Huey P. Newton remains one the left’s intellectual enigmas. Although lauded for being the leader of the Black Panther Party, Newton is relatively unacknowledged as an intellectual. This article challenges the neglect of Newton’s thought by shedding light on his theory of empire, and the present-day value of returning to his thought. The article centres on how Newton’s critique of what he called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’ prefigures many of the elements found in the work of Hardt and Negri on empire. This (...) comparison will be used to show how Newton not only foresaw elements of the rise of contemporary neoliberal globalization, but also offered an idea of political solidarity and revolutionary politics for such a context. The article concludes by highlighting how Newton’s ideas about the need for a war of position based on ‘survival pending revolution’ presents a more theoretically and empirically salient conceptualization of resistance than his successors. (shrink)

Drawing from the writings of Deleuze and Foucault, various forms of political vitalism have emerged as one of the most dominant approaches to radical politics today. However, there has been considerable disagreement over the terms on which a debate over vitalism’s perceived utility should be carried out. This has allowed for a great confusion over what is at stake in the vitalist controversy. This article argues that an analysis of the most recent works of Maurizio Lazzarato, one of the most (...) prominent contemporary political vitalists, assists in clarifying the terms of the debate and provides a rebuttal of several of the most common criticisms of political vitalist thought. Through his engagement with the work of French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, Lazzarato has developed a distinct variety of neo-monadology that analyses the world in terms of micro-psychic forces. On the basis of this ontology, Lazzarato constructs a politics of multiplicity consisting of open strategies of experimentation and creation, which he argues offers the best form of resistance to neo-liberal capitalism. It is argued that Lazzarato is able to provide an answer to the three common charges that vitalism is a mysticism, suffers from a lack of normative foundations, and has an incoherent political programme. The article concludes with a reflection on the extent to which political vitalism is still haunted by a failure to give an account of and come to terms with the role of negativity in politics. (shrink)

This text examines some parallels between Walter Benjamin’s “critique of violence” and the theory of violence proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Whatever the differences between these two approaches, they both share an important common feature, defining the violence of state and law in terms of a “violence which presupposes itself”. This circular structure of the concept of violence renders utterly problematic the attempts to envisage a wholly other, revolutionary form of violence, which could be opposed to that of (...) the state or its law. Benjamin’s hypothesis of a divine violence which breaks the circle of the mythical one, as well as the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of the war machine, have been devised in order to come to terms with this situation. However, these concepts are not intended to serve as a basis for the legitimation of possible acts of counter-violence. What they assert is rather the fundamental and irreducible unavailability of the event in the sphere of social struggles, where our actions can neither be calculated in advance as to their results nor be ultimately justified. (shrink)

Las infraestructuras de la energía se han visto tensionadas por una serie de demandas y responsabilidades que tienden a solucionar problemas cruciales de la actualidad y del futuro, como el cambio climático y la justicia distributiva. En este artículo planteo que, para armonizar muchos de estos asuntos, una mejor comprensión de la relación entre usuarios e infraestructuras debe ser alcanzada. Para ello, sostengo que los estudios infraestructurales, en combinación con los análisis de usuarios provenientes de los estudios de Ciencia, Tecnología (...) y Sociedad (CTS), pueden contribuir significativamente a esa tarea. De este modo, desde una perspectiva genealógica y mediante el análisis de documentos de archivo de la Administración Pública de Chile, analizo el caso de los colgados: grupo de usuarios de la energía eléctrica sin relación contractual con las empresas de distribución, que emergió como un problema durante la década de los ochenta, cuando se comenzó a privatizar la infraestructura en medio de la dictadura militar. El análisis del caso de los colgados permite notar que, a pesar de la evidencia presentada en los estudios encargados para el conocimiento del perfil de este tipo de usuarios, quienes estaban a cargo de la infraestructura -empresarios, economistas y políticos- interpretaron en todo momento los resultados de dichos estudios dentro del marco racional-económico con el que se diseñan las políticas públicas a partir de esa época en Chile. Así, este caso de estudio sirve como un ejemplo de la obstinación con que se aplican los supuestos de racionalidad-económica. A pesar de la evidente contradicción entre el comportamiento de los usuarios y los supuestos con que operaban las políticas públicas, la ilusión de la racionalidad-económica como explicación representativa del comportamiento de los usuarios, continuó siendo el eje articulador de las relaciones infraestructurales. (shrink)

El presente artículo plantea un análisis del sujeto revolucionario en Los condenados de la tierra de Frantz Fanon bajo la lente de las posteriores contribuciones teóricas de Antonio Negri y Ernesto Laclau a los modos y determinaciones de construcción de los sujetos políticos en general y a través de sus valoraciones de las tesis fanonianas en particular. En concreto, se argumentará que en Fanon se encuentran matizada y entrecruzadamente algunas de las consideraciones que permiten interpretar el sujeto político que se (...) alza en la lucha de liberación nacional, primero como un sujeto múltiple y espontáneo de características tangentes a la multitud negriana, y segundo como un sujeto articulado unificadamente en relación con el pueblo laclausiano que, eventualmente, acabará recalando en nuevas correspondencias exegéticas con Negri. Este cuerpo analítico será complementado con referencias a la postura divergente de Vladímir Lenin y de Rosa Luxemburgo en torno a la cuestión del espontaneísmo y la organización del sujeto revolucionario. (shrink)

Against those who wish to marginalise Deleuze's political relevance, this paper argues that his work – including and especially that produced before his collaborations with Guattari – is not only fundamentally political but also profoundly engaged with Marx. The paper begins by focusing on different possible strategies for contesting the claim that Deleuze is apolitical, attempting to debunk this claim by briefly considering Deleuze's work with Guattari. The bulk of the paper is concerned with a close examination of the appearance (...) of Marx in both Nietzsche and Philosophy and Difference and Repetition, establishing that the ‘pre-Guattari’ Deleuze was fully engaged with both politics and Marx and demonstrating that the concepts and arguments of the Marxist politics of the Deleuze–Guattari books can be traced back to Deleuze's own work. It is argued that an analysis of Deleuze's work on Marx is significant not only for deepening our understanding of Marx, but also for understanding the possibilities for Deleuzian politics. (shrink)

Como reacción a la recuperación académica de un Marx completamente desvinculado de la tradición marxista-leninista realizada a finales del siglo xx, las dos últimas décadas han presenciado un nuevo intento, propiamente filosófico, de rescatar partes del pensamiento de Lenin, si bien se han llevado a cabo desde posiciones epistemológicas, y con objetivos políticos, altamente divergentes. El presente artículo analiza y compara las que consideramos que son las dos líneas principales de esta recuperación: La liderada por Slavoj Žižek desde posiciones sociosimbólicas (...) post-althusserianas, y la desarrollada por Antonio Negri y Michael Hardt a partir de la ontología deleuzoguattariana y el post-operaísmo. (shrink)