What in the hell …

If you’ve been wondering, here’s a reasonable account (via).

From the ‘bringing oneself down to their level’ department…

A friend of mine came out of a short-term hibernation today, and to celebrate invited several people to a bar. It was nice - good jukebox, a Galaga arcade style video game, decent cheap beer, and conversation with smart, funny, good-looking people (and I don’t just mean my wife Angelica). Negri’s impending appearance in North America was mentioned (some conference in April in Canada), someone told a story about Negri trying to come to the US for a conference and getting given the run around by the government, not a denial but a permanent deferral of permission. Then Agamben’s “No To Biopolitical Tattooing” diatribe was approvingly referenced, his refusal to come here, his calling for others not to come here (which I don’t remember, I’ll have to look at that piece again).
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I’m currently charting some future readings I plan to do, with some hypotheses in mind. The idea is to look at the noble lie in the Republic, to compare that with Leninist accounts of “trade union consciousness”, and bad marxist stuff on productive vs unproductive labor.
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I’ve been meaning to read Tronti’s book for a good long while now… I’ve read the chunks that are in English before, but not for a long time. I can’t remember when I got the book in Spanish, but my plan had been to dive in immediately. I haven’t read much of it (too many other things, and lack of planning on my part). (more…)

This is an attempt to write out some things my friend Tzuchien and I talked about last time he and I hung out. To be clear: the past tense in the subject heading does not mean to imply those books are outmoded. That said, the initial moment of those books, especially Empire, is over. There’s a difference between the hit record that everyone has and the new record everyone is telling you to get. Empire was the latter for a time and is now more the former.
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It’s good to get confused sometimes, especially if one aims to be honest and not obfuscate. I’m having trouble remembering why I used to get so worked up over universals.
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I’m not sure, but hopefully Angela will write more about. She wrote a post about this topic, starting with a letter from Marx to Ruge.
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