From De Sica to Hardt and Negri Author(S): Alessia Ricciardi Source: MLN, Vol

Immanent Miracles: From De Sica to Hardt and Negri Author(s): Alessia Ricciardi Source: MLN, Vol. 122, No. 5, Comparative Literature Issue (Dec., 2007), pp. 1138-1165 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30133980 . Accessed: 15/09/2013 18:05

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ImmanentMiracles: FromDe Sica to Hardtand Negri

AlessiaRicciardi

For Michele

Philosophyis revealednot by good sense butby paradox. Paradox is thepathos or the passionof philosophy. -Gilles Deleuze

Miracle as a Form of Life

In an age of cynicalreason, it is no doubt an embarrassment,if still at timesa necessity,merely to speak of miraclesor, as Alain Badiou does, of secularizedgrace.2 Carl Schmitthas argued thatthe signifi- cance of the concept of miracle consistsin its analogous relationto the sovereign'sdecisive call for the state of emergencyin a secular world."Giorgio Agamben furthermore makes the point that the state of emergencynow has become thenorm, perhaps suggesting that we have been deprivedof even the logical possibilityof immanentmiracles.4 What seems to be at riskfrom the attacksof "realist"cynicism or pessimism,in otherwords, is less the idea of a divineintervention than the potential for a lastingalteration of conventionalpolitical prac- tices.In whatfollows, I willargue thatthis prospect, which Agamben appears to implyhas been foreclosedentirely, becomes mostapparent in formsof lifethat embody resistance to sovereignpower, thus giving an improbablejustification for political faith or optimism. Yet as a semioticstructure, as Eric Santnerrecently has observed, the miracle seems to resistits obsolescence against all odds, and its paradoxical survivalraises the prospect that we may be livingin a

MLN 122 (2007): 1138-1165 @ 2008 byThe Johns Hopkins UniversityPress

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1139 post-secularmoment.5 Such a timewould be more, ratherthan less, favorableto a broadening of our ethical and political imaginative horizons.6Our abilityto take the miraculousseriously would repre- sent, then,a measure of our capacityfor resonance and refraction, for the activitiesof a mode of thoughtthat is not afraidto question the defensivenessof secularismand thus the statusquo.7 In readingsof worksby Rosenzweig, Benjamin, and Kafka,Santner bringsto lightan idea of the miraclethat, contra Schmitt, persists in modernityas a suspensionof the stateof emergencythat has become the inescapable politicalnorm. Benjamin's concept of awakeningas the opening of a space of new possibilitiesin ethicaland politicallife is exemplaryin this regard.With such reasoning in mind, Santner claimsthat, in the courseof our confrontingthe symptomaticailments of modernlife, "miracles happen when,upon registeringtheir 'historical truth,'we are able to act, to interveneinto these symptomsand open the space of possibilitythereby... . Miracleshappen when we findourselves able to suspenda pattern... wherebyone 'culpabilizes' the Other or, in more Nietzscheanterms, cultivates ressentiment, with respectto a fundamentaldysfunction or crisiswithin social reality."8 Santner'sdefinition of modern miraclesmay be refinedif we take the position that nowadaysthe trulymiraculous consistsnot only in eventsthat momentarily intervene in or suspend the biopolitical automatismof contemporarysociety but also in formsof life that embodyfull-blown resistance to it.9These formsof lifeemerge most fullyon a plane of immanencein whichgrammar and conduct imply each other.A politicsbased on formsof life mustfocus not on the aestheticsor stylisticsof existencebut ratheron culturalpractices that, in constanttransformation, manage to avoid the aporiaiof a politics based on supposedlyuniversal concepts of community or individualism. Finally,speaking of formsof lifeallows us to re-integrateethics-in its relationalversion and no longer imaginedas produced by thejuridi- cal order-in the space of politics.The concept is obviouslya legacy of a long philosophical traditionthat runs fromthe Hellenisticand Roman period to Foucault and Wittgenstein.'o On thisview, salvation happens as the byproductof a miraculous form of life. This conviction,it seems to me, is at the core of two genealogicallyrelated worksrevolving around the phenomenology of immanentmiracles: Vittorio De Sica's Miraclein Milan (1951) and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire(2000). In what follows, I will argue that to speak of "immanentmiracles" in the contextof these worksis not to espouse what Schmittcalled the "theological

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1140 ALESSIA RICCIARDI derailment"of the politicalbut ratherto name a differenthorizon of politicalphilosophy."' This alternativeperspective would be interested less in determiningthe conditionsand limitsof action thanin explor- ing the indefinitepotentialities of political change and transformation. We mightbest approach such a prospectnot by re-treadingthe well- worn paths of skepticaldoubt but ratherby wayof the Foucaultian critique of power and Deleuzean faithin the world." Indeed, the depictions of communal formsof life in both Miraclein Milan and Empire(and in Multitude,Hardt and Negri's sequel to Empire)give expressionto an intuitionthat deepens the meaningof the syllogism formulatedby Deleuze in readingFoucault: "Lifebecomes resistance to power when power takeslife as its object.9""' Not coincidentally,Hardt and Negriinvoke De Sica's filmas a model of politicalargument in theirown critiqueof power.Miracle in Milan centerson a communityof the homeless inhabitinga shantytownon the outskirtsof Milan. These derelictindividuals have been banished fromthe body politicand consignedto a strictlybiological existence, exemplifyingthe paradoxical state of "inclusiveexclusion" from the polis(or, in otherwords, the conditionof merelyphysical bodies without rights)that Agamben identifieswith the bare life of subjection to sovereignpower. They thus representwhat he would call homines sacres.4Yet even beforeexperiencing the supernaturalmiracle evoked in the film'stitle, they manage to renounce resentmentand to achieve a state of bliss,at least for a while,outside the normal,institutional structuresof capitalistsociety. Indeed, the most crucialposition that Miraclein Milan shareswith Empire is the refusalto admitlabor as the determiningsignifier of social and politicalidentity. In the film,this miraculousform of lifeoccurs in overtcontrast to the phenomenon generallyreferred to as "theeconomic miracle"of Italy, the post-World WarII period ofsteady economic growththat began in the early1950s and peaked in the late 1950s and early1960s.'5 What is at stakein the insistenceof both Miraclein Milan and Empireon the inherentdignity of the mostimpoverished modes of being is the possibilityof locating a politicsof resistancein the sphere of immanence,on an ontological ratherthan economic basis.'6 On a related note, readers have remarkedthat perhaps the most originalinsight in Empireis itscontention that the social and political upheavals of the 1960s created globalizationfrom below.'7 Enlarg- ing on Mario Tronti'sworkerist theory, Hardt and Negri argue that capitalismresponded to these strugglesby appropriatingthe most innovativestrategies of resistance.Precisely in order to expose the

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1141 capitalistaim of co-optinglabor's productiveenergies, workerism affirmsthe worker's autonomy from capital and the refusalof workas a means of resistance.Along theselines, Negri throughouthis career redefinesthe politicaltask as the overturningof the customarysocial principles:in thissense, the rejectionof workis central.'8However, it has yet to be noted thatthe politicalinheritance of the book, which certainlycan be traced back throughthree decades of Negri's writ- ings to the workerismof the 1960s, furthermoreshares some of its essentialcharacteristics with the outlook of Italian neorealistcinema. If 1968 is thewatershed in the politicaleconomy of Empire and itsview of history,the book's main concepts-from the emergence of the multitudeto the notion of an immanentevent-already are present at a priormoment in Italian culturein the movementof neorealism. To begin to understandthe criticalkinship that links Miracle in Milan and Empire,we firstshould examine the philosophicalitinerary that bringsHardt and Negri froma mood of optimismto the condition of faithin immanentmiracles.

The Best of All Possible PoliticalWorlds

AfterNietzsche's critique of metaphysics,Freud's undercuttingof moralityand civilization,and the FrankfurtSchool's indictmentof culture,optimism may not seem likea credibleposition. In thepolitical realm,it certainlyappears thatpessimism is the onlysuitable attitude. Carl Schmittadvancesjust such a dour claim in TheConcept of the Politi- cal on the ground thatpolitics is definedby the possibilityof enmity.'9 Accordingly,Hardt and Negri'sparticular strain of optimismin Empire has led manycritics to denounce theirargument as a politicalfairy tale. TimothyBrennan, for example, giveshis reviewof the book the scathinglysarcastic title "The Empire's New Clothes.""' Perhaps the most cogent advocate of the pessimistmentality is AntonioGramsci. In a fragmentof PrisonNotebook 9 (1932) titled,"Past and Present:On Dreaming withYour Eyes Open and Fantasizing," Gramscirebukes those who believe that what he calls"a fact"-meaning a change in the social structure-alreadyhas taken place. For such individuals,he asserts,the "mechanismof necessity"has been over- turned,and therefore

everythingiseasy. One canachieve what one wants, and one wants an entire seriesof thingswe are presentlymissing. At bottom, what we are dealing withis thepresent turned upside-down and projectedinto the future...

