Politics and Life. Postoperaist Perspectives

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relation between politics and life, from the point of view of postoperaism. Rather than proposing an all encompassing perspective on postoperaist authors, the paper aims to enable the analysis of contemporary relations between capital and labor, presenting different issues worked out by four postoperaist philosophers. Specifically, the work consists in three parts. In the first part, we will analyze the question of the exploitation of generic human faculties, as it has been explored by Paolo Virno. In the second part, we will comment on the “soul at work,” as it has been theorized by Franco Berardi (Bifo). In the third paragraph, we will focus on the problem of the control of the population (in a public and not biological sense) which is at the core of Maurizio Lazzarato’s work. In the fourth part, we engage with Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s conception of life as a creative force, allowing us to image a possible liberation from explotation. An introductory paragraph will locate postoperaism within the Italian scholarly tradition. The article ends asking whether postoperaism can be thought as opposed to political philosophy.