PAOLO VIRNO: Materialist Philosophy in Counter-Revolutionary Times

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[00:00:08]Hello everybody. Welcome to Red May, your one month vacation from capitalism, where you have a chance to riff on red and proclaim that the market is not the solution to the problems that the market creates.

[00:00:23]This is the last week of our 10th year.

[00:00:27]Uh before we get into today's program about Po Viero, I will uh introdu I will uh tell you what's coming up in this last week. We have a a good program tomorrow and for the next three or four days. Uh tomorrow at 2 PM online, Carl Marx in America, a discussion of a a great new book by Andrew Hartman. Uh that will include Cedric Johnson, William Claire Roberts, uh Lee Clare Lab. Uh and Thursday night live, if you happen to be in Seattle and can make it to the Hood Famous Bakery in the International District at 6:30, we have Socialism and Revolution and AsianAmerican History. Scott Kurashigi is going to talk about his new book, American Peril, uh about that very topic. And on Friday, uh, May 29th at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time, critical theory and social form, that's online with Chris Okaine, Amy Death, Nima Carexmar, Andrew Hos, and Chris Nean, the moderator. Uh, if you like what we do and want to help defraise some of the expenses that we have incurred uh, doing this, you go to our website, www.c Seattle uh redmemes seattle.org and there's a button that says donate and it will give you instructions from there. But now uh without further ado, I'd like to uh introduce you to the conductor of uh the panel today on uh Paulo Verno, the late uh Italian philosopher. It's called materialist philosophy in counterrevolutionary times. Uh and uh our moderator and first presenter will be uh Alberto Tuscano.

[00:02:22]Uh Alba Albato is north of the border here on stolen indigenous territory.

[00:02:29]Teaches at uh Simon Fraser and is the author of terms of disorder, late fascism and the upcoming book communism and philosophy. Alberto, take it away.

[00:02:43]Thank you very much uh Philip. It's a real pleasure to be a red may again and thank you again for uh all the work uh you and the comrades have done to take this uh initiative forward. So um this panel is uh intended both um as a as a celebration but also an engagement uh of the work of the Italian uh philosopher and communist Paulo um who uh passed uh late um last year uh and whose work while translated uh into English uh including uh most recently his book on uh impotence by Ariana who's joining us uh as one of our panelists today I think still um requires or demands a much uh deeper and more uh serious um engagement than perhaps it has yet received. We might discuss um why uh notwithstanding a kind of um interest in an engagement with uh so-called Italian theory uh Veno's work or Venos uh philosophy um is still you know in need so I suppose of that engagement. Uh before I make some uh initial comments of my own though, I wanted to uh introduce uh the panelists who will speak uh after me. uh Jason Reid uh who's uh professor at the University of Southern Maine and uh author of uh the double shift most recently published by Verso um Alleta Still who is Aliensa and uh also now uh visiting international chair of philosophy at Parit uh and the author of a very important book called the debt of the living and uh Adana Bet who uh as I mentioned uh as well as being a um independent critical researcher and and writer who uh ran uh for a long time the excellent uh website generation online from which many of us got some of our political education is also the translator uh for seagull books of um of Paulo's um I believe perhaps final book uh at least of philosophy on impotence life in an age of frenetic paralysis. Uh uh maybe you can I think it might be your mic that's crackling a little bit. Perfect.

[00:05:32]Thank you so much. Um so I wanted to just begin by making some um comments on what I think is the the singularity and relevance uh of Veno's uh work. um drawing a little bit on um a kind of reflection that I wrote shortly after uh his death for uh elux.

[00:05:55]Um and perhaps these comments could be um organized around the theme uh or or or the title of something like towards a natural history of counterrevolution.

[00:06:07]And I wanted to think about these two terms that I think play uh a asymmetrical but I think important role in um the uniqueness of uh uh Vino's philosophical uh project. Um, counterrevolution is a is a term uh that uh is especially present in an aspect of Paulo's work that perhaps is not so well known to the um anglophone public, namely his more directly political uh journalism.

[00:06:42]um not long after uh being uh released from uh prison um for you know uh uh claims of you know insurrection against the powers of the state and the like that so many revolutionary militants of his generation in Italy were subjected to. Uh Paulo uh became a editor of the cultural pages of the independent communist newspaper in Manifesto and then continued also uh through the uh extremely important and unique journal uh Logune to continue to reflect right in a in a philosophical and political vein at once on the nature of uh the counterrevolution that followed uh the end of uh the so-called red decade in Italy but especially for Paulo the so-called movement of 77 seven of which he was very much an integral part at the time as a as a militant in the group potato and then and then the uh um autonomous organizations that kind of uh followed uh and one of the things that I think is really unique uh in uh Paulo's work uh and which gets I think covered over or or neglected in um having his writing flattened on a sort of angophone own reception of um so-called post-workers debates about postforwardism, immaterial labor and the like was to really think of uh the transformations in um capitalism's uh regimes of accumulation and forms of political rule uh as uh counterrevolutionary and by counterrevolution he intended not just a restoration but actually what he terms a kind of inverted revolution right uh there's a very uh important text in that line in uh a book that I think was important for a number of us u that Paulo co-edited with Michael Hart in 1996 on radical thought uh in Italy and I think the importance of this notion of counterrevolution also gives us a clue uh as to how which is you know at times not entirely evident um Paulo's philosophical inquiries into linguistic anthropology ology and linguistic practice which really took up at least the last couple of decades of his work linked to a political problematization even when quite uh at times quite stringently and self-consciously they weren't let's say about uh the political or about uh politics and um one of the things that um that uh Paulo's argument about counterrevolution involved was the notion that um that capitalism, the strategies of capital had managed to respond in at times particularly efficient but of course for revolutionary forces and interests.

[00:09:46]devastating ways to the um increasing significance uh of the fundamental invariant faculties and capacities of human being or so-called human nature to uh the system of production and of social reproduction. Right? So that so that capital had managed to respond to the fact that that you know biological potentials the faculty of language the ability to respond to contingency human beings underdetermined flexibility visav a world that was not an an environment.

[00:10:31]All of these were um in a sense the object of both um economic and political capture, modulation, transformation and that this in a sense was uh part of the texture of this counterrevolution. And so uh in ways that are you know philosophically quite complex uh Paulo talk about this as a kind of uh materialist or secular revelation of sorts right uh the idea that um invariant um physiological linguistic uh and natural faculties that would otherwise only emerge in moments of exception or crisis have become the routinized problem of uh contemporary life under capitalism.

