<nettime> microreview of A Grammar of the Multitude by Virno

[lotu5@resist.ca]

This is a short, but very dense and very intelligent book. Overall, its
tough to trudge through so much analysis of obscure passages of Marx. I
think virno is at his worst when he's trying to claim that biopolitics is
based in "labor-power", but at his best in the ten-theses at the end of
the book. His analysis is broad and really amazing at describing some
aspects of contemporary culture. I think the whole consideration of
post-fordism is essential to understanding contemporary politics, but I
think that he doesn't actually do a very good job of describing the
multitude. I'm going to go back to Negri for that. Overall a great book,
but too economically determinist, I think. Also, I wonder how much of the
analysis of contemporary labor as always fluid and temporary really
applies to most of the economy. He tries to say that there is a balance
between people's instability in life and their instability at work, but i
think this is totally oversimplified.


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