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Following my bookly convalescence... 
Let us pass to the serious things: 
Toni Negri in Exile 

[Note : this text followed another about sexism in french left-side litterature, particulary about a novel of Serge Quadruppani, known ultraleft author. Our comrad Syb explained she was ill and take a little time to read... and rage ! This texte was written in a very imaged language and difficult to translate for the computer. Sorry ! Feel free to send us corrections.]

After a good Stephen King book exposing the awfully insipid life of a woman in the State of Maine-USA (Dolores Clairbone), I decide to pass to "serious" things a little more. Having brain a little less softened by chemicals, starting to entrapercevoir the blue of the sky through the window of my pad, I start to mug up Toni Negri, Exile (1001 Nuits ed., 1998). I better have to take another Stephen King. The book of Toni Negri is short, hopely. It is a series of talks condensed in some chapters. These conversations were carried out June 97, right before its "return" in Italy. Good, that it is the intro. Do not await ego that I make you a panegyric of Exile of Toni Negri. Considering its reading rather irritated me. Even if if also I like Giacomo Leopardi, without talking cock! but, tit took a little age, isn't it ! 

I leave side all the historical aberrations quoted in Exile even if they do not miss drolery as his fascination for "the grandissime Dutch Respublica" which exists for him since the XII E century (sic!) and where "the individuals were already rich". By rich person, it implies the intellectual richness, the acquisition of a certain plenitude, in short sharp Netherlands of the modern time, it is perhaps to forget certain extremely traditional considerations even those of Voltaire on Surinam... Also amusing, it is all its hiatus on the inexistence of weary social current whereas they existed front, in my opinion it is more complex, and these considerations on the social classes... Let us drop its comments on the average from life before the post-modern time, which according to the philosopher did not exceed the forty years... well... and what from a intellectual point of view, pushed to reflect in the short run. I will not discuss on these good statistics for the school of annals, but not badly of people lived longer, even if Spinoza died in forty year old ! 

Good the problem with grandpa Toni, it is that it identifies his own existence with those of the others. All its trick on the brain-machine, i'm not unquestionable that all the hard-working ones / citizens are in the same anguishes, and there are still among us not badly people which are not used like brains, but well like replaceable machines by others. One does not have a whole a computer connected on the virtual one, and one does not pass either all nonthree-quarter of our life to be theorized on the nonsense of the life... (as I am doing it!). 

Nor all its pantheist things (kind the Whole in one, that has even seems slighty New age but I will irritate by them more than one if I insist on this aspect) or " Spinoza the father of all the atheists" and so on ! Considering on Spinoza, according to what I undertsand that discusses appears that spinozism it is not the same thing as Spinoza, but especially that in my opinion there are several kinds of atheism, the spinozism in is one among others. "Atheistic" that I am, I precisely make a point of doing without the Father... But Toni Negri has super ideas, because if it is its job is to replace us Marx by Spinoza, it goes until asserting "a laic and atheistic franciscanism'" there I am wondered by this innovation: the spirituality of Franciscus of Assise, his evangelic poverty, this command begging excelling in the Enquiry, a new chance for atheism?! Ca will shake in the conventicules, it is the revolution of Fraticelles. It is what this thing, a new charismatic, but atheistic community today ? kind a Sans-culotte Jesus ? 

The other thingk which annoy Toni Negri, it is the age which advances with great step. It repeats us in vain the opposite, but one can only with half be convinced when it explains us why to age is not a intellectual and physical senescence (it supports us, that according to its last check-up, it is in super health! What I wish him). Old age, it is for him " a widening in simplicity and softness. Ageing is not a suspension but, on the contrary, an extension soft and alleviated of capacity to act." (p. 48). One imagines the type which has 65 old does not want to take off its place of its armchair to the International College of Philosophy or of university, estimating that it has the still youthful brain... that the intellectual aura is done in the twilight life...OK... OK... " one day old Chuck, Mandarin always... " Further, it makes us his antiyouth long-winded speech not " that the old men are wiser, but simply because in old age one can live more. I was always disgusted by the sexual relations and the erotism of the young people, with their speed, their violence of animal desires." (p. 49) However when one reads Le Poulpe [left-side novel collection]  and Quadruppani, one is more than desperate by the sexism conformist as of the these old revolutionists! This sontbien first to be behaved like old "silver plated backs" [old gorillas]. 

Maintenance starts well. I plagiarize because I am tired a little : Tony Negri affirms us that everyone works since everyone contributes to the construction of the social richness. Good, on top, tope-là! It is the continuation of the speech which turns vinegar: " Like says it Christian Marazzi, the production of the richness is assured today by a biopolitic community (the work of those which have an employment, but also the work of the students, women, of all those which contribute to the production of affectivity, the sensitivity, the modes of semiotisation of subjectivity)" (p. 17). 

Read you like me ? The women do not have employment, they are not coeds either... But they produce they also but rather semiotico-subjective affectivity, sensitivity and tricks. Me, I say myself: Toni Negri, as it identifies its existence with the multitude of the others, it should not have of girlfriend or then she does not work, but the  not badly. In all the cases, I feel super concerned by these very raised considerations (lack more than the intuition is 'naturally' female...). Further in the text there is even a reference to maternity like a productive trick hyper: nothing against, note, but i'm not just a belly-athanor... 

I can only quote you this passage on i"woman-becoming  of work"  for him it is the theory of the future. Considering it speaks about woman, I feel concerned, namely to what I will be puffed out today: 

" Actually, it is not possible any more to imagine the production of the richnesses and the savoirs if it is not through the production of subjectivity, and thus the general reproduction of the vital processes. The women are in the center of the problem." [ etc. ] I summarize: the men produce savoirs, the women reproduce human beings and affects. I take again the blah-blah: 

" I believe that today the woman-becoming  of work is an absolutely extraordinary idea. One is confronted with a woman-becoming  of work because the reproduction, the production processs and of communication, the emotional investments, the investments which relate to the education and the material reproduction of the brains, are becoming increasingly more essential. Of course, it is obvious that the women will not be the only ones to occupy itself of all that: it is a masculinisation of the women and a feminization of the men who is with the inescapable work of manner inside this mechanism." 

Thus if Toni Negri wishes a notable change, it is for him implicitly obvious that the women are only the reproductive ones and men of the producers. It never calls in question in its speech the fact that this sexual division is the interpretation of a company to dominant male, and not a reality. But Toni Negri is not encumbered any more with this marxist rubbish... 

There I remained perplexed, it is the example which it chooses to illustrate its theory of " the eternity of the at every moment lived present which passes " : a woman which betrayed it, it is a bitch (p. 50). Tell me Toni grandpa, would not have you other little less macho examples ? Bitch ? because it betrayed you... bah hold! perhaps she had of it her snap on your phallocrat side . Have you reason Toni, they are really all of the bitches... 

Syb (07/02/00)