Autonomia, new edition: Post-Political Politics (Semiotext

by Sylvère Lotringer (Editor), Christian Marazzi (Editor)

Edited by Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi with the direct participation of the main leaders and theorists of the Autonomist movement (including Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone, Paolo Virno, Sergio Bologna, and Franco Berardi), this volume is the only first-hand document and contemporaneous analysis that exists of the most innovative post-'68 radical movement in the West. The movement itself was broken when Autonomia members were falsely accused of (and prosecuted for) being the intellectual masterminds of the Red Brigades; but even after the end of Autonomia, this book remains a crucial testimony of the way this creative, futuristic, neo-anarchistic, postideological, and nonrepresentative political movement of young workers and intellectuals anticipated issues that are now confronting us in the wake of Empire.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Theory, Essays, Academic

330 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Sylvère Lotringer (born in 1938 in Paris, France) is a literary critic and cultural theorist. A younger contemporary of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, he is best known for synthesizing French theory with American literary, cultural and architectural avant-garde movements through his work with Semiotext(e); and for his interpretations of French theory in a 21st-century context. An influential interpreter of Jean Baudrillard's theories, Lotringer invented the concept "extrapolationist" as a means of describing the hyperbolic world-views espoused by Baudrillard and Paul Virilio. Lotringer is a Professor of Foreign Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

a neat anthology of essays from the Italian autonomist movements of the 1970s, covering the fascinating revolutionary histories of Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio, and the Red Brigades, as well as the theoretical underpinnings of those movements, the working class struggle and composition, auto-reduction...

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

instead of Storming Heaven, this is the book i read in 2011 at age 24...not realizing that it hadn't been compiled in 2007, but (largely?) in 1980 for the semiotext(e) journal. this context explains why this tome which i had hoped would help me understand autonomia focuses far too exclusively on the Moro situation, the Negri trial, academics coming to the support of Negri (that's deleuze and guattari, and the americans and french, here), some theorizations of adventurism and terrorism and so on. that's sort of a shame, because the layout and images in this edition are amazing - we never get anything like this anymore. and the 1980 context also explains the severe lack of pre-1977 context. only Tronti's "Strategy of Refusal" (1965) is among the earlier operaismo texts, a chapter that I initially devoured. however the next text (and the rest of the volume) fast forwards us to 1977. yet it is the second crucial one here, which I had completely forgotten about until reading Wright's book. it is Sergio Bologna's "The Tribe of Moles." here is a text from 1977 wherein a long-time workerist mobilizes all the tools at his disposal to grapple with a terrain which had shifted drastically beneath his feet. an attempt to re-describe class decomposition and recomposition from the starting point of an economy undergoing drastic changes, not least to try to prevent worker power. this essay and the layout gets 4 stars, the Tronti now rendered superfluous; the rest of the volume ought to be read simply as a relic of a particular moment which overly inflated Negri's role, as well as the influence and involvement of D&G, Alliez, Lotringer, Virno, Virilio, and the rest of the now-standard and otherwise deserving semiotext(e) crew.

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 3 out of 5]

For whatever reason, I was under the impression this book was a lot more history rather than theory. There was some good stuff, and it's interesting to see how a lot of the theoretical discussion is a clear precursor to Tiqqun and runs parallel to communization theory. But at the same time, historical background (or maybe a lengthy summary of events and the situation in Italy) would have added to this greatly and made the denser texts a little clearer.

[Sean A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of various documents from an era of italian struggle known as autonomia. reading the book front to back can be a bit difficult and puzzling at times as the documents while clearly related in my eyes only sort of formed a narrative and overview. also, even being somewhat familiar with marxist thought the more autonomist-marxists tracts were woefully dense to me and i ended up skipping a few of them. however, the sense of tension and revolutionary motion examplafied in the book and documents was engaging. my favorites were the more firsthand accounts from the fiat worker, the autonomist-feminists and the one about auto-reduction.

[Az · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important collection of 70's Italian post-marxian theory, with an archive of the Hot Autumn, when lots of Italian leftist groups were targeted by the state and Toni Negri was arrested for supposedly having kidnapped Aldo Moro.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important collection of texts from different movements around Italy's long '68. Particularly favourite is the text on autoreduction movements.