[00:11:24]Uh and that this is one of the stakes of uh rethinking what revolutionary politics or what communism or what anti- capitalism might mean today. Now, uh Paulo also did this really very much as a philosopher, right? is a philosopher of language concerned with syntax with questions of negation with questions of modality with the most recendite problems of logic enunciation and so on and many of his texts I think it's very important to recognize uh stand as uh really significant interventions into the philosophy of language and linguistic anthropology let's say regardless of uh necessarily his uh uh uh communist uh commitments, right? Uh but I think it's also very important to um think through why right his uh philosophical work which interesting enough began with uh in the late 1970s in fact in the midst of his revolutionary militancy with a thesis on Dorno and parenthetically I think uh Paul's kind of pretty much one of the only figures in that whole generation or even the generation slightly before him uh that really um took up the most vital and interesting aspects of uh the tradition of critical theory namely of Adorno and and and Benjamin uh including in his forms of writing and I wanted to also underscore that you know I think he was the best philosophical pro stylist of his generation. So uh which is you know quite a task for the likes of uh Aliana. Uh but uh I I think his there is something about the reflection on language and the forms of writing and of political writing and and certainly this is true also uh in his journalism the particular you know uh uh tactical era that he had for the Italian language and syntax which is really important to note. But I wanted to uh end these uh uh reflections by also uh bringing to the for what I think is um maybe one of the most um interesting um proposals and indeed again problematizations present in his work which was his effort to rethink this paradoxical oxymoronic but also in its own way dialectical category that was key to the inter war philosophical reflections, some of the most demanding reflections uh of both Benjamin and Adorno, namely this idea of natural history.

[00:14:07]uh and um Paulo um brings this concept forward especially uh in what I think is is is perhaps if one had to read one book but you know one should read them all but if one had to read one I would say that uh the book when the word becomes flesh for me really brings together uh so many of the threads of his work and there is a chapter there I think the the penultimate chapter which deals with this question of natural history and with the fact that rather than, you know, as one might think of a philosopher who talks about politics and language and human nature, rather than drawing a politics, right, out of some conception of these biological invariance or of linguistic faculties that um Paulo in a sense making his own in a very different historical moment and with very different philosophical resources, the problem raised by Benjamin and Adorno wanted to think the the you know this kind of disjunctive synthesis so to speak right between the natural and the historical. So the historical understood as he put it in terms of the contingency of social systems and of the sequences of modes of production and the natural understood in terms of innate dispositions of the human species uh invariance and the faculty of language and and and and in those passages in particular what uh Paulo does is really um engage in this kind of uh extremely creative neither nor reading of the Fuko Chsky debate in Einhovven from 1971. Right? So neither uh the denial uh as in Fuko of of of of questions of naturalization and of human nature as simply you know relative to particular epistemic configurations. nor you know as in the case of Chomsky the idea that the fact that there are invariance or the fact that there is innateness uh tells us anything about the kind of politics that we should advance right and so I think it's very important here to underscore that uh you know Paulo did not think as in some sort of subsoian fantasy that you know there was something teologically naturally inherently or innately communist about human nature.

[00:16:30]Far from it, right? It's the it's the profound ambivalence, indeterminacy uh uh and therefore, you know, politicality of human nature which he was which he was concerned with. But uh that just opened up the spectrum of of of political possibilities, right? And therefore was a matter of thinking how nature implies the greatest variability. know this human nature as based on linguistic practice uh implies the greatest variability uh uh of experience and of political possibility. Whilst uh and this was the historical element uh you also have this uh challenge to think of these moments or perhaps also these situations in which these invariants are foregrounded, right?

[00:17:17]um these moments where um the invariant or where nature becomes a visible and politically significant fact right which at times are moments of emergency but perhaps in our own condition can also be moments of routine so I had some other reflections uh the about perhaps where uh some of Paulo's thought might uh take us or allow us to problematize a present in which questions of language, intelligence, and their capitalization have become so pronounced. But I think I'll leave that for the uh our discussion together, and I will pass the proverbial mic over on to Jason.

[00:18:05]>> Thank you. Um, thank you so much for the organizers and everyone participating.

[00:18:10]I'm always glad to uh talk about VNO. I I I write about Verno, write with Verno, I guess I would try to say some of my work and have taught him several times.

[00:18:21]In fact, I once had a student ask me where could they go to do graduate work if they were interested in studying Paulo Viero. And I kind of felt this moment of like, you know, what have I done? I've sort of convinced them that there that he he is in my view a very important philosopher but but underrated. And I think part of the underrated nature, it's not as is usually the case and I I give credit to a lot of the people who are on this this discussion that a lot of the stuff has been translated. It's not the usual usually when someone from Europe is underrated, under read, it's because they haven't been translated and Vo has, but I think people still struggle with how to make sense of him. And I was reminded and I spent a good part of this morning trying to find this quote in an interview which I'm going to paraphrase.

[00:19:07]I hope I don't do too much violence to because I could not find it in which Verno said that you can only really go so far in doing political philosophy that you either at some point had to get engaged in actual political practice and political engagement or you ended up having to go in the other direction into a more speculative relationship to to philosophy as such. And I think what's interesting about Verno's saying is that of course he has done both and is often doing both at the same time, right?

[00:19:38]Writing sort of work on philosophical kind of anthropology that is incredibly political.

[00:19:47]So in sort of sort of connecting the two dots and I and I do really like the title of this session um because as as Breto was saying I think counterrevolution is an important thought of uh of Verno but I also think he was someone who was very much preoccupied with his question of how to do materialist philosophy and for me those two dots connect around the question of work. I think that uh I first discovered Verno um as one of the many commentators on the famous so-called fragment on machines. You know this is the passage from Marxandrrisa where Markx talks about the general intellect becoming the productive force of society. And as Verno and of course Vo has this very amusing little text uh in the book Marxism beyond Marxism where he kind of compares that fragment to like the biblical quote that a a hero in a in a western will say you know they'll sort of say it again and again or if you want a more contemporary film you can go with Pulp Fiction and Samuel Jackson sort of fabricated a scripture which of course Pete Hexath recently thought was authentic but that's beside the But um that one returns to this passage again and again in these different moments and it means different things. And of course Verno argued I think quite convincingly that sort of everything that Markx had said about machines becoming the productive force that labor stepping to the side as a conscious organ.