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It is necessaryinstead to attractattention to thepresent as itis, if we want totransform it.Pessimism ofthe intelligence, optimism ofthe will.21 Gramsci'sstoic parola d'ordine, or slogan,leaves no doubt thatthe ontologicalmode of his philosophy is pessimistic."2His credohelps to takemeasure of theradical gulf separating Gramsci from Negri, for Negrimakes clear that he willsettle for nothing less than an "optimism of reason.""In Gramsci'stheory, it is the partythat represents the newor modernprince, the reservoir of the political will that holds a transformativepotential for collective action.24 To assignthe decisive conceptualrole to an abstractidea of theparty, however, may mean neglectingalternative forms of life, such as excluded,disenfranchised, or dissidentsingularities, infavor of a transcendentalconcept that has failedto alterthe course of historyin a significantway. Not surprisingly,some readershave disparagedHardt and Negri forpresuming the revolution's achieved state, the occurrence of the factthat simplifies everything.25" On a similarnote, Gramsci views the hopefor a "turningupside-down of the present" or, to adopt Foucault's terminology,"strategic reversibility" as an illusionand a signof passivity.The pointof referenceoffered by Foucault, however, usefully bringsinto focus the relational dimensions of power, which he com- pellinglysuggests in La volontede savoir are notinevitably determined byjuridical or economicconditions but ratherrespond to strategic contingenciesand thusare subject to reversibility.26 Commending this theory,Deleuze observes that Foucault's thinking does notdeny class strugglebut rather"illustrates it in a completelydifferent way," that is to say,with the implication that resistance consists not in reacting to (and thusaccepting) the practicesof dominationbut ratherin turningthe strategic,immanent, and diffusenature of powerrela- tionsto emancipatorypurposes." On thisview, it may be repliedto a pessimistsuch as Gramcsithat utter confidence in theirreversibility ofnecessity may help enforce the automatisms of capital, which mere willis incapableof rethinking.His prohibitionagainst what he calls "fantasizing"may result in blindnessto thebiopolitical potential of themultitude. Criticalpessimism, inother words, risks its own sort of self-indulgence. Thisrisk is especiallypronounced, as Negriobserves in SubversiveSpi- noza,when contaminated with postmodern skepticism: Itcertainly cannot be saidthat these philosophies of the postmodern (from LyotardtoBaudrillard, from Rorty toVattimo) do not perceive the essential qualitiesof the phenomenology ofour time. But all theseversions, without

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exception,present to us,along with the sacrosanct narrative of the end of transcendentalism,a senseless spectacle of what remains after its death. It is a sortof apology of resignation for a half-amused,half-pitiful disengage- mentthat settles down at theedge ofcynicism.28 Althoughhe reservessharp scorn here forthe "postmodern,"Negri's disagreementwith Gramsci in factoffers the clearest picture of what he means by"resignation." Hardt and Negriapproach whatGramsci calls Machiavelli's"living book" froma verydifferent perspective than that of the Sardiniancritic.29 According to the authorsof Empire, Machiavelli's ThePrince ought to be considereda "revolutionarypolitical manifesto" that nonethelessposits a problematic,ineluctable distance between the subject (the multitude)and the object (the Prince and the Free State) (E 63). Gramsciis of littlehelp on thisscore, since he proposes a binarismof the partyand the collectivewill that merely recapitulates the dichotomy. Hardtand Negriinstead clearly suggest that the gap maybe bridged by somethinglike Negri's optimismof reason. They insist,"as the democraticMachiavelli tells us, [on] the powerof generation,desire, and love" (E 388), on a biopoliticalvitalism according to which the multitude opposes Empire with "no mediation" (E 393). Such a mode of optimismshould not be taken to affirmthe Hegelian view thatwhat is real is rationaland whatis rationalis real. Rather,Hardt and Negri may be situatedin a genealogy that proceeds fromSpi- noza to Deleuze and Guattariand upholds a faithin the immanent link betweenhumans and the world. Such a stance accords withthe belief in ontologicalblessedness that is articulatedin Proposition21 of Spinoza's Ethics:"Nobody can desire to be happy to do well and to live well withoutat the same time desiringto be, to do, and to live; thatis, actually to exist.""3And like the Spinoza of the PoliticalTreatise, Hardt and Negri appear to be convincedthat human beings can live in harmony.3 The specificoptimism that informs Empire may be said to servethe purpose of a politicaltheodicy, which is to saya rationalefor why the currenthistorical conditions are the most conducive to realizingan immanent,transformative event. Not surprisingly,readers often have cast thebook's authorsin the role of credulousCandides.32 Yet unlike Leibniz's Theodicy,Empire gives voice not only to a justificationof the politicalopportunity that the contemporarystate of thingsrepresents but also to a reminderthat salvation is indeed a necessity,albeit not in a transcendentalsense (E 533).oo Hardt and Negri look forward to a politicalhorizon thatwill come into being onlywith the arrival

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1144 ALESSIARICCIARDI ofwhat they enigmatically refer to as "theevent," when the potenti- alitiesof themultitude will be realized.They thus refer the idea of theevent, which manifests a vital attitude of love alternately derived fromMachiavelli and (as we shallsee) Spinoza,to theemergence of thoseforms of lifethat reject or call intoquestion the automatism of sovereigntyand thatI have been proposingmay be associated withthe miraculous. With regard to theproblem of explicatingthe immanentmiracle of theevent, however, their thinking encounters itsown limit or at leastits own threshold. Early in Empire,the authors definephilosophy as "praxisapplied to theevent" (E 49). Atthe end of thebook, the question remains open howto pursuethe "practice of theevent" (E 386), whileyet awaiting the arrival of a "realevent": "Certainlythere must be a momentwhen re-appropriation and self- organizationreach a thresholdand configure a real event. The only eventwe are stillawaiting is theconstruction or ratherthe ....insurgence of a powerfulorganization. We do not haveany model to offerfor thisevent" (E 411). Whatis strikingabout thispassage is itsemphasis on "theinsur- gence of a powerfulorganization," as the book does not advocate anyparticular means of organizing the multitude and, in fact,treats politicalparties and labor unionsas outmodedrelics of the past. Indeed,the refusal of conventionalaffiliations appears to substitute fororganization in Empire.34More probably, the "powerful organization,"as Multitudeseems to imply,coincides with resistant forms of life.At any rate, the elusive notion of the event, which is a recurring topicin modernand contemporaryphilosophy from Heidegger to Deleuze and Badiou,is particularlypuzzling in theimmanent order imaginedby Hardt and Negri.As no individualor collectiveact of willnor any telosis identifiedin Empireas a meansof surmounting thedistance between the present and thefuture, we are leftin a posi- tionto conceiveof theevent only as a re-descriptionof themiracle in a post-secularworld. In otherwords, because the event that Hardt and Negripropose in Empirehas no modeland defiesthe prevailing institutionalorder imposed on our existence,no otherconcept than thatof the miracleadequately encompasses all the dimensionsof thisevent. Althoughit is importantto criticizeHardt and Negrifor the limits oftheir discussions of emigration, colonialism, and immateriallabor, it is equallynecessary to recognizetheir achievement. " The authors compellinglydefine the first task of politics today as believingin the world,which not bychance looms large on the coverof the book. We

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1145 mightsay that the issue forHardt and Negriis no longer,as it was for Marx in theeleventh of his "Theseson Feuerbach,"how to change the worldinstead of interpretingit; rather, the mosturgent challenge that the authorsconfront in Empireis how to restorebelief in the world and hence in politics.Political faith for them does not coincide with the searchfor another world but in establishingthe rightlink between human beings and thisworld, that is, betweenlove and life. Their positionderives in importantways from the writingsof Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,where a relatedconcern forimmanence can be found. In Anti-Oedipusand A ThousandPlateaus, Deleuze and Guattariinsist on an optimistic,Spinozist politics that is free of the shacklesof the negativepsychoanalytic imaginary. Such a standpoint refusessuch notions as transcendence,the law, the father,etc. in favorof the termsof a politicalunconscious that,in its immanence, no longerneeds to referto Oedipus or to a theatricalscene of desire. On thisview, the unconsciousis a productivemachine thatis engaged in a process of immanentbecoming. Hardt and Negri imagine thatEmpire, which stands over the multitudeas a mere "apparatusof capture,"to invokethe language of A ThousandPlateaus, might convert in the manner of a Gestaltswitch into the empire of the multitudeas seen frombelow, the empire of the multitude'sproductivity and creativity(E 62)."3It is noteworthyin thisregard that they criticize Deleuze and Guattari,from whom they borrowmuch of theirvocabulary, for overemphasizingsocial forms thatunfold as continuousflows and chaoticmovement: "Deleuze and Guattaridiscover the productivityof social reproductionbut manage to articulateit only superficiallyand ephemerally,as a chaotic, indeterminatehorizon, marked by the ungraspable event" (E 28). The differencebetween Hardt and Negri'sposition and Deleuze and Guattari'smay be regarded as stylisticin nature. Brennan describes the rhetoricalstyle of Empireas "scholastic,"an approach thatseems at odds with the method of Deleuze and Guattari,whose mode of argumentboth is dedicated to and enacts the deterritorializedflows of desire."7Brennan also feels thatHardt and Negri's interpretation of the concept of agencementor "assemblage"results not, as in Deleuze and Guattari,in a means to an exhilarating,new wayof thinkingbut ratherin a rationale for incoherence, for creatinga philosophical universein whichincompatible thinkers such as Machiavelli,Spinoza, and Marx can eclecticallycoexist."8 Against Brennan, it may be replied that Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari,and Hardt and Negri are all grapplingin common witha

