Antonio Negri Quotes on Nature
Antonio Negri, the Italian Marxist political philosopher and co-author of the Empire trilogy, did not write a philosophy of nature in the traditional sense, and the quotes gathered here approach the theme through his central concept of the multitude. Negri describes the multitude as the productive flesh of the world, the living, creative force from which value is generated. He treats resistance as itself natural and healthy, holding that disobedience to authority is one of the most natural and healthy acts. And he grounds the possibility of a common political project in what human beings share by nature and by condition, bodies, life on this earth, and a common situation, insisting that this common condition does not mean sameness but rules out any difference of nature or kind dividing the multitude. Drawn from Multitude and his other works, these passages present the human, productive flesh of the world as the ground of political possibility.
Quotes
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“The multitude is the productive flesh of the world.”
(62) -
“Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order — and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order.”
(20) -
“The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.”
(46) -
“Disobedience to authority is one of the most natural and healthy acts.”
(210) -
“We share bodies with two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes; we share life on this earth; we share capitalist regimes of production and exploitation; we share common dreams of a better future.”
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire | (128) -
“the question to ask, in other, is not "What is the multitude?" but rather "What can the multitude become?" … common condition, of course, does not mean sameness or unity, but it does require that no differences of nature or kind divide the multitude.”
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire | (105-106)