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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MLN. http://www.jstor.org 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 pes- simism,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 'histori- cal 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 with- out 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