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1146 ALESSIARICCIARDI largerquestion than one of style,which Deleuze poses in his study ofFoucault: "What powers must we confront,what is ourcapacity for resistance,today when we can no longerbe contentto saythat the old strugglesare no longerworth anything?"" In substance,then, Hardtand Negrimay be seen to sidewith their French counterparts in not givingcredence to reactive,conventionally institutionalized formsof resistancebut onlyin "goingstill further in theprocess of deterritorialization"40The common goal is to locatethe potential for revolution,even if this revolution can be describedonly as a line of flight,migration, or exodus.41However, by redefining this potential in termsof "the event," Hardt and Negrialso distancethemselves from thebeatific faith in a process"already complete as itproceeds and as longas itproceeds" articulated by Deleuze and Guattariat theend of Anti-Oedipus,even while cautioning that the event will emerge from contingency,not necessity.42Hardt and Negriare readyto embrace theirown "kairos,"as theyput it: "Onlyin the presentsituation ... does thiscoexistence of crisisand the fieldof immanencebecome completelyclear" (E 374). Notonly pessimism, but even ambivalence, whichis arguablyone ofthe most resonant of Freudian notions, must be renouncedin thiscontext. To completetheir phenomenology of politicalfaith, Hardt and Negriaccordingly deploy a chargedvocabu- laryof passions and affects.4" Negrireplaces a terminologyof desirein his theorywith one of love.Although the term"desire" surfaces throughout Empire, Hardt and Negriultimately give "love" the last political word in thetext. This emphasisshould not come as a totalsurprise if we considerthe ideo- logicalfreight of the concepts. Notwithstanding Deleuze and Guattari's attempt,beginning in Anti-Oedipus, toredefine "desire" as a processof continuouslibidinal production rather than as a psychologicalcondi- tionof lack,the word ultimately carries a dialectical,Hegelian con- notationand thusis boundup withthe drama of negativity. Foucault also showsa definiteawareness in hiswriting of the need for another wordfor "desire," which he satisfiesby settling on "pleasures."44In an essayentitled "Spinoza and thePostmodern," Negri explains why he needs love in hisvocabulary: "And even if the philosophersdo not likethe word 'love,' even if the postmoderns marry it to thewithering of desire,we whohave re-read the Ethics, we theparty of Spinozists, dare to speakwithout false modesty of love as thestrongest passion, thepassion that creates common existence and destroysthe world of power."4"Negri's highlighting of "thepassion that creates common existence"signals that, in his estimation,love is linkedto povertyand

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1147 thusrepresents a keystep in anthropologizinglack. His invocationof the word "love" helps redefinepoverty in termsof a lack thatis not psychological,but ratherbiopolitical. Desire is susceptible,on the one hand, to dialecticaldomestication and, on the other,to assimilation into the meaninglessautomatism of the drive.It thereforecannot be the libidinalprecondition for the realizationof immanentmiracles. The abilityto break the patternsof experience is the resultneither of will nor of desire,but onlyof love.

WorldlyImmanence Hardt and Negri thuselaborate a concern centralto Deleuze's thinking, one thatthe French philosopherarticulated in a range of works from Whatis Philosophy?to Cinema1: Movement-Imageand Cinema2: The Time-Image.Their defiance of political skepticismconsorts with Deleuze's philosophicalprogram to make theworld "thinkable" again, to providethe image of thought. One of the mostimportant moments in Deleuze's philosophyis his analysisof Italian cinema, in whichhe praisesneorealism for having restoredbelief in the worldeven in the face of injustice,poverty, and the intolerablequotidian.46" On his account,the greatestachievement of filmas an artform is not,pace Andre Bazin, the accurate phenomenological representationof thingsas they are-realism, in other words-but the rescue of human beings' faithin thisworld, in what theysee and hear,ultimately in theirlove of life (C2 221). As Deleuze puts it: "The link betweenman and the worldis broken. Henceforth the link mustbecome an object of belief:it is the impossiblewhich can only be restoredwithin a faith.The cinema must filmnot the world,but the belief in thisworld, our only link" (C2 171-72). On this account, the modern cinema of what he calls "the time-image" has an anti-cynicalpurpose.47 Hardt and Negri have been attacked for their messianicview of socialism (CLI 28). Yet preciselybecause theydo not preclude the possibilityof miraculous events, their immanentism holds open ethical horizons that otherwisewould remain inaccessible.For this reason, Empireought to be discussed in the contextof neorealism.To judge Empirestrictly in termsof so-calledpolitical realism would be a mistake in the same waythat it would be pointlessto interpretneorealist film on the sole basis of whetherit offersa verifiablehistorical record. It is tellingin thisregard thatNegri, in an interviewwith Danilo Zolo, playfullyre-imagines Empire not as a book but as a film.48We might

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1148 ALESSIA RICCIARDI add that if Empirewere a film,it surelywould be Miraclein Milan. Certainly,Hardt and Negri's political theoryand Italian neorealist cinema share significantcritical affinities that make theirencounter seem inevitable.A pronounced emphasison a philosophyand ontology of immanence is common to both projects.According to Bazin, by refusingthe selectiveprinciple of editing,neorealism succeeded in portrayingan action withoutremoving it fromits material context (WC2 38).4 Consequently,neorealism's turn awayfrom the formal and technical intrusionsof montage corresponds to the idea that significationarises from the miracle of fortuitousencounters. The filmtheorist and co-authorwith De Sica of the screenplayfor Miracle in Milan, Cesare Zavattini,indeed defined neorealismas a "cinema of the encounter,"proposing a formulationthat Deleuze echoes in Cinema2."0 Enlargingand refiningBazin's position,Deleuze contendsthat neo- realismestablished an entirelynew mode of cinematicvisualization: the time-image.He describesthis phenomenon in termsof an "action thatfloats in the situation,rather than bringingit to a conclusion or strengtheningit" (C2 4). The possibilityof action, and more specifi- callyof revolution,also mightbe said to "float"in Hardt and Negri's philosophy,which, on account of its radical immanentism,appears incompatiblewith any teleology.If neorealismfor Deleuze does not so much depict realityas aim at it (C2 1), criticaltheory for Hardt and Negri performsmuch the same gesturewith respect to political action and revolution. Anotherbasis on whichneorealism coincides with Hardt and Negri's thinkingis the emergence,under the aegis of neorealism,of a new subjectof cinematicattention: neither the massesas in Eisenstein'sor Griffith'sepic cinemanor the individualfocus of a characterstudy but ratherthe diverseplurality of the multitude.In thisconnection, it is importantto recall thatDeleuze's investigationof cinema emphasizes the factthat, proceeding from neorealism to itsso-called "third world manifestations,"modern cinema no longer can make referenceto a unitedpeople aimingat a collective"evolution or revolution"(C2 219). He suggeststhat what fillsthe void left by "the people [who] are missing"are the people thatexist only in the conditionof a minority (C2 220)." What the Frenchphilosopher describes, in otherwords, is whatHardt and Negri would call a multitude.The multitude,unlike the concept of "a people," is not the objectivecorrelative of the state, but ratherit is a sortof expansionof Gramsci'snotion of the subaltern in its refusalof a strongclass analytic.

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When we consider filmssuch as Rossellini's Open Cityor Paisad, Visconti's The Earth Trembles,De Sica's BicycleThieves or Miraclein Milan,we recognizethat these directorsarticulate the experiencesof collectivityand singularityin waysthat conform neither to the liberal ideal ofindividualism nor to canonicalMarxist ideas ofclass. We might say thatwhat is at stake in neorealistcinema is, instead,what Negri definesas "the ontological recognitionof the common" [il riconosci- mentoontologico del commune](CLI 31). The unedited, long take that Bazin identifiedas thevisual signature of neorealismallows the image to retainits singularity.This method avoids the loss of autonomous meaning brought about by the rapid cuttingand juxtaposition of shots,which Pudovkin and Kuleshov'sclassic example illustrates.At the same time,the acknowledgementof the image's singularitytakes place while registeringthe multiplicityof the communal. The long take, which Bazin often discussed in conjunction with deep-focus techniques, ideally allows for the simultaneousviewing of subjects both in the backgroundas well as in the foreground. Althoughneorealism is hardlyan ethicallyand aestheticallyuniform phenomenonin the Italiancontext, one mightsay that what character- izes thebest neorealist films is theirability to bringto lightthe complex makeup of the multitude.From the visionof the Resistenzaas a collec- tiveorder encompassingthe priest,the communist,and Sora Pina in Open Cityto the various encountersbetween Italians and Americans in Paisa and the plural condition of the thievesemphasized in the originalItalian titleof Ladri di biciclette,neorealism cannot be said to elucidate the plightof eitherthe massesor the people, ifby "people" we mean the modern state'sartificial social unity,as Negri does. Neo- realisminstead confrontsus witha multitudeof singularities. The epochal undertakingof the authors of Empireis to cast the afterlifeof Marxismin a new light,to give it a new terminology.52 Negri assertsin a recentessay, "The genealogyof the multitudeis in the shiftfrom the modern to the postmodern (or, if you like, from Fordismto Postfordism).This genealogyis constitutedby the struggles of the workingclass thathave dissolvedthe 'modern' formsof social discipline" (MS9). As presented in Empire,Hardt and Negri's new concept of the "multitude"plays a crucial role in the logic of their argument.In Empire,the concept of the multitudeclearly revises and displaces the traditionalnotions of the plebs,the workingclass, or the masses.Through thisrethinking of collectivity,Hardt and Negri aim to bring to consciousnessthe subject's condition of biopolitical exposure in postmodernsociety. In their eyes, labels such as "the