[00:21:23]Everything had come true except the liberatory dimension of that. And there is and I think one of the the real strengths of of Verno is he is in many ways a kind of thinker of ambivalence of seeing both the possibilities of liberation and subordination often in the same historical phenomena. And one of the things I think is very interesting about his interpretation of the general intellect is he has this line in which he says the general intellect is nothing but the intellect in general. And his point being is that every time someone engages in work that we might call service work where they have to deal with with a sort of unknown situations with unpredictable human beings, deal with customers and so on. They're called upon to to site a what he would call a score. Only their score is not written in advance. It has to deal with the contingencies of the situation. they have to deal and they have to engage with the the the very capacities we as human beings have to speak and to communicate with each other and that's this sort of this general intellect and I think in doing so I think uh Verno really sort of broke the the the whole discussion around that from a sort of in some cases a misguided attempt to find a sort of new vanguard in sort of immaterial labor or some se sector of the economy me and point out that what was happening sort of permeated all work situations in the sense that as communication is part of work it it draws upon this kind of unwritten and unre repeatable score and with that I think you know Verno has some really interesting essays say on the c the use of professionalization right as this word that sort of has overspilled its boundaries in sort of talking about work it's no longer there these discrete professions you know law education etc It's everyone is expected to have a professional attitude which is this sort of strange kind of commitment to both be thoroughly engaged at all times but be thoroughly impersonally engaged at the same time which I think becomes I think in Verno's later work work you know he becomes someone who really takes seriously that um that some of Marx's seemingly most economic categories have a directly philosophical dimension that needs to be drawn out. Um this is from the book deja vu in the end of history where Viona writes the concept of labor power though recurs at every turn of phrase throughout economic and sociological analyses has itself hardly been thought about at all. professionals, philosophers shrug their shoulders at the thought of doing so and at most busy themselves with themes which are its corollary biopolitics for example. Yet this concept which is apparently self-evident and even superficial is very much tangled up with the study of historical time. The capitalist production relation is based on the difference between labor power and effective labor. Labor power is pure potential very much different from the corresponding acts of quote. And of course, one of the things the I think the real paradoxical thing that that or I guess maybe ambivalent is the right word here that Verno draws on is this idea that you know, human beings have this, you know, what distinguishes us sort of the traditions of philosophical anthropology or what distinguishes us from other creatures on this earth is our undetermined potentiality. Right? We don't have particularly good instincts for anything. uh but we have the capacities to take on various types of knowledge, skills, behaviors and so on, languages and so on. Um and that has always in some sense you know as Reo would say has been the backdrop of human history but to some extent in contemporary capitalism the backdrop of human history becomes an actual historical fact. In other words, when one sells one's labor power to an employer, what one sells increasingly is not this or that set of skills, right? I can do this. I know how to use word. I know how to use blah blah. But their capacity to acquire new skills, >> right? The the very undetermined nature of being a human being becomes itself a productive force. Now, and I think one of the things that Vinar really draws on and the ambivalence of this is that this this overlap between what is sort of natural to being human and what is contingent to this particular stage of capitalism takes on two very different appearances at the same time. One appearance as he says is it appears as if we are at the end of history that capitalism is in some sense the realization of what it means to be human because what it means to be human is to be flexible and undetermined and capable of learning new skills and that's exactly what everyone is talking about in on LinkedIn or whatever it is they're doing. Uh and so that capitalism is in some sense human nature which of course to quote Frederick Jameson is the statement which should never ever be allowed to stand and I think Vo very much agrees with that but but sees the way in which that appearance of capitalism as human nature is itself a product of the existing mode of production that we are living in which relies more and more on this capacity to learn rather than a a discrete set of tasks and abilities. But of course, there is in that same ambivalent kernel the possibility for what you know Verno sometimes refers to as a non-state public sphere of new capacities for um turning that that ability to act to the ability of sort of communist politics. And of course and I think I think one of the things that I always you know find interesting about Verno is that you know I always think of him mentally is like between you have like the incredibly sort of optimistic you know negri communism is already here it's you know then we have you know on the flip side you have Barardi we're fucking doomed.

[00:28:09]Um, and you have you have Verno kind of in the middle like just saying it's both that the possibilities of new creation and the possibilities of new domination um as he says about you know which I think one of the interesting things he says about virtuic activity is when one deals with human beings as part of their work it's one of the pressing questions and we all see this every day is how to quantify and measure that. You can't just point to the number of things you've built and say here's my work where you're building and creating relations. There is the possibility that it's always undetermined which brings in the sort of uh as he says virtuous activity is universal survi work. The possibility that the only person who can tell you or anyone how well you performed is the customer, the boss etc. which brings in a new and I think seemingly archaic right because for someone like Marx personal cvility is what capitalism destroys in sort of abstract relations but Verno I think saw that to some extent there's a revival of that cvil but also a revi with that revival of the civility of the fact that the boss can say you've not really done anything worthwhile there is the possibility of all of us sort of taking that script that we're forced to uh repeat and that score that we're playing again and again and find new and innovative and transformative uses to turn our labor into the possibility of liberation. I'll leave it I'll leave it there. Hopefully we can come back to some of these themes in the rest of the discussion.

[00:30:03]Thank you so much uh Jason and I'll now pass uh to >> Yes, thank you so much. I would like to thank first of all the organizer of this event for inviting me to participate in this uh panel dedicated to Palo recently pasted our way. Um I would say we mourn his passing as a friend, as a commemorate, a philosopher and and and as distinguished intellectual who remain committed to the struggle against the abuses of capital until the very end. And uh this is really uh something that um I would I I have I have the desire to say.

[00:31:03]Um Paulo Vno's work lies at the intersection of political philosophy, the philosophy of language and the analysis of contemporary labor as has been noted drawing on the tra tradition of the Italian oper operismo and post operismo.

[00:31:27]If he was one of the first to provide original perspectives on post forism, the role of language in new modes of production and the evolution of subjectivity in modern society.

[00:31:47]One of Verno's most significant contribution is for me is an analysis of the transition from forism to post Fordism.

