The Soviets of the Multitude : On Collectivity and Collective Work: An Interview with Paolo Virno

Abstract

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.