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1150 ALESSIA RICCIARDI masses" and "the proletariat"too oftenhave been used to describe an irrational,mob-like group, a forcethat is volatile,dangerous, and easilymanipulated. By contrast,the multituderepresents for them a horizon of active,organized, and self-empoweredsocial agency.The disparityof powertraditionally perceived to existbetween the masses and transcendentauthority may be replaced, the authorsrepeatedly assert,by an immanentspace of liberation,a dimensionin whichthe multitudethrives by virtue of its own intrinsic biopower. In Empire,they listseveral historical manifestations of the biopowerof the multitude, forexample theircatalogue of "the most radical and powerfulstruggles of the finalyears of the twentiethcentury," among whichthey include Tiananmen Square, the Intifadaagainst Israel, the 1992 riotsin Los Angeles,the Chiapas uprisingbeginning in 1994, the labor strikesin France at the end of 1995, as well as the 1996 strikesin South Korea (E 54). Along related lines, theyfind instancesof "self-valorization, cooperation,and politicalself-organization" in the variousphases of "capitalistworker militancy" informing the transition from Fordism and Taylorismto "the post-Fordistinformational regimes of production" (E 409). In the sectionof Multitudeentitled "The Wealthof the Poor," Hardtand Negrifurthermore argue thatthe poor and migrantworkers ought not to be regardedas constituentsof the Lumpenproletariatbut ratheras the exemplarysubjects of biopoliticalproduction.5" Such a claim highlightsthe sympathybetween Hardt and Negri's position and that of De Sica's Miraclein Milan. The communityof vagrantsdepicted in the filmaptly embodies the principaltraits of the multitude.The communitycomprises a multiplicityof singularities,is anthropologicallycomplex (as the directormakes clear by emphasiz- ing not only the group's rootlessness,but also its inclusion of black immigrants),and cannot be identifiedin a traditionalsense withthe workingclass, thus refusingan expected role in a manner that dis- turbedmany critics at the time.54Small wonder thatHardt and Negri nominate Miraclein Milan as an emblem of theirmission in Empire. Otherimaginative works discussed in Empire,such as Melville'sBartleby, theScrivener or Coetzee's Lifeand Timesof Michael K., straightforwardly dramatizethe protagonists'refusal of theirsocieties' demands. Miracle in Milan,however, may be seen to reflectback on and illuminatethe entirestrategic and ontologicalargument of Empire. Hardt and Negridiscuss the filmin a keypassage of Empireentitled "The Poor,"a segmentwhose importancethe authorsunderscore by italicizingthe text. Here theyparadoxically assert that the poor embody power-that, as theyput it,"There is worldpoverty, but thereis above

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1151 all worldpossibility and onlythe poor is capable of this" (E 157). As theypoint out, the mainstreamof Marxismalways has looked with contempton the poor, whom it considersundisciplined in relation to the workingclass. In thisconnection, Miracle in Milan providesthe authors witha powerfulexpression of a viewpointthat is ethically opposed to such contempt.They admire the film'scelebration of the creativityof Milan's poor and needy,who are envisionedas capable of an ecstaticflight into freedom:"Consider how,when in the early 1950s VittorioDe Sica and Cesare Zavattiniset the poor to flyaway on broomsticksat the end of theirbeautiful film Miracle in Milan, theywere so violentlydenounced for utopianismby the spokesmen of socialistrealism" (E 158). Hardt and Negri compare the spokesmen of socialistrealism in the 1950s to contemporaryphilosophers intenton the cynicaldisparagement of social struggle,pedants who are unable to realize that,in the authors' words,"The discoveryof postmodernityconsisted in thereproposition of the poor at the center of the politicaland productiveterrain" (E 158). This unique conceptionof the politicalpotential of the poor is one of the book's centralclaims. So we ought to considerhow the notion of the multitudein Hardt and Negri's writingsmay be understood to "repropose"the poor, beforeexamining the contradictionsof the "immanentutopia" affirmedboth by Miraclein Milan and by the authors' praise of the film.In the case of Empire,Hardt and Negri's insistenceon the vitalityof the multitudeclearly aims to dispel the academic air ofmuch politicalphilosophy. For a readersuch asJacques Ranciere,Negri's romanticizing of thehomeless or nomadiccondition of the poor is a problematictrait, as when the Italian philosopher writesthat "the prometheismof the poor, of the migrant,is the salt of the earth;and the worldhas reallybeen changed by hybridization and mixing"[ semmaiil prometeismodei poveri, dei migranti,e il sale della Terrae il mondoe realmentemutato dal nomadismoe dal meticciato](CLI 32).""The implicationof such remarksis that,for Negri, the multitude constitutesthe ground on whichpolitics may be definedas ontology and ontologyas politics.In place of analyticdefinitions, Empire offers an enthusiasticoutpouring of encomiums to the political potential of the multitude,to its propensityin Hardt and Negri's words "to love, transform,and create,"and to its drivetoward emancipation.5' Described in these mythicalterms, however, the idea of a subjectthat is selflesslypure in itsactions and coincideswith limitless power may look like a moral fable or fantasy.57If Empireis a parable like Miracle in Milan,how does the filmshed lighton the politicaltreatise?

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Cinemahas long been valued as a formof political expression. More thanany other art, the achievements of cinemaare a functionof its relationto themasses, of itsability to exposethe political vitality of the masses,as in differentways the filmsof Griffithand Eisenstein demonstrate.The classicmasterpieces of film always have established a dialoguebetween the people and a revolutionaryfuture, and not onlyin theirRussian manifestations. For Deleuze,even Hollywood moviesaspired, at leastat one time,to a revolutionarytransformation insofaras theyaimed to visualizethe birth of a nationmade up of immigrants."58Cinema in general, on thisaccount, raises the possibility of our projectioninto the world. Moderncinema in particular,however, ceases for Deleuze to envi- sionthe "conquest of power by a proletariat,or bya unitedor unified people"and insteadpermits the unveiling of a multiplicityofpeoples thatare oftenmarginalized and fragmented(C2 219-20). In other words,in moderncinema-as, according to Hardt and Negri, in mod- ernsociety-we witness the transition from the people as thesubject of powerto what Deleuze calls "un peuple mineur," a category that seems to be analogousto Hardtand Negri'smultitude. Deleuze's stress on the"minor" condition of the people depicted by modern cinema does notmean that in hiseyes the catholic and revolutionarydimensions of themedium, which are inherentin itsvery ontology, in itscapac- ityto establishlinks between man and theworld, are compromised. To thecontrary, the cinema of thetime-image, which is exemplified aboveall byneorealism, introduces the possibility of bearing witness to injusticeand inequalitywhile at thesame timepromoting a sort of immanentfaith in thisworld. Our challengeis to decide to whatextent the miraculousaspect of Miraclein Milan calls into question the immanent vocation of neo- realismand, in thissense, both elucidates and bringsto an end its realisticand political functions. As we have observed, neorealism marks notonly the triumph of pure optical and soundsituations in film,as Deleuze suggests,but also the emergencein contemporaryculture ofan ensembleof singularities, a multitude."5 In thevast majority of neorealistfilms, from Open City to TheEarth Trembles and Miraclein Milan,neither the individual nor themass is ultimatelywhat counts (Bazinobserves that the mass is rarely presented by neorealist directors as a positiveforce, WC2 22 ff.).The objectof neorealismis a more holisticview that, following Bazin, might be definedas "immanentism": "The originalityof Italianneorealism, as comparedwith the school of realismthat preceded it and withthe SovietCinema, lies in never

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1153 making realitythe servantof an a prioriprinciple... . Neorealism knowsonly immanence" (WC2 64). Hardt and Negri make a similar claim on behalfof theirtheoretical reinterpretation of Marxism, which theydistinguish from other interpretationsprecisely on account of theirfocus on the immanent.As a result,Hardt and Negri,like the neorealistdirectors before them, consistently lay themselvesopen to criticismfor their lack of a programmatic,methodological approach to politicsand theiradvocacy of a naive biopoliticalvitalism.

