Natural-Historical Diagrams: The ‘New Global' Movement and the Biological Invariant

This article puts forward the thesis that the contemporary global movement against capitalism, and the post-Fordist regime it is responding to, is best understood in terms of the emergence of ‘human nature' as the crux of political struggle. According to Virno, the biological invariant has become the raw material of social praxis because the capitalist relation of production mobilizes to its advantage, in a historically unprecedented way, the species-specific prerogatives of Homo sapiens. Through the concept of ‘natural-historical diagrams', the article explores the significance of socio-political states of affairs which directly display key aspects of anthropogenesis, and, making use of Ernesto De Martino's concept of ‘cultural apocalypses', considers the different relations that a biological ‘background' and a socio-political ‘foreground' entertain in traditional and contemporary societies. The attempt to develop a ‘natural history' of such diagrams leads Virno to reflecting on the importance of the language faculty, neoteny, non-specialization and the absence of a predetermined natural environment for political action. This reflection on the contemporary importance of political anthropology leads Virno to a set of concluding remarks on the role of ethics and the idea of the ‘good life' in the practice of the ‘new global' movement

The Soviets of the multitude : On collectivity and collective work: An interview with Paolo Virno

Paolo Virno is one of the most radical and lucid thinkers of the postoperaist political and intellectual tradition. Of all the heterodox Marxist currents, postoperaismo has found itself at the very center of debates in contemporary philosophy. Its analytics of post-Fordist capitalism refer to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, to Heidegger and his Daseinsanalysis, to German “philosophical anthropology,” and to Foucault and Deleuze with their problematization of power, desire, and control apparatuses. Subjectivity, language, body, affects or, in other words, life itself, are captured by this regime of post-Fordist production. These “abstract” concepts and discourses have entered the reality of contemporary capitalism and become fundamental to it, as real, functioning abstractions. Such theoretical suggestions have launched enormous polemics over the last two decades

Architecture, Multitude and the Analogical City as a Critical Project

This article develops a theory of the multitude for architecture. It is a close-reading of political theorist Paolo Virno’s concept of the multitude and its associated categories of language, repetition and what Virno calls “real abstraction.” The article transposes those categories to the thought of Aldo Rossi on typology, the city as a text and the analogical city. The aim is to explore the conditions of possibility for a renewed critical project for architecture and to articulate architecture’s capacity for framing a collective political subject. The key questions addressed are therefore how does Virno’s grammar of the multitude translate into an architectural grammar for the city; and how can architecture frame a collective political subject

Performing thinking in action: the meletē of live coding

Within this article, live coding is conceived as a meletē, an Ancient Greek term used to describe a meditative thought experiment or exercise in thought, especially understood as a preparatory practice supporting other forms of critical — even ethical — action. Underpinned by the principle of performing its thinking through 'showing the screen', live coding involves 'making visible' the process of its own unfolding through the public sharing of live decision-making within improvisatory performance practice. Live coding can also be conceived as the performing of 'thinking-in-action', a live and embodied navigation of various critical thresholds, affordances and restraints, where its thinking-knowing cannot be easily transmitted nor is it strictly a latent knowledge or 'know how' activated through action. Live coding involves the live negotiation between receptivity and spontaneity, between the embodied and intuitive, between an immersive flow experience and split-attention, between human and machine, the known and not yet known. Moreover, in performing 'thinking-in-action', live coding emerges as an experimental site for reflecting on different perceptions and possibilities of temporal experience within live performance: for attending to the threshold between the live and mediated, between present and future-present, proposing even a quality of atemporality or aliveness

Workshopping the revolution? On the phenomenon of joker training in the Theatre of the Oppressed

The article brings together observations and insights on the emerging phenomenon of training the trainers, also known as joker training in the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO). The concerns raised in this article are twofold: first, how does the modularised, workshop format of joker training affect the core principles of TO? Second, what are the implications of professionalising the work of the joker? These questions relate to the critique of ‘creative industries’ and debates around precarisation that profoundly impact arts and humanities education in contemporary Europe. They also serve as a call to interrogate concepts central to TO, such as participation, empowerment and community, in terms of how these concepts are appropriated and made docile in the increasingly neoliberal environment of European cultural and educational policies. The article proposes that a training in TO must view the dissemination of techniques and methods of joker practice as inseparable from a deep commitment to a ‘conscientised’ understanding of the complex social problems that the theatre seeks to address. The focus on a technical training alone bears the danger of reinforcing Freire's ‘banking method’ of pedagogy, which is counterproductive to the political objectives of TO. The article observes that professional jokers work in precarious conditions far removed from the promises of the economic rewards of creative enterprise. The proliferation of project-based freelance work creates a situation where jokers tend to become de-territorialised and alienated from actual problems, thus propagating biographic and short-term approaches to systemic contradictions. The study aims to problematise these issues and contribute to a debate that might lead to politically and professionally viable paths for the future of TO

Quando il verbo si fa carne. Linguaggio e natura umana

Il libro contiene riflessioni sulla facoltà di linguaggio, sul suo carattere di organo biologico della prassi pubblica, sugli aspetti costitutivamente rituali del discorso umano. Dopo aver messo in luce il carattere pubblico della mente linguistica, il libro esamina il nesso tra requisiti biologici invarianti e mutevoli esperienze storiche. Il punto di arrivo è un peculiare concetto di "storia naturale"