[00:32:02]And while forism was characterized by standard standard standard desires industrial production and a clear separation between manual and intellectual labor post forism is marked by the integration of the two uh dimension and VNO pointed out the cont that contemporary Work increasing requires linguistic, cognitive and relational skills and that communicating the cooperating and managing information have become central productive activities.

[00:32:51]In this context, Verno speaks of immaterial labor, emphasizing how typically human capacities such as language, thoughts, and creativity are directly exploited.

[00:33:10]And this involves a profound transformation in the relationship between life and labor. as um Verno an alli analyzed very well with almost I would say prophetic clarity.

[00:33:31]He highlights the fact that in the in the post formism era, there is no longer a clear distinction between working time and free time as social life as a wall becomes potentially productive and drawing on concept from Kark's VO assigns a central role to general al intellect that is socially diffused intelligence.

[00:34:06]And in contemporary capitalism, knowledge is no longer confined to machines or specialized elites, but is embodied in the linguistic and cognitive capacity of the labor force.

[00:34:26]And this and this is a an an issue particularly topical today in the age of artificial intelligence.

[00:34:39]According to Veno, this collective intelligence is both a productive resource and a potential basis for nonhierarchical forms of cooperation.

[00:34:56]However, the main issue is that capital captures and exploits this collective intelligence generating new form of precarity and insecurity.

[00:35:13]And I discussed this aspect in particular in particular uh with VNO while writing my book the depth of the living which was translated by Ariana Bo and I would like to take this opportunity to uh thank her.

[00:35:33]The most interesting aspect of his perspective concerning precisely concerns precisely the fact that he emphasizes the ambivalence of contemporary transformations.

[00:35:49]According to him, the same futurist that enable greater freedom that is flexibility, creativity, linguistic cooperation are also sources of precarity and fear. And in particular, he analyzes the role of polit political emotions such as insecurity and anxiety which becomes structural traits of life in advanced capitalism.

[00:36:25]In this sense, fear is not mereily an individual reaction but a social phenomenon tied to a state of perpetual perpetual instability. And according to VNO, it can be exploited politically, but it can also be transform into an opportunity for collective action to affect emancipation.

[00:36:56]So finally, I would like to mention a book that I particularly loved in Italian. it the title is recordo del present remembering the present which was published in 1999 as far as I know it is not being translated into English I don't know in in any case in this book Paulo Verno provides a clear critic of the idea of the end of history a concept that characterized the neoliberal counterrevolution, the high day of globalization as a triump triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism.

[00:37:49]According to this idea, history understood as the conflict between major political and ideological systems has re re uh reached a kind of complexion. Vno challenges this view on several levels.

[00:38:11]First, he argues that the idea of an end of history arises from a linear and progressive conception of historical time as if there were a final point of stability ino present remembering the the present time. By contrast, VNO insists that the present is inherently unstable in un instable and trans transpers by unrealized potentialities.

[00:38:50]It is never closed.

[00:38:54]A central aspect of his critic concerns the relationship between memory and the present moment.

[00:39:03]Vo refers to a memory of the present to suggest that elements of the past that have not been achieved coexist within the present. And this means that history does not progress through defi definitive resolutions but rather through reactivations and repetitions.

[00:39:34]Consequently there can be no through end.

[00:39:40]Fartmore Verno links this analysis to changes in contemporary post for this capitalism. Rather than marking a def definitive stabilization, test this transformations render historical time even more open and conflictual.

[00:40:05]Precarity, constant change, and new forms of life all demonstrate that history is far from over.

[00:40:18]Finally, against any against any anyological view, Vno emphasizes the contingent and plural character of historical processes.

[00:40:33]There is not no necessary or final outcome. Rather, multiple possibilities remain constantly in play. In short, VNO's critic is that the idea of the end of history is a carefully constructed theoretical illusion intended to present to present a closed word. Conversely to this theory, he argues that the present is not the end point of history, but rather a dynamic field in which the past and the future continue to intervene and repen.

[00:41:22]This is particularly relevant today given that the theory of the end of history has been disapproved of by the events in in Ricardo de Presente. Paulo Vno also reinterprets historical materialism in a nonorthodox way, distancing itself from the more rigid deterministic version associated with some Marxist transition. The crux of his argument is his criticism of historical materialism based on necessary laws and a linear sequence of stages. For instance, the progression progression from fodalism to capitalism etc. In this sense, he rejects a reading of carmarks that views that views history as a process driven by an inevitable logic.

[00:42:30]Um so um I will in short I would say that Vno insist that the past is never completely overcome and this is also a Benyaminian uh idea that I think is reinterpret by Po Vo. This challenges the idea present in some version of historical materialism of a linear suggestion of epox that leaves one another behind and the past remain active within the present continually reopening the historical process. In short, VNO presupposes a nondeological and noneterministic historical materialism.

[00:43:29]Material conditions matter, but they don't know close history into a necessary path. They keep it open, contingent and transversed by multiple possibilities, possibilities of revolution, possibilities of changes. Thank you.

[00:43:58]Thank you very much uh uh thank you also for uh reminding us uh about uh one of Paulo's I think most uh important I think now also resonant interventions which was actually translated into English but perhaps has not been uh read enough under a title that's a little >> hides the Italian called deja vu and the end of history.

[00:44:24]>> Okay. Okay. Thank you. Oh, see there there you go. Jason has uh has visual proof. Uh but thank you so much uh for that uh Electra. And uh now I will pass it over to Ariana who I think is frozen but Oh, there you are.

[00:44:47]Okay.

[00:44:47]>> Can you hear me?

[00:44:49]>> Yes.

[00:44:50]>> Okay. Um, thanks for inviting me and uh I wish I was there at the festival. I've never been to Seattle, but um I'm sure you're having lots of fun. Um, and I'm really honored to speak of a a philosopher that has really um been very present in in my life and I've always read his books closely and felt uh very uh in agreements or disagreements very close to his model of thinking especially his ambition of um on what to do with um with philosophy and how to um deal with politics in philosophy.