Lines of Flightin Milan and Empire To thosewho say that escaping is not courageous,we answer:what is notescape and socialinvestment at thesame time? -Deleuze and Guattari

A closerlook at Miraclein Milanwith this background in mindwill help to clarifywhat Hardt and Negri'sproject shares with neorealism and, in particular,to illuminatethe politicallimitations of both endeavors. Miraclein Milanwas released in 1951 at a timeof extraordinarilyactive internalmigration in Italy,during which thousands of people wound up livingin slums in the environsof Rome and Milan. This time of internalmigration coincided withthe period of growthknown as the "economic miracle."After achieving international success with the filmsShoeshine and BicycleThieves, De Sica decided to adapt Zavattini's 1943 novella Totothe Good [ Totoil buono]for the screen. The fantasticplot of the filmbegins with a poor,virtuous woman's discoveryof an infantnamed Toto undera cabbage plant.The woman, Lolotta,raises him untilher death, at whichpoint the child is placed in an orphanage. When he is released at the age of eighteen,Toto becomes the inspirationalleader of a makeshiftvillage of the poor on the peripheryof Milan. When oil is discoveredon the shantytown's premises,Mobbi, the richestman in the city,enlists the police to evict the inhabitants.Toto startsan uprisingagainst Mobbi withthe help of a dove sent by Lolotta thatconfers on him the power of magically realizinghis everywish. Toto uses thispower to remedythe poverty of his cohorts,inadvertently setting in motiona viciouscircle of envy and greed for the blessingshe bestows.After temporarily losing his magicalpower, Toto regainsit while standing in frontof the Duomoof Milan,just in time to escape the police who are arrestingthe slum's squatters.Stealing the implementsof the city'sstreet sweepers and

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1154 ALESSIA RICCIARDI turningthem into flyingbroomsticks, Toto leads his comrades into the sky. In whatlight the filmmakers meant us to takethe supernatural events of the plot is not entirelyclear; Miraclein Milan mightwell be said to representthe paradoxical accomplishmentof a realisticfairy tale. The horizon of politicalaction in the filmoccurs in unproblematic contiguitywith that of the miraculous, signified by the apparition of the dove, whichfunctions as a stand-infor the spiritof Lolotta but also as a symbolof the Holy Spirit.Tellingly, when Toto uses the powergiven him by the miraculousdove to shape lifein the community,he winds up disruptingthe normal social economy.The narrativebegins like a children'sfable with the formula"once upon a time,"yet the visual characterand location of the shantytownin the Milanese neighbor- hood of Lambrate are convincinglyrealistic, thanks to the arduous effortsof De Sica and Zavattinito scoutlocations."6 In Miraclein Milan, as P. Adams Sitneyhas noted, neorealism unexpectedlyrediscovers the influenceof GeorgesMelies, the delightsof fantasy and cinematic illusionism.6'Hardt and Negri rightlyrecollect, however, that when the filmwas firstdistributed, the criticsdisparaged it as an "involu- tion" of neorealism,as itsblend of fairytale and neorealistelements struckmany viewers as a contradictionin terms.62 Although the filmwon the Cannes Film Festivalin 1951 and the New YorkFilm CriticsAward and was warmlyand publiclypraised by the likes of Pudovkin,Cocteau, and Welles,it met witha cool recep- tion in Italyfrom the momentof itsrelease. To begin with,the film's originaltitle, "The Poor Who Disturb"[Ipoveri disturbano], had to be abandoned because it was too controversial(MMVDS 116, 122, 125). In spite of the renamingof the film,the filmmakersaimed not to produce an allegoryof evasion,as Zavattiniexplained, but a parable of indignationthat took its cue fromradical, rather than bourgeois, Christianity(MMVDS 131-42). Zavattiniclaimed never to have any particularpolitical sympathyfor Marxism,declaring that,over the consolations of ideology,he preferredto surprisereality and to be surprisedby it. Accordingly,he developed a taste for the fabulous and the determinationto articulatehis concern for social inequal- ityand injusticethrough a visionaryand mythicalre-imagination of reality.63Against the backgroundof the artisticwitch hunt following the firstphase of neorealism,when filmssuch as Rossellini's"trilogy of solitude" (consistingof Stromboli,Land ofGod, Europa '51,and Voy- age toItaly), Visconti's Senso, and De Sica's workswere excoriatedby mostItalian critics,Zavattini's Franciscan pietas looked insufficientto

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1155 defendMiracle in Milan against its detractors. In general,the criticism of the filmbears more than a passingresemblance to the derision thatgreeted the publicationof Empire.64 Much of the critics'puzzlement may have surroundedthe film's curiousending, which depicts Milan's poor and homeless "flying high" in thetranscendent space of the sky.65 The immanentutopia realized earlyon in thefilm's neorealist passages in otherwords dissolves in the transcendenceof thefilm's final scene, which the authors of Empire singleout for praise. In Miraclein Milan,as in Empire,the revolution has alreadyhappened, which is anotherway of saying that the film's conclusiondramatically confronts us withthe question: what comes afterthe revolution? Precisely through its work of dissolution or trans- mutation,Miracle in Milanachieves its unique place in theeconomy of contemporaryculture, enlarging the very questions that led to its conceptualizationby challengingtheir basic premises.The filmis simultaneouslya Christian parable and a socialist-humanistindictment ofcapitalist society that in theend explodes the claims of naive realism whilesimultaneously avoiding conventional religious wisdom."" Perhaps we mightadd thatMiracle in Milanaspires to overcomeneorealism properin somethinglike the same way,and formany of the same reasons,that Empire aims to overcomeMarxism. As we notedearlier, the film'sdetractors reserved their harshest attacksfor the film's final sequence. Both Guido Aristarco and Ennio Flaianoremarked that the poor charactersportrayed in thefilm are not trulypoor becausethey lack class consciousness (MMVDS 157). Morethan a fewreviewers have brought the same accusation against Negri'sdescription of themultitude. For Aristarco in particular,the mosttroubling feature of thefilm was its depiction of thesquatters as disenfranchisedindividuals who neither work nor intend to work. WhereasBicycle Thieves was, in his opinion,an authenticdramatiza- tionof unemployment, poverty, and classsolidarity, Miracle in Milan revealsits true colors at itsend, when Toto and thesquatters steal the broomsfrom the streetcleaners. On thisview, the ultimateethical conflictin thefilm occurs between the poor who work and thepoor whodo notwork. It shouldcome as no surprise,then, that Aristarco was bewilderedby the film'smiraculous finale in whichthe squat- tershover between dream and reality,flying over the skyof Milan (MMVDS174-78).67 To suchviewers, the flight of the poor to a mysticaldomain where, accordingto thescreenplay, "good morning really means good morning" could only look like the regressivenessof false hope: "Soon, a

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1156 ALESSIA RICCIARDI long line of trampson broomsticksis flyingthrough the sky.They begin to sing their simple song of hope in the future,as they fly above the square, the cathedraland the town.Toto and Edvige lead themas theyhappily disappear among the clouds: towarda kingdom where good morningreally means good morning"(MMVDS 120). As we alreadyhave seen, however,the idea thatwork ought to be valued onlyinsofar as it representsa mode of creativesharing is crucialto the film'sevocation of a miraculousform of life. (In thisconnection, we mightrecall with amusement the scene ofToto's fantasticalnaming of streetsthrough mathematical formulae.) Indeed, the squatters'very refusalto definetheir identity as workers,their lack of anxietyin this respect,establishes them withinwhat Agamben mightcall the glory of a quasi-sabbaticaltime. In II Regnoe la Gloria,Agamben sets out to re-establisha dialogue betweenpolitics and theologyby explicating the phenomenologyof glory.In his opinion, the glorythat ensues from the LastJudgmentwill consist of a cessationof all activities,of a state thatought to be characterizedneither as one of otium,nor of laziness, but ratherof decorous "inoperosita.""68From itsvery first scene, then, Miraclein Milanvisualizes a formof life that is "miraculous"in thesense thatit resistsconventional expectations. One signof thisresistance is the film'spreservation of the fairy-talerelationship between Toto and Lolotta, blessedlysparing the child fromany formof "addiction,"as Santner puts it, to the adult's enigmaticdesires. Santner so defines the miraclein the lightofJean Laplanche's celebratedtheory according to which our libidinallife is the resultof the Other's enigmatic desires: "A miraclewould representthe eventof a genuine break in such a fatefulenchainment of unconscious transmission.""9 Such a conclusion, however,cannot dispel the impression that Miraclein Milan attemptsto distractits viewersfrom the demise of the immanentutopia of the Milanese shantytownby focusing on the happyending of transcendence.The destinyof the poor in De Sica's film,like the fate of the multitudein Hardt and Negri's treatise, appears to have littleto do with the traditionaldignity of work or, more specifically,of organized labor.As in Empire,exodus represents the ultimatesolution to the anthropologicaland politicalproblems of capitalistsociety. Zavattini's sensitivity to the riskof mystifyingthe agonisticconditions of historyclearly prompted him to denythat the film'sfinal sequence showsToto and his fellowsquatters ascending to paradise. The author suggestedinstead that theyare simplymigrat- ing to another state: "I have said it and writtenit, the squattersdo not go to paradise but migrate,like immigrantsgoing to Caracas; the

