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The General Body
by Sabrina Ovan
Summary: Studies of
immaterial labor have focused their attention on the the emergence of a new
class called, following the Marxist blueprint, the cognitariat. The cognitariat
is mainly characterized by its impossibility to dissociate the categories work
and leisure. This class is identified in the nomadic – and often exploited –
displacement of brains, or in the high tech creative work. Most importantly,
the emergence of this new class is strictly related to the notion of general
intellect, or, as Paolo Virno calls it, the system that ‘includes the epistemic
models that structure social communication’. Such relation associates the
immateriality of labor with an immaterial, collective and disembodied entity.
Within the core of the argument, however,
lies a question that has been posed (by Franco Berardi, for instance) but not
fully investigated: what are the bodies of these new brainy underdogs made of?
If displacement and nomadism are their main characteristics, how do they move
in or organize the space around them? What is the impact of their everyday
activity? In other words, can we give a material, or even a virtual body to the
general intellect? By putting in relation different interpretations of general
intellect with the critical work on the virtual (cultural) body proposed by
Antonio Caronia and Franco Berardi, my paper will try to give shape to what we
could ultimately call a general body.
CV:
Ph.D in Comparative Literature from the
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Dissertation: “Designifiers: proper and
improper names in French and Italian Contemporary Fiction.”
Research Interests: Collective writing, new media
art and literature (Italy and France), Italian political philosophy, Relations
between Italian and French contemporary thought, theories of space.
Published work: “Q’s General Intellect.” In Cultural Studies Review, The University of Melbourne. Special Issue “The Italian Effect.” (September 2005).
E-mail: [email protected]