Trilogy of Resistance PDF
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TRILOGY OF RESISTANCE This page intentionally left blank TRILOGY OF RESISTANCE ANTONIO NEGRI Translated by Timothy S. Murphy Afterword by Barbara Nicolier REVERSE REVERSE POS/BOX NEG/BLOCK university of minnesota press minneapolis london Quotations from Euripides in Cithaeron are from The Bacchae of Euripides, trans. G. S. Kirk (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); copyright 1979 Cambridge University Press; reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Published in French in 2009 as Trilogie de la différence. Copyright 2009 Éditions Stock. English translation copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Negri, Antonio, 1933– [Trilogia della resistenza] Trilogy of resistance / Antonio Negri ; translated by Timothy S. Murphy ; afterword by Barbara Nicolier. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8166-7293-6 (acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-7294-3 (pbk. : acid-free paper) I. Murphy, Timothy S., 1964– II. Title. PQ4874.E326T7513 2011 852'.914—dc22 2010044066 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS vii Translator’s Note ix Translator’s Introduction: Pedagogy of the Multitude TRILOGY OF RESISTANCE 3 Preface 5 Swarm: Didactics of the Militant (2004) 33 The Bent Man: Didactics of the Rebel (2005) 77 Cithaeron: Didactics of Exodus (2006) 119 Afterword: Staging the Plays BARBARA NIColIER 123 Translator’s Notes This page intentionally left blank TRANSLATOR’S NOTE In order to produce a functional dramatic text of these plays, I had to modify the translations of two of Negri’s key philosophical terms that have become standard over the past two decades. The linked Italian terms potere and potenza, which correspond to the French pouvoir and puissance, refer respectively to power in an institutionalized, repressive, hierarchical, or transcendent sense and to power in a fluid, creative, constituent, and immanent sense. Potere/pouvoir and potenza/puissance are normally translated into English as Power and power, often with the Italian or French term included in brackets for clarity. Because the typographical distinction of capitalization is inaudible and the inclusion of bracketed terms is likely to impede the performance of the plays, I simply translated potere/pouvoir as “power” and potenza/puis- sance as “potency.” Adjectives derived from these nouns are translated accordingly: “powerful,” “potent,” and so on. The title of the French volume on which the present translation is based is Trilogie de la différence (Éditions Stock, 2009). In discussions after the publication of the French edition, Negri expressed to me a preference for a different English title, Trilogy of Resistance, which the publisher has respected. vii This page intentionally left blank TRANSLATOR’S INTROduCTION Pedagogy of the Multitude The theatre became an affair for philosophers, but only for such philosophers as wished not just to explain the world but also to change it. — Bertolt Brecht, in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic Antonio Negri’s militant experiences and critical writings have never lacked drama in a colloquial sense—political imprisonment, parlia- mentary elections, and clandestine border crossings, on the one hand, and panegyrics to anonymous militants, rationalist metaphysicians, and Roman Catholic saints, on the other, give his career a “marquee value” that other thinkers simply can’t match—but they have rarely touched on the theater. Indeed, little in his work suggested any inter- est in drama in the strict sense of writing for theatrical performance, yet in 2004 his first play, Swarm, premiered at the Théâtre de Vidy- Lausanne in a production directed by Barbara Nicolier that later moved to the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris. Two years later, The Bent Man premiered in Viterbo before moving to Rome and Vienna. Ci- thaeron was first staged by students from the Sorbonne at La Colline in the summer of 2007. In October of that year the same theater staged dramatic readings of Negri’s entire Trilogy of Resistance, which were broadcast on France Culture in 2008. What, if anything, do these plays have to do with Negri’s better-known work in political and ontological iixx
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