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1157 reading of the ending would have been easier had we been able to adapt a sequence that De Sica was not able to realize; the squatters would tryto land withtheir broomsticks, but on everyfield was written 'privateproperty,' and then theyreally would have had to leave" (MMVDS 25).7"In lightof Zavattini'scomment, it is interestingto note as well thatthe screenplayoriginally contained a scene showingsome of the squattersbeing shot out of the sky,a prospectfinally deemed too upsettingfor audiences (MMVDS 111).71 However,in the preface to the English edition of the screenplay, De Sica ascribesto Miraclein Milan a more benign intent:"This is a fable,slightly wistful perhaps, but quietlyoptimistic within its poetic framework.If I mightbe allowed to giveit such a name" (MM 13). In the same preface,he names Saint Francisas the model forhis repre- sentationsof the poor: "They greetwater with the same pure joy as Saint Francisdid... . They are poor, then,but theyare not outcast" (MM 11). The oscillationbetween Zavattini's pessimism and De Sica's optimismcomprises one of the chieffeatures of interestof Miraclein Milan. Along similarlines, Hardt and Negri's insistenceon the posi- tiveattributes of povertyand migrancyin order to keep at bay their real costs in termsof sufferingand alienation has drawn persistent criticism.In the interviewwith Danilo Zolo cited earlier,Negri decries pessimismonce more and admonishesreaders to look at povertyin termsnot only of miserybut also of possibility,associating migrant workersas a groupwith the dignityof a searchfor "truth, production, happiness" ( CLI 31-32).7 It is hardlysurprising that Hardt and Negri assign Miraclein Milan such a privilegedrole in theeconomy of their polemic, notwithstanding thefilm's ambiguous finale. Perhaps the authors might even recognize, in thefilm's final tableau of the poor flyingtogether through the skies over Milan, an instance of what theydefine in Multitudeas "swarm intelligence,"a distributednetwork attack patterned after a flockof birds (M91). Tellingly,the multitudeis definedelsewhere in the same book as an emblem of the desire foranother world (M 227). Ultimately,however, Miracle in Milan may be said to allegorically depict, in the final flightof the poor, the paradoxical capacityof neorealistfilm to convertpessimism into an act of immanentfaith, as a miraclecan only emerge froma contingentand immanentper- spective.Perhaps thisis the reason whymany critics regard Miracle in Milan as the last neorealistfilm, as a kind of apotheosis of the form thatmakes explicit neorealism's claims not to realismbut to faithand beliefin theworld. Bazin wasso delightedby the ideological ambiguity

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1158 ALESSIA RICCIARDI of De Sica's filmthat he was moved to avowthat a trueparable should have somethingfor everybody:"I would not dream of saying that the kindnessof De Sica is of greatervalue than the thirdtheological virtueor class consciousness,but I see in the modestyof his position a definiteartistic advantage" (C2 70). Yet Bazin's wordsof approval merelybeg the question: is such modestyalso a politicalvirtue? Hardt and Negri's concluding evocation of Saint Francis at the end of Empirecould be seen as an act of politicalmodesty, albeit one inflectedwith a Catholic specificitythat is somewhatproblematic insofaras it disruptsthe book's otherwiseecumenical spirit: Thereis an ancientlegend that might serve to illuminatethe future life of communistmilitancy: that of Saint Francis of Assisi. Consider his work. To denouncethe poverty of themultitude, he adoptedthat common condi- tionand discoveredthere the ontological power of a newsociety. ... Once again in postmodernitywe findourselves in Francis'ssituation, posing againstthe misery of powerthe joy ofbeing. This is a revolutionthat no powerwill control-because biopower and communism,cooperation and revolutionremain together, in love,simplicity, and alsoinnocence. This is theirrepressible lightness and joy ofbeing communist. (E 413)

The authors' exaltation of such "innocence" and "simplicity"only promptsa final constellationof questions: is Empire,like Miraclein Milan, simplya mythabout faithin the world?Can Empireafford to be nothingmore than such a myth?The finalsentence of Empireis disappointingin itsfailure to anticipateand address such questions. Hardt and Negri's use of the word "lightness"strikes a false note, not only on account of its cliche, post-Kunderanassociations, but also because it implies a denial of the political cost of communist allegiance, encodes a blindness to what Negri himselfdescribes as the "harshnessof immanence."73 If Empirein the end seems too cheerfullyoptimistic, if it shuts its eyesto the difficultyof restoring faith in our participationin theworld (whichcan hardlybe said to involve"lightness"), the book nonetheless succeeds in arguingthat the contemporarystruggle cannot revolve around a process of pristinesecularization, around a strictpragmat- ics of power and its existinginstitutions, as a morejaded voice such as Schmitt'swould have us believe. In thissense, a political miracle can neverbe forHardt and Negri,as it is for Schmittin The Concept of thePolitical, the equivalent of the sovereign'sdecision. Quite the contrary,we finallycan onlybelieve and have faithin a "real event" forwhich we have no model. This faithis not theological,is immanent

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sun, 15 Sep 2013 18:05:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLN 1159 and ontological,and yetdispels the myththat modernity's destiny is skepticismand cynicism.By insisting on the eventthat has no model, the authors push the logic of immanence at work in Empireto its limit,inviting the criticismthat theiridea of the event seems to be merelya wayof smugglingthe language of transcendenceback into theirargument. In thisregard, it ultimatelymay be more productiveto read Empire against the grain of its rhetoricalinsistence on the singularityof the event,restoring to the authors' immanentismsomething of the flu- idityof Deleuze and Guattari'sprocess of deterritorialization,while retainingHardt and Negri'sown refusalto concede thatthis process is "alreadycomplete." For in spiteof theiravowal that the real eventhas no model, the authorsof Empirerepeatedly invoke what at least must be counted as historicallydelimited instances of real events,whether "the events [of the late 1980s and 1990s] in Beijing, Nablus, Los Angeles,Chiapas, Paris or Seoul" (E 54) or the strugglesundertaken by"the communist and liberatorycombatants of the twentieth-century revolutions,the intellectualswho were persecutedand exiled in the course ofanti-fascist struggles, the republicansof the Spanish civilwar and the European resistancemovements, and the freedomfighters of all the anticolonialand anti-imperialistwars" (E 412). In the end, Hardt and Negri's argumentin Empirepoints not to a unique model of the real eventbut ratherto a contingentplurality of real eventsthat alreadyhave contributedto changingour politicalimagination. Instead of envisioningthe real eventas a semi-teleologicalpoint of convergence,we thus ought to thinkof an agencementor assemblage of eventsthat takes place on differentplateaus according to lines of flight.Accordingly, the peculiar effectiveness of both Empire and Miracle in Milan may be discerned as not residingin the endorsementof a definitivecultural or biopoliticalmodel but ratherin havingbecome eventsin theirown right.Whereas models encourage conceptualand methodologicalautomatism, events are such in virtueof theirability to disruptthe order of things.Both Hardt and Negri's philosophical treatiseand De Sica and Zavattini'sfilm are eventsnot onlybecause they have opened up a space to thinkand act differentlybut also because theyhave mountedformidable opposition to the entrenched cultureof cynicism.Their respectiveachievements consist in the per- suasivevoicings they give to a stubbornfaith in the potentialof the multitude,of the poor who disturb.

The UniversityofCalifornia at Berkeley

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NOTES

1 For theirinsightful contributions to the discussionof severalof the textsand films in thispaper, I wishto thankall of mystudents from the course "The Afterlifeof Marxism,"which we pursued togetherat NorthwesternUniversity's Humanities Center in spring2006, and in particularJeremy Cohan, Ben Fink,Jason Malikov, Noora Lori, and Ben Shepard. I also wishto thankScott Gottbreht, the Editorial Assistantof MLN, forhis extremelyhelpful editorial work on thisessay. 2 Alain Badiou, SaintPaul: TheFoundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier(Stan- ford,CA: StanfordUP, 2003) 66. 3 "All significantconcepts of the modern theoryof the stateare secularized theological concepts not onlybecause of theirhistorical development-in whichthey were transferredfrom theology to the theoryof the state,whereby, for example, the omnipotentGod became the omnipotentlawgiver-but also because of their systematicstructure, the recognitionof whichis necessaryfor a sociological con- siderationof these concepts.The exception in jurisprudenceis analogous to the miraclein theology."Carl Schmitt,Political Theology: Four Chapters on theConcept of Sovereignty,trans. George Schwab (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005) 36. 4 GiorgioAgamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005). 5 Eric L. Santner,"Miracles Happen: Benjamin,Rosenzweig, Freud and the Matter of the Neighbor"in Slavoj Ziiek, Eric L. Santner,Kenneth Reinhard TheNeighbor: ThreeInquires in PoliticalTheology (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005) 76-133. 6 An importantconsequence of allowing for the possibility of a post-secularmoment is the freedomto question the supposedly"universal" tenets of secular rationality. 7 William Connolly has argued convincinglythat, if not banished from critical discussion,secularism should be reconsidered carefullyin order to avoid the reductionof public discourse to pure, rationalargument Ila Habermas, a nar- rowingthat hinders not onlysubjective and intersubjectivecreativity but also the possibilityto "appreciatepositive possibilities in the visceralregister of thinking and discourse."William Connolly,Why I Am Not a Secularist(Minneapolis: Min- nesota, 1999) 35-36. 8 Santner,"Miracles Happen," 89-90. 9 Badiou sums up this notion of automatismwhen, in his reading of Saint Paul's lifeand work,he declares that"sin is the lifeof desire as autonomy,automatism" (Saint Paul, 79). 10 Withregard to the idea of "formsof life,"we should note thatHardt and Negrido not offera theorythat is a grammaror reservoirof rules readyto be actualized. In a move thatis Wittgensteinianin inspiration,they instead imagine a language thatmay be deduced from"resistant" forms of life:the social upheavals of 1968, theworkerist movement, the anti-globalizationprotests at Seattleand Genova,the Zapatista movementin Chiapas, and more generallythe interrelationbetween a politicsof the common and electronicmethods of communication.For their specificarticulation of Wittgenstein'simportance to the philosophical currents that resultedin "a new materialismwhich negated everytranscendent element and constituteda radical reorientationof spirit,"see Hardt and Negri's injunc- tion "to focuson ... the thoughtof LudwigWittgenstein," see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000) 374-80; hereafter cited parentheticallyas E. 11 Schmitt,Political Theology, 39.