[00:45:40]So, um I wanted to start with uh just a reflection on um something that he said um during the trial. um the trial that he was put under for arms struggle uh in the 70s and he did two by then he'd done two and a half years in um preventive imprisonment and um by this time he'd um uh he he was facing the judge and we translated the transcripts of the trial for an artistation by Viscotti. We translated those transcripts about 11 years ago and they just came out last November. So if you want to read um the court hearing um transcriptions in English of those uh those trials of activists autonomous activists in the 70s and 80s um from the movement of those years um yeah get the book is called the trial Rosella Biscotti the artist who um put together these audio files and then transcribed them in Italian and we translated them in English. Um so anyway um Ringo's interventions during the trial and his approach to judge is really interesting.

[00:46:58]Um and right at the beginning of his opening speech and confronting the judge he says we've been revolutionary communists even though heretic in contents and he's obviously referring to the critic of laborist that he was part of and at that point is keen to uh state his extraneous that he's extraneous to the facts of his of the charges and he he'd been charged with arms struggle. Um and at the time uh the con accusations that the red brigades led at uh people from the movement uh was that um they were irresponsible because they uh refused to arm spontaneity. And so for um people like him being charmed struggle was particularly um uh insulting. And uh he he was keen to explain why those charges uh how he did not commit the crimes he was charged with. But um also that he want he didn't want to talk about the crimes he did not commit. He wanted to talk about uh the things that he did do and why they were not crimes. And so in this uh dialogue he says many things that were certainly uh not legal in those years were legitimate in terms of the common sense of hundreds of thousands of people. Uh and the judge replied or this distinction between legality and legitimacy in some is somewhat peculiar to you. Uh it's not common amongst jurists uh to put it mildly. And Berno says no naturally not indeed. However, it was common to many people's way of doing things and ways of living. Uh, and the judge here gets a bit angry and says, "Well, this is not what I want."

[00:48:54]And VM says, "Well, I just want to explain myself and I wasn't seeking legitimation."

[00:48:59]Um and consider that uh this is uh when he starts for example mentioning things like that uh so in this distinction between uh things that were not legal but still legitimate, he starts talking about why if a bunch of homeless people occupy an empty building, it is it might be not legal, but it's certainly legitimate. and that loses the the attention of the judge.

[00:49:32]But um one thing that always strikes me about everything he's done is and this is one example is it always manages to good to make some good out of bad and in the dire circumstances I not just not in opportunities or hopes in a vague sense but actually in literally in potential and uh his I think militancy intellectual philosophical was always a struggle against defeats men against the easy option of joining the ranks of you know the critical critics and his attitude was um one of defiance so defiance against defeatism um so I'd like to take few moments um to uh just list what uh struck me as uh examples of his attitudes the first aspect uh that uh I think it's really important that he's done in a unique way is um to constantly make a gesture against exterior towards exteriority.

[00:50:40]Uh so in all of his books of philosophy he in different ways uh but connected ways he explores the he he adds to the critique of uh the ide of the sovereign individual uh in a manner that is very unique to him I think and it's worth exploring precisely because of this ability to make good of bad or to actually be defiant against defeases. Um so the idea of the sovereign individual is a controversial concept. It points to difficulty for the I think to apprehend itself as an object which for Kant um uh became an account of a subject as substance and uh differentiated him from senosis ontology. Um and in the word when the word become flesh which is one of my favorite books too um Vo makes quite an outrageous move in trying to in resolving the problem of the transcendental unity of our perception that uh Emanuel Khan posited. thought just to explain K said that um uh uh in a way the I think is necessary because if we didn't have this idea of the I think the coal philosophy if we didn't have this uh activity we would be mutable with any perception that uh comes to us so for the manifold representations that are given um in intuition there must be something that makes this representation mind and so he struggled to to call this something you know it could not be substance and there must be kind of a common self-consciousness that we can ascribe to to this is looking for what this is and this must be for count I think as an act of spontaneity and he calls it pure perception it kind of means consciousness but as an act as an activity not as a state or as a stage and uh for count it's an activity of reflection of consciousness and not one of perception of inner sense. So it describes the actual structure where the mindful representations and perceptions come together into something. And so this I think for K means that um uh in a way uh means that we encounter constantly a fallacy or a paralogism calls a logical fallacy where we try to think as ourselves as a thinking substance because we can't both represent ourselves to us and be the representing uh actor if you like. So we can never reach through knowledge this ontological substratum like the soul or the metaphysical eye which rational psychology claims to be able to do. Uh and this is kind of what marks our finitude in in the physological terms.

[00:53:38]So this is K's critique of rational psychology a really interesting passage theorism and remains in a way question for anyone who does not want to fall into idealism.

[00:53:50]uh still must describe something like consciousness and how it is that uh we can be reflexive beings. Voles is um what can't thus an ambition to derive an identity of the subject from the logical linguistic prerequisites of the population I think uh as a mark of fetishes and uh what Berno does is to show that self-consciousness or this transcendental unity of perception is actually revealed not in the I think but in the I speak and this just such a genius move consider we must write in is uh you know we we we are familiar with the uh rejection of uh the philosophy of subject in this after the second world war in Europe and how that kind of is fed by also reflection of language of structurism and what outcomes all of that critique um um brings about but is saying you know what you're actually seeing when you're looking for the transcendental unity of a perception is not the I think but it's the I speak um and it's an act rather than a flow and it's an act and it's an act that is linguistic so for Verno the I speak is the synthetic unity in so far as it's executed performed and inserted in the word at once uh Verno says the I think it's a descriptive statement because it does nothing more than assert the incontrovertible psychic reality ity.

[00:55:26]Whereas the I speak on the other hand is a performative statement that going beyond the psychic element shares in the exteriority and manifestation of practice. Here and elsewhere V is asserting a sovereign sovereignty of exteriority against the sovereignty of introspection and um this turning against the sovereignty of introspection and the solitism of the coto is important also at the ontological level. And Vner recognizes this and in this in a way he's uh kind of taking u charge of a problem that uh was left open really by crystal theory and I'm thinking about Adorno here as you already mentioned uh Adorno in this little brilliant book called the jargon about authenticity uh says um the ego posits itself as higher than the word and becomes subjective to the word precisely ly because of this this hard hardened inwardness of today idealizes its own purity. The outset of contemporary ontology coincides with the hold of inwardness. The retreat of ontology from the course of the word is also a retreat from the empirical content of subjectivity.

[00:56:45]And um and this is Adorno but uh it's probably for me it's kind of the premise on which VNO's work uh could be built.

