks Marksizm’in çıkmazına çözüm olabilme imkânı olarak görüp, oturup kendi klişe (sözde Marksist) diliyle bile olsa, yazmış olmasına...
İkinci yıldız ise çok daha değerli bir hizmeti gerçekleştirmiş olması şerefine...
Nedir o hizmet?
Spinoza’nın felsefesinin anlaşılmazlığı ön kabulünü, kendi yazım dilini olağanüstü klişeleşmiş ve itici komünist kavramlarla daha da anlaşılmaz hale getirip, Spinoza’yı anlaşılabilir kılması...
Bu arada Komünizm ideolojisini değil, bu ideolojiye mensup entelektüel kesimin çoğunda gördüğüm, yazım dilindeki zorlama kaosu eleştiriyorum.
İnatla kitabın 160 sayfasının tamamını okudum. Sadece bir makalesi dışında, düşünce içeriğini yazım diline aktarma şekli öyle rahatsız edici ki, Etika ya da TPP ya da TP’den verdiği alıntılardaki Spinoza dili neredeyse lise düzeyinde kalıyor.
Eğer Spinoza okuması planlarsanız, Antonio Negri’yi atlayabilirsiniz.
Sevgiler,

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two quotes. The first is the best dis of Heidegger I've read in a while. "This does not mean that we should not denounce the thought of Heidegger as a reaction,m and not just because it is probably linked to the vicissitudes of the Nazi movement and fascist politics, but also because its conception of being makes destiny the suffocation of life. Heidegger is a black serpent, he strangles us." (68)

"Democracy is an act of love." (98)

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

If anyone is interested I wrote a review of this book for the journal Dialogue:

https://www.academia.edu/12874918/_Sp...