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12 For a helpful reading of Foucault's thoughtin this regard,see Fr6d6ricGros, "Course Context"in Michel Foucault, TheHermeneutics ofthe Subject: Lectures at the Collegede France1981-1982, trans.Graham Burchell,eds. FranCoisEwald, Ales- sandro Fontana,Arnold I. Davidson (New York:Picador, 2005) 526. 13 GillesDeleuze, Foucault,trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1995) 92. 14 GiorgioAgamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and BareLife, trans. Daniel Heller- Roazen (Stanford:Stanford UP, 1998). 15 Althoughthe zenithof the economic miracleis identifiedwith the period 1958- 1963, historiansand economistsgenerally acknowledge that the phenomenon encompassesa broader timespan. Paul Ginsborg,for example, actually begins his studyof the economic miraclein 1951, and Jon S. Cohen and GiovanniFederico begin theirsin 1945. Paul Ginsborg,A Historyof ContemporaryItaly: Society and Politics,1943-1988 (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) 186-209.Jon S. Cohen and GiovanniFederico, The Growthof the Italian Economy 1820-1960 (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUP, 2001) 87-106. 16 This emphasison the immanentrevises the classicMarxist insistence on changing the worldrather than interpretingit. In Empire,interpretation and action coexist and are reciprocallyimplicated. 17 TimothyBrennan, "The Empire's New Clothes" in CriticalInquiry 29: 2 (Winter 2003): 351. 18 Even in a recentinterview, Negri stresses the originof his thinkingin the refusal of, and resistanceto, labor, as he considers the capitalistorganization of labor a real formof slavery.See GoodbyeMr Socialism,ed. Raf Valvola Scelsi (Milano: Feltrinelli,2006). 19 "Because the sphere of the politicalis in the finalanalysis determined by the real possibilityof enmity,political conceptions and ideas cannot verywell startwith an anthropologicaloptimism." Carl Schmitt,The Conceptof thePolitical, ed. Charles Schwab (New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers UP, 1976) 64. 20 See note 10 above. 21 "Passatoe Presente.Del sognare a occhi apertie del fantasticare:'Prova di man- canza di caratteree di passivita.Si immaginache un fattosia avvenutoe che il meccanismodella necessitasia stato capovolto. La propria iniziativae divenuta libera.Tutto e piu facile.Si puo cio che si vuole, e si vuole tuttauna serie di cose di cui presentementesi e privi.E, in fondo, il presentecapovolto che si proietta nel futuro.Tutto cio che e represso si scatena. Occorre invece violentemente attirarel'attenzione nel presentecosi com'e se si vuole trasformarlo.Pessimismo dell'intelligenza,ottimismo della volonta."'Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni dal Carcere, vol. 2, ed. ValentinoGerratana (Torino: Einaudi, 2000) 113. 22 Gramsciattributes the expressionto Romain Rolland in an articlepublished in OrdineNuovo April 3-10, 1920. Gramsci,Quaderni dal Carcere,vol. 4 (Roma: Editori Riuniti,1996): 2510. 23 In a recentinterview, Negri reaffirmshis hope for the futureof communism,as opposed to socialism,in termsof "the optimismof reason" [l'ottimismodella ra- gione]: "Whereassocialism is dialecticand by now a bad memory,communism is the optimismof reason... " Antonio Negri,Goodbye Mr Socialism,ed. RafValvola Scelsi (Milano: Feltrinelli,2006) 23, trans.modified. 24 Antonio Gramsci,"The Modern Prince" in TheModern Prince and OtherWritings, (New York:International Publishers, 2000) 135-89.

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25 Brennan is a prominentexample of thissort of reader. 26 Michel Foucault,La volontide savoir:droit de mortet pourvoir sur la vie,ed. Fr6deric Rambeau (Paris: Gallimard,2006) 208. We mightregard Empire, indeed, as the elaboration on a global scale of Foucault's theoryof power as articulatedin the firstvolume of his Historyof Sexuality. 27 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault,trans. Sedin Hand (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1988) 25. 28 Antonio Negri, SubversiveSpinoza: (Un)ContemporaryVariations, ed. Timothy S. Murphy,trans. Timothy S. Murphy,Michael Hardt, Ted Stolze, and Charles T. Wolfe (Manchester:Manchester UP, 2004) 116. 29 Gramsci,The Modern Prince, 135. 30 Baruch (Benedictus de) Spinoza, Ethicsin CompleteWorks, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. Michael Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett,2002) 332. 31 "Indeed I am fullyconvinced that experience has revealedevery conceivable form of commonwealthwhere many men can live in harmony."Baruch (Benedictus de) Spinoza, PoliticalTreatise in CompleteWorks, trans. Samuel Shirley,ed. Michael Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett,2002) 681. 32 Paul A. PasseventandJody Dean, eds., Empire'sNew Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (New York:Routledge, 2004). TimothyBrennan deliversa devastatingcritique of Empirein his essay"The AnarchistSublime" in Warsof Position: The Cultural Politics ofLeft and Right(New York:Columbia UP, 2006) 145-233. See also AnselmJappe, "Die Proletariatsneue Kleider:Vom Empire zurfickzur ZweitenInternationalen" in Krisis25 (2002). 33 On the dangersof reading Empire as a theodicy,see Bill Maurer,"On DivineMarkets and the ProblemofJustice: Empire as Theodicy"in Passeventand Dean, Empire's New Clothes,57-72. Agamben points out thatVoltaire, despite being the inferior philosopher,managed in Candideto render a successfulcaricature of Leibniz, because Leibniz set out in his Essais de theodiceeto justifyrather than to save the world and pursued his argumentwith absolute faithin the necessityof the law. Agamben,II Regnoe la Gloria(Milano: Neri Pozza, 2007) 298. 34 Brennan,"The Empire'sNew Clothes,"345. 35 The collectiveRetort (which includes Iain Boal, T. J. Clark,Joseph Matthews, and Michael Watts) mounts what ought to be regarded as the most effective,least triumphalistcritique of Empire.The group strikesthe rightnote, among other reasons,because, unlike most of Hardt and Negri's detractors,Retort proposes alternativestrategies of resistanceto capital and empire and does not shyaway frompositions that they happen to share withEmpire's authors. For example, the group'smembers freely make use of the term"multitude" to discussthe possibility of politicalassembly. Yet theyalso rightlypoint out thatcybertechnology, the medium of the multitude,is also the medium of whatthey define as "the machinery of a self-administereddreamworld." Retort, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a NewAge of War (New York:Verso, 2005) 4. 36 See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,"7000 B.C.: Apparatusof Capture" in A ThousandPlateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1987) 424-73. 37 Brennan,"The AnarchistSublime," 199. 38 Ibid., 196. 39 Deleuze, Foucault,115.