[00:56:57]Uh because uh when VO's transposing the question of the eye onto the level of language and saying what we're seeing here is not the I think but it's the I speak. Um he does in a way he does it in a way that creates this we centered space um that immerses us completely in the empirical in the work but without affecting a total dispersal into discourse as we might find in in Fuko for instance um and from Vo it's in fact the mark of a subjectivity that's also an embrace of the word one of his major achievements is to keep the debate on language within the realm of social theory And uh he is for me the legacy of the structuralist rejection of modernity that rather than disappear the subject into its critique of the philosophy of the subject and the political processes of individuation instead develops a philosophy of subjectivity that is befitting for our finds. And I could say a multitude here just as a word. Um I say social theory because his brilliant work on language um does something more than uh attempt to solve the problem of the transcendental union about perception and the paris reason. Uh because he then he then does something uh on recognition with language and there we realize how important it is to insert this reflection into the word. Um for him uh language in a way negates the possibility of inter subjective empathy.

[00:58:35]In his work on uh negativity language and negativity uh he says if it wasn't for language it wouldn't be possible for a human being not to not recognize a member of his of his own species as such. Um and this is really important um reflection that he makes. So it's um for him um he's asking uh every he's asking how do you account for the fact that the human animal is capable of not recognizing another human animal as a fellow creature there's always this permanent possibility in extreme cases such as cannibalis harits but it is also manifest in paler shades everyday communication and please as its limit is possible ility for no recognition also affects the thought and permeates the fabric of human interaction. Um so this uh not the ability to say this is not a man. The ability for a man to say this is not a man expresses this uh expresses a kind of a heterogenity and difference rather than an opposite and and an indeterminacy and but and a nonrecognition. But at the same time, language having this possibility of negation intrinsically to it radicalizes into subjective aggressivity and pushes uh to a threshold of miscoition of one's fellow human. And this is the realm that we have of propaganda, persuasion, deception, misinformation, cyber warfare. Um so Venus is kind of on the one hand giving us a real um possible way of conceiving of uh the subjectivity uh that is a social way but immediately plunges us into the worst of its possible uh manifestation. And for him in the public sphere and here is again you know counterpoint to habas is the outcome of this process of negation and negation of negation because as those who say this is not a man there's also those who say this is not not a man. So it's the negation of negation our task is to experiment new and more effective ways of placing a known before known.

[01:01:00]Um I the the the second aspect for me is this openness that Electra brilliantly uh really summed up um earlier. Um there's always a sense of an opening to the world. Bruno says because there's no correspondence between human abilities and human tasks or functions between the perception stimuli and their biological finality or between what we're what we're exposed to and uh that having some kind of physical purpose.

[01:01:34]There exists this unpredictability this indeterminacy and this is the space of decision or indecision of politics.

[01:01:42]This is theural mode of this openness to the world, openness against determinism.

[01:01:49]Um so uh I think the um book that is coming out next uh in June I think uh on influence um is also part of this trajectory of exploring um this openness and where uh what you also discussed this kind of recognition of always there being potential in every situation is ambivalence of possibility ities where where it is at the moment. And in the book on impotence, Ver revisits um Aristotle's metaphysics for a diagnosis of our times. Um and it's interesting that uh Aristotle in the M physics tried to explain the idea of movement and the role of change of motion and uh in a way that would not imply necessarily a shift from non-being to being which run against the principle of no contradiction and to to to do this to explain movement Aristotle introduces a distinction between that tilts the whole question and the distinction is between potentiality and actuality and he is movement as a shift from a way of being potentially to another way of being actually. So rather than being one thing means not being another you know being potentially to another way of being actually effectively granting to becoming a legitimate ontological role that would not contribute the principle of principle of no contradiction. So motion is the making actual of what movement is the making actual of what potentially is as such. Um now Venus uh starts from this c crucial distinction between potentiality and actuality to uh to make a claim that might strike you as counterintuitive and that's partly the seduction of so much of the work because uh it really has this effect this kind of like Russian formless effect of total defamiliarization and every premise once anyone gets slightly comfortable with uh what's happening something comes that turns everything upside down into directions that are unexpected and that's part of the pleasure of reading him really.

[01:04:22]Anyway, this book on impotence he starts from this premise that is slightly counterintuitive. He says we are impotent today because we have too much potential. Uh if we're targeted by misfortune, we cannot suffer from self-improvement to lifelong learning.

[01:04:39]are constantly busy acquiring new skills for tasks we know we'll never carry out and he's trying to really capture the mood of um our exeonic existence in contemporary capitalism. Uh we have more information than ever before yet so little knowledge. We're more connected than ever yet so lonely. Life has never been this frenetic still. We're paralyzed. Um and um uh this is uh and this is his exploration of why you know what happens to the too much potential that creates this total hold of um uh eventually not preventing change or movement and real kind of shifts in society. So um it's uh it's not a therapeutic book uh and uh it does not offer comfort to defeated uh but um VR is always a an author that does that does not write for the sake of it. he he he really dissects our contemporary predicaments in ways that um will make us see things very differently. And so um that's probably all I'd like to say.

[01:06:03]>> Okay, thank you so much uh Alana. Um and I think now we will open it up for a discussion. I'm not entirely sure um what the procedure is. We have one I think we have one question uh in the chat that was uh uh passed on to me by the red m organizers and then maybe we we will wait for other questions. If not we can ask each other questions and so on and so forth. Um so the I will just pose the question that's in the chat uh first. Maybe we'll have others passed on. So this is really fora but I guess we can also uh explore it uh more broadly as a as a quartet which has to do with whether uh voy rejects the hegalian dialectic or does he complicate and refine it. Um, so I don't know if you wanted to uh since you're the one who uh the question is addressed to Ben and you obviously brought up uh that uh infamously Hegelian theme of the end of history and uh via the no's objections to it. Ela if you had some comments in that direction.

[01:07:15]>> Yes, I think that Vo rejects fi the Hegelian dialectic. He is Zarana already said but also the others he is the thinkers of the negation and then he is maybe uh so um the thinkers of the adorn adornia adorn adorno the the the critic the he he repeat in some way the critic of adorno to Hegel but Um in another sense I would say that is the the question of the language as Ariana said is very important to understand the role of the negation in this critic to the egalian dialectic that is the language is the human experience through which uh the negation is always present and this negation is also the experience erience of the potentiality. That is it is not important the uh actualization and then the overcoming of the negation in a gelian sense. But for VNO is what is the uh originary um human experience is the experience of so negation and then of this potentiality.

