Paolo Virno

Paolo Virno (* June 27, 1952 in Naples ) is an Italian philosopher and semiotician who is a member of the Marxist movement. Because he was, during his student years, been a member of various illegal organizations since the late 1960s, he was arrested and accused of being a member of the Red Brigades in 1979. After several years in prison, he was eventually acquitted. He then founded the magazine Luogo commune to publish the political ideas he had developed during his detention. Virno Currently teaches at the University of Rome.

Life

Paolo Virno was born in Naples but spent his childhood and youth in Genoa. The first political experience was gained in the movement of 1968., Where he learned that combination of personal fulfillment and anti-capitalism, which should form a key basis of his political philosophy later. At the beginning of the 70s he moved with his family to Rome, where he studied philosophy at the university.

At the same time Virno became involved in the labor movement and participated in the group Potere operaio with that dealt with the recruitment and mobilization of industrial workers. While the party communists tried under the influence of the Soviet Union and China to unite students associations and the trade unions of workers with each other, Potere Operaio focused mainly on the lives of factory and industrial workers with a program that is located at Karl Marx's critique of the organization of work oriented. Until its dissolution in 1973 Virno took part in this movement and organized protests and strikes in the northern Italian factories.

In 1977 Virno defended his doctoral thesis on the concept of work and theory of consciousness by Theodor W. Adorno. At the same time he actively participated in the "Movement of '77 " part, in which it came to the precariousness of workers. Together with Oreste Scalzano and Franco Piperno, he founded the Metropolitan Magazine, which was the organ of the theory movement for some time. Two years later, the editors were arrested and accused of belonging to the Red Brigades of Metropolitan.

The three-year prison was for Virno and others a time of intense studies. Virno 1982 was sentenced to twelve years in prison for " subversion by force of arms banding ". The accusation of belonging to the Red Brigades, had, however, not substantiated. Virno then went in revision and was released while the case was transferred to the second instance. In 1987, he was eventually acquitted, along with Piperno. Virno's experiences from custody were incorporated into the design of the magazine Luogo Comune, which was devoted to the forms of life in the social situation of post-Fordism. In 1993, Virno on the position of editor in chief of Luogo Comune at the University of Urbino, to teach philosophy. He was invited to lecture at the University of Montreal in 1996. On his return to Italy, he obtained the chair of philosophy of language, semiotics and Ethics of Communication at the University of Cosenza in Calabria.

Theoretical work

Virno's early works were directly related to his political activities. Since then, he had operated during the years of imprisonment together with fellow inmates intensive philosophical studies shifted the focus of his work on more ambitious theoretical research areas such as political philosophy, linguistics and the study of mass media.

On the one hand Virno's studies in the field philosophy of language led him to classical themes of philosophy, such as the analysis of subjectivity to confront with the boundaries that are set in linguistics; other hand, Virno has the ethical dimension of communication explored. The connection of these areas was found in a materialism which includes the processes of language and thought. In the tradition of Adorno and Alfred Sohn-Rethel forms for Virno the relationship between work, thought, language, society, and history of the cohesion of his philosophical thought.

Virno's philosophical concepts nevertheless retained a close connection to political theory and action. The concepts of "world", "power", " potential " and " history ", which are the main focus of many of his works, has Virno derived substantially from Marx. Virno joined together with many of his contemporaries, such as Antonio Negri, against the hegemony of the dialectical tradition in Marxist philosophy.

Virno argues that historical and linguistic concepts have a political agenda. If State sovereignty, obedience, legality, legitimacy in the theory and philosophy of the company accepted as invariant, as Virno sees these terms polemically as inventions of the seventeenth century with very specific and controversial political goals. The redefinition of the terms of the company is part of an identified political task. On the concept of emigration Virno shows an example of how personal emotional experiences are understood as an act of resistance against the established power and the status quo: it is assumed that a person is responding to social structures on the run. Such restrictions have been criticized in this context as a symbol of the movements of the counterculture Virno.

Works

• Convenzione e materialismo. Ed. Theoria, Rome 1986
• Opportunisme, cynisme et Peur. Ambivalence you Désenchantement Suivi de les labyrinth de la Langue. Editions de l' éclat, Paris - Combas 1991
• Mondanità. L'idea di " Mondo " tra Esperienza Sensibile e Sfera Pubblica. Ed. Manifestolibri, Rome 1994
• Parole con parole. Poteri e Limiti del Linguaggio. Donzelli, Rome 1995
• In: Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt (eds) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996: The Ambivalence of Disenchantment, page 17-18
• Virtuosity and Revolution. The Political Theory of Exodus, page 189-209
• Do You Remember Counter Revolution?, Page 241-259

• Introduction ( pdf)

• Introduction ( pdf)
• English edition: A Grammar of the Multitude. For on Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Semiotext [e], New York 2004
• German edition: Grammar of the Multitude. Studies on current life forms, from the Italian by Thomas Atzert, afterword by Jost Müller, ID -Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89408-092-2
• German edition: Grammar of the Multitude. Public, intellect, and work as life forms, with Appendix Paolo Virno: The Angels and the General Intellect, from Italian by Arianna Bove, Edited and introduced by Helen Ferguson and Gerald Raunig, Turia and Kant, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85132-453 -6