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40 GillesDeleuze and Fl1ix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,trans. Robert Hurley,Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1983) 239. 41 Ibid., 341. 42 Ibid., 382. 43 More than any intrinsiccondition of "immateriallabor," it is the need to affirm Spinoza's line of reasoningin Empirethat explains why Hardt and Negri adopt a terminologyof feelingrather than of structureto describe the workingsof con- temporarypolitical economy. 44 On thisquestion, see the essay"Desirs et plaisirs"in Gilles Deleuze, Deux regimes defous:Textes et entretiens, 1975-1995, ed. David Lapoujade (Paris: Les Editionsde Minuit,2003) 112-23. 45 Negri,Subversive Spinoza, 117. 46 GillesDeleuze, Cinema2: TheTime-Image trans. Hugh Tomlinsonand RobertGaleta (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1994) 222; hereaftercited parentheticallyas C2. See also Deleuze, Qu'est-ceque la philosophie?(Paris: Les Editionsde Minuit,1991) 161. 47 Complicatingthis credo, Deleuze claims in Pourparlersthat neorealism's achieve- mentconsists in markingthe end ofany belief in thepossibility of acting or reacting to situations,while somehow avoiding passivity with regard to the intolerabilityof everydaylife. Gilles Deleuze, Pourparlers(Paris: Les Editionsde Minuit,1990) 74. A similar,complex alchemyof faith,passivity, activity, and hope informsHardt and Negri's thought. 48 AntonioNegri, Cinque lezioni su Imperoe dintorni (Milano: RaffaelloCortina Editore, 2003) 11; hereaftercited parentheticallyas CLI. 49 AndreBazin, Whatis Cinema2, trans.Hugh Gray(Berkeley, CA: U of CaliforniaP, 1971) 38; hereaftercited parentheticallyas WC2. 50 Zavattini,Neorealismo (Milano: Bompiani, 1979) 103. 51 For moreon thismatter, see Paola Marrati,Gilles Deleuze: cinema et philosophie (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 2003) 117 n. 2. 52 Negrirecently has written:"If the historicalshift is definedas epochal (ontologi- callyso), then the criteriaor dispositifsof measurevalid foran epoch willbe radi- callythrown into question. We are livingthrough this shift, and it is not certain whethernew criteriaand dispositifsof measure are being proposed." See "Pour une definitionontologique de la multitude"in Multitudes,no. 9 (Mai-Juin2002): 36-48, as published on the Web site http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article29 .html;hereafter cited parentheticallyas MS9. 53 Michael Hardt and AntonioNegri, Multitude: War and Democracyin theAge ofEmpire (New York:Penguin, 2004) 130-37; hereaftercited parentheticallyas M. 54 Beginningin the 1950s,the movement of operaismo[workerism] in Italyexpounded the idea of the "autonomy"of the workingclass. Mario Tronti'stext "Operai and capitale" became the major point of referencefor a generation.In the wake of the Italian operaismo,Negri became the principal ideological spokesperson of the politicalgroup AutonomiaOperaia in the 1970s, articulatingthe macroscopic metamorphosisthat labor was undergoing.Over time,the idea of the autonomyof theworking class had come to be regardedin the mainstreamMarxist tradition as an impossibility,since the workingclass was seen as dependent on itsrelationship to capital.Like Tronti,Negri thoughtthat it was timeto reversethis assumption. Consequently,the notionof autonomiaought to be consideredthe firststep toward the multitude.

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55 As Ranciere puts it: "Les mouvementsnomadiques invoques comme preuvesde la puissance explosive des multitudessont pour l'essentiel des mouvementsde populations chassees par la violence des Etats-nationsou par la misere absolue oii les a plongees leur faillite."See Jacques Ranciere,"Peuple ou multitude:question d'Eric Alliez AJaques Ranciere,"MS9 95-100. His point is that the concept of the multitudeseems to be the objectivecorrelative of globalization,whereas the notion of a people presumes a contractualrelation along the lines of the Hobbesian state. Ranciere argues forcefullythat the survivaland multiplication of nation-statesalongside the processesof globalizationis a possibilitythat Negri does not account forvery well. 56 From anotherviewpoint, this enthusiasm may look like an idealization.Ranciere observesthat the concept of the multitudemay be seen to encode a phobia of the negative,as well as the suppressedanxiety that politics is nothingmore than politics,an intrinsicallyagonistic discipline. He identifiesa Nietzscheanand De- leuzean genealogyfor Hardt and Negri's brand of immanentism,based on the shared rejectionof any negativedimension. In thiscontext, Ranciere contends, politicsbecomes impossible;see "Peuple ou multitude,"MS9 95-100. For an acute commentaryon both Ranciere's and Hardt and Negri's positions,see Ernesto Laclau, "Can ImmanenceExplain Social Struggles"in Passeventand Dean, Empire's NewClothes, 21-30. 57 Negriprovides an unconvincingreply to thisline of criticismin his essay.Although Hardt and Negri develop the link between the multitudeand immanence in philosophicallypersuasive terms, and, accordingto Balibar,the Derridean notion of spectralityoffers a figureof the transcendental,the aim in both cases seems to be to provide new moral foundationsfor a political subject that is immune to realization.How spectralis the multitude?How improbableis the idea of an immanentutopia realized by the multitudethrough its constituentpower? 58 Cf. GillesDeleuze, Critiqueet clinique (Paris: Les Editionsde Minuit,1993) 14, and Qu'est-ceque la philosophie?,99-101. 59 Indeed, neorealismcould offeran exemplarycase for an understandingof the multitude.According to Negri, one of the multitude'scharacteristics seems to be its resistanceto concrete phenomenological manifestations.The multitude seems contentto existin a perpetualvirtual state. "It is stillnecessary to insiston the differencebetween the notion of multitudeand thatof people," writesNegri in "Toward an Ontological Definitionof the Multitude.""The multitudecan neitherbe grasped nor explained in contractarianterms (once contractarianism is understoodas dependent on transcendentalphilosophy rather than empirical experience). In themost general sense, the multitudeis diffidentof representation because it is an incommensurablemultiplicity. The people is alwaysrepresented as a unity,whilst the multitudeis not representable,because it is monstrousvis d vis the teleological and transcendentalrationalisms of modernity.In contrast withthe concept of the people, the concept of multitudeis a singularmultiplicity, a concrete universal.The people constituteda social body; the multitudedoes not, because the multitudeis the fleshof life.If on the one hand we oppose the multitudeto the people, on the other hand we mustput it in contrastwith the masses and the plebs. Masses and plebshave oftenbeen termsused to describe an irrationaland passive social force,violent and dangerous preciselyby virtue of itsbeing easilymanipulated. On the contrary,the multitudeis an activesocial agent,a multiplicitythat acts" MS9 36-48. 60 VittorioDe Sica, Miraclein Milan (NewYork:The Orion Press,1968), 19. Hereafter cited in the textusing the abbreviationMM. 61 P. Adams Sitney,Vital Crises in Italian Cinema(Austin: U of Texas P, 1995), 101.

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62 Maria Carla Cassarini,ed., Miracoloa Milanodi VittorioDeSica: Storiaepreistoria di un film(Genova: Le Mani, 2000) 137; hereaftercited parentheticallyas MMVDS. 63 See Zavattini'sinterview with Silvana Cirillo,in which the author commentson the sourcesof his inspirationand his concernfor the poor: "Mai che pero questo diventasseteoria o filosofiao avesse agganci col marxismo.. ." (MMVDS 106). 64 Piero Meldini,for example, dismissed Miracle in Milan as a "parody"of neorealism thatavoided the real ideologicalconflict between rich and poor and settledinstead for a delusivelyevangelical and apocalypticoptimism: "Apparently in line with neorealistaesthetics,.... Miracle in Milan providesinstead its parody" (MMVDS 99). Even Bazin, in one of the fewpositive assessments of Miraclein Milan, observes that none of the villainsin the filmare antipathetic(WC2 69). For a sample of the skepticalreception that greeted the publicationof Empire,see note 33. 65 On the other hand, the film'sachievement in this regard also may be said to have inspiredthe moderatelymiraculous event of the birthof Bob and Harvey Weinstein'sindependent filmmaking"empire" in the United States, as Harvey Weinsteinhimself has recentlydisclosed. In a reminiscenceabout Miraclein Milan in TheNew York Times, the producercredits the film'seffort to "allowus to believe that the impossibleis possible" withinspiring the brothersWeinstein "to bring the classicsof cinema to movie theatersacross the country."Harvey Weinstein, "Spreading Cheer, Doves and Transvestites,"The New YorkTimes, November 4, 2007. 66 Cocteau regardedMiracle in Milan as an orientaltale in the streetsof Milan.Jean Cocteau, Le Passe djfini,vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard,1983) 351. 67 Respondingwith a similardismay, Edoardo Bruno replied to Zavattini'sclaim that the filmwas not about evasionby declaring that the moral of thefilm could onlybe thatfailure must be expected if the collectiveis not organized (MMVDS 166). 68 Agamben,II Regnoe la Gloria,262. 69 Santner,"Miracles Happen," 92. 70 As it does on other topics,the filmneatly anticipates how Hardt and Negri will address the problemsof the multitudein termsof exodus and migration. 71 Like the protagonistin another great parable of the twentiethcentury, namely Kafka's TheBucket Rider, the poor in Miraclein Milan flyfor the negativereason thatthey have not foundreal solidarity.Something ominous, not romantic,ought to be discernedin the image of theirflying. 72 Negri's position on this score may be aligned withMaurice Blanchot's descrip- tion of whatDeleuze calls "revolutionaryescape": "Whatis thisescape? The word is poorlychosen to please, Courage consists,however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquillyand hypocriticallyin false refuges."Blanchot, L'amitii (Paris: Gallimard,1971) 232 as quoted in Deleuze and Guattari,Anti-Oedipus, 341. 73 Negri,Subversive Spinoza, 116.

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