[01:08:57]This in the sense of negation and potentiality are always the possibility to open up the opening. Please >> um yeah maybe to add to that I think there are some uh um I mean I haven't tried to do this at all systematically but I think it's interesting to look uh across uh VNO's work for uh uh his uh at times episodic but also very nuanced and incisive engagements with Hegel. just had his his first book which was mainly uh written uh during his time in prison but ultimately published in the I believe mid9 mid to late 1980s uh convention and materialism and only recently translated into English um and he draws uh um quite a bit uh on the phenomenology to think uh in a very counterintuitive way to resonate with Alana about uh in this case the question of the experiment, um the relationship between the abstract and the concrete and of course even um that um you know absolutely crucial moment in the phenomenology uh the section and sense certainty, right? The the abstractness uh the profound abstractness of the seemingly most concrete act of language, right?

[01:10:29]uh the saying this or even indeed certain forms of saying I. So I think there are uh certainly moments uh in the Hegelian dialectic, not its full world historical or world spiritual concatenation, but I think dialectical thought in its Hegelian guys or or or at least fragments of that dialectic are absolutely crucial in Vno. Not least of course because also of the place of uh of Adorno, the place of uh uh Marx uh and and of other um and of other thinkers of the of the dialectic. Um I don't know if others had uh had comments on on this uh this vexed uh question. Um I I had one thing I just thinking about that you know it just struck me that it'd be very unveal dialect like a direct sort of statement like that like seems very >> out of sync with his philosophical practice in some ways. I mean I think that one of the things I I find very interesting about Verno is that he often will draw as you were talking about right like Hegel shows up but it's Hegel as a thinker of language and negation rather than as a thinker of like the dialect or it's it's that whole the whole saying that this becomes the problem the same way that as I was saying like abstract labor becomes not like an economic category becomes sort of the basis of a philosophical anthropology and The same way that like in Verno like idol talk and curiosity from Haidiger become not like parts of a of a fundamental ontology. they've become parts of a kind of socio analysis of like 20th century like modernity and like and I think there is a way in which like Verno is constantly reading against the grain of different philosophers where you know he either will engage with like very canonical Marx Hegel etc in ways that are surprising or he'll find his own sort of like like you know just like he reads Berg's son for a theory about history like which is Like you know Burkson he says but Bergson says this thing about déja vu like when deja when you have déja vu you're memoring the conditions you're remembering memory itself the constitutive role that memory plays in experience and he basically says well that's déja vu in history is like the the fundamental condition of history labor power is appearing as a phenomenal experience within history and so there is there's just something to be said about about like Verno's practice of philosophy I guess is what I'm trying to say about the way in which he engages with the philosophers that I think is both part of what makes him very engaging but may also be part of what makes it hard for people to situate him.

[01:13:40]>> And I think his philosophy is in many ways also uh including in those uh counterintuitive dimensions that you've all rightly noted. one of the best um exemplifications of that famous quip by Lenin right u that intelligent idealism is always superior to stupid materialism right and there are you know there's a passage uh one of the first things that I translated by him it was in the graduate journal of philosophy at war plea it was this excellent short essay two masks of materialism which I think also is draws from one of these um articles that he'd uh written for manifest or or or maybe uh you know where he says something along the lines of like you know there's there is a so much more to learn about the mechanisms of these forms of capital that uh exploit right uh linguistic capacity from you know a close reading of um Khan's critique of pure reason uh than uh than there is you from uh you know some kind of empirical sociology uh of a call center or whatever, right?

[01:14:57]Uh so these provocations, right? There was also one that was making the social media rounds which is a clip from a very I thought very smart documentary which I think might be called Wagokun that was made about in 2014 >> uh about Vno which also includes the uh the recordings of the trial some of the recordings from the trial which are really remarkable uh that Adana was uh mentioning and you know that clip that made the rounds actually I now remember was about Hegel right where he says you know I don't I don't understand what you know these young people have about you know going to like techno raves I mean like yeah once but then it becomes so monotonous he says you know the sheer like bodily libidinal excitement you can get from properly reading a couple of pages of Hegel right so um so yeah that that kind of uh came to mind there's another question uh here says uh um this is via I guess the YouTube chat vos uh the transcend ental as the we speak versus the I think relocates trans individuality to the space of relationality um a usable technique and idea of labor in the parlance an analysis of Simondon so I don't know uh if anyone uh wanted to perhaps you Jason to begin with since I know you've written a lot about it but maybe also Alana and Alleta talk about the place of Simon in Vno's work that might maybe say a couple of words about who Simon was for those in the in you know not exactly the most uh famous uh 20th century French philosopher for people outside of AD vo etc kind of ambit is the idea of this um not impossibility that the intelligence is something individual and sim connected this conception of trans individual. It is a dimension then transit the individuality through um the the the importance of the technique. That is the intelligence is also related to life as technique and VNO connected this also to idea the uh form of life. No that is central to his conception also of life as politics life the form of lives are politics also because are not ne are never individual from the origin from the original human experience and then he reinterpret this idea of simond that is not only of Sim Don but um so uh particularly from him of trans individual I don't know if I so I have the idea that Vno could be here and very ironic about his uh personal um so concept because it was so when I spoke always ironic about philosophy and this is was really and so a ton and an estim very very important antique for thought for thinking.

[01:18:58]>> Yeah. And he actually brings up that question of the relational dimension of transindividuality.

[01:19:05]Uh actually in that discussion of the Fuko Chomsky debate, right? It is precisely the the limit of the naturalism, the materialist naturalism um in the cognitive sciences but especially in the work of Chsky derives like you were suggesting from thinking that one can have this discussion of the linguistic faculty and uh of human nature at this uh individualized level, right? And that that the uh the inability to grasp the problem of transindividuality is also at the source of the uh profound political limitations of the kind of um you know Rousoan anarchism for want of a better word that Chomsky is proposing against um against Fuko. Um actually this is you know the question is also kind of dear to me because it was over Simondon that I first came into uh uh contact and correspondence uh with Paulo he for those of you who who wouldn't know it >> uh he translated actually one of the couple of books that he translated but he translated um Simon Don's uh psychic and collective individuation which is the second half of his large uh thesis this um and and I think he's one of the you know along with Balibar and and perhaps a couple of others one of the more uh interesting um readers of uh of Simon Don's uh work and I think it's also um striking right that he built this very curious uh pantheon right >> uh of uh of materialist thinkers for him right that really don't fit standard um standard collections, right? You know, so Simon, Sebastian, Sebastiano, uh Ernesto de Maltino and so on, right?

[01:21:15]So this this uh curious materialist uh genealogy of his own. Alana, did you uh have something you wanted to add to this question? No. Um I mean one thing I was going to ask uh all of you um it it you know Aliana mentioned uh and others as well. I think the um you know this uh creative uh uh uh re uh appropriation right of of Marx's granda and of the fragment of machines and the and the rethinking of um the question of labor power and it was kind of inevitable for me you know trying to work you know uh work through some of this material especially the ones you know the the aspects around uh the capitalist counterrevolution and the place of linguistic capacity in it. It's difficult not to, you know, think of the gargantuan expropriation and capitalization of linguistic acts and linguistic capacities that has now pervaded most of the institutions of what perhaps anacronistically was called immaterial labor or cognitive capitalism. Right? So on the one hand you know one of the things that comes to mind is that actually you know on the one hand one could say that that post-workerist moment right uh especially in the 1980s in Italy a kind of pioneering engagement with the the place right of uh language uh in uh um strategies of of exploitation and uh and governance of capitalism that actually reading it's strange to read those debates now because actually there's an aspect of that fragment of machines which they rarely dealt with but which is now just so you know evident which is that that whole chapter is about fixed capital and now just to put it somewhat provocatively but you know language just is fixed capital you know like the the the terraforming of you know giant swades of the earth with data centers with their you know obvious enormous extractive and ecological uh footprints sort of gives the lie right to the idea that this was only about cooperation right or that this was only about the capacities of you know so at the same time reading vo um especially when the word becomes flesh I was thinking so much about this distinction that he makes which again he says is what cognitivism and chsky doesn't grasp right is that they treat the dunamis the potential ial ity of the linguistic faculty as though it were like a super language, right? As though it was a super grammar, a super language, something that is already determined albeit at this kind of combinatorial level. And so it made me think that you know in many ways like the large language models um the you know what goes by the name of artificial intelligence today is uh really the capitalization automation and turning into fixed capital of languages is but interestingly enough it's a complete obliteration of the very question of there being this underdetermined language anguage faculty, right? So much so that of course even at the pedagogical level the idea is that oh actually if you want to deal with this you basically have to create these like you know kind of Faraday cages where people I like can actually have a language capacity right like where there are no computers or people just you know I including in in North American universities that never had this practice where people are starting to basically reinvent like the old Italian university as a way to deal with AI right it's just like oh we'll just have oral exams and that's it because this is the only way that like we can actually form judge and test like the capacity right for for thinking and for speech.

[01:25:31]So in any case I I I find it very striking right to read in this very moment uh these qu the this work that's so centered right on language when now this has become like actually the the source of absurd levels of you know like the capitalization of these companies which is driving much of the stock market is just like the direct exploitation of the production of linguistic utterances and I think that's quite bewildering right and it's no longer thinking oh this is just exploiting our linguistic activity as like you know loose precarious postfordist workers or or even as people who you know kind of consume and therefore create science no this is something like I think much deeper in a sense right and uh I just find it in interesting to take these counterintuitive aspect of veno and perhaps mobilize them into thinking of the politics of this moment where the question of language has become political but in a very different way I guess that that in like postforwardism as understood in that 80s to '90s moment. So I just wondered if anyone had any reflections on on that, you know, and the fact that this is the, you know, that that that actually we're also at this paradoxical level where it's the manual labor like literally, you know, where I live like if you wanted a secure job, you want to be an electrician, right? Not like a programmer or even a trader or even a lawyer, right? So it's a it's a curious moment even for what we understand to be like sellable labor power.

[01:27:22]>> Yeah. And I mean part of um I think part of Verno's correction to Markx on the general intellect is this idea that the general intellect is not just in fixed capital. It also is in subjectivity.

[01:27:35]Right. And I think that that kind of tracks with the moment he's trying to talk about the post forest moment where you you can't just I mean we're operating a computer is fundamentally different than operating like the steam engine on a train where all you need to know is like where to shovel the colon right where the the machine embodies sort of thermodynamics and you just have to sort of keep it running whereas the computer you know need you you constantly need to communicate and talk and interact with others to for to function whereas is part of what's happening with with with large language models is to some extent the increasing fixed capitalization of this cooperative ability. In fact, there's a an interview that Verno did with radical philosophy where he kind of does this reading of like he uses talks about Simon a lot. In fact, it's called reading Simon dome but he he employs kind of Marxist categories. He makes this distinction between like reification which in which something becomes like a thing and like where the publicness of the intellect is like this thing that manifests itself and fetishization which in some sense oludes the very conditions of its production right and you could definitely say that like LLM are definitely they're they're fetishes right because no one wants to talk about like how and what way they function you just write the words in and it tells you your you know you ask it like am I right and like dealing with this social problem. It says, "You're definitely right in dealing with a social problem."

[01:29:03]Then you go down like a, you know, a rabbit hole of psychosis because like you're constantly, you know, they function by oluding the very conditions of their production and appearing I the very use of the term artificial intelligence is all about that, right?

[01:29:19]Is to make them appear as intelligence when they are to some extent all about, you know, probabilities, linguistic probabilities really.

[01:29:29]But but I do think you're right. I think there's a sense in which like Verno seem at least in the publications I've written, I don't know if we ever engaged these questions, brought us up to this moment, but the moment has fundamentally shifted around all these questions that were very central to Verno about language, capital, labor, all these things are are going undergoing a profound mutation. And I guess only I can really say about that is like is that to try and maintain sort of a verno sort of inspiration to try and think both the conditions of domination and the possibilities of liberation that are contained in these moments. Although sometimes it is definitely hard to see the the liberation because as you point out so much of the response has either been sort of an accelerationist embrace or a kind of like return to let's break out the blue books, let's break out the oral exams to kind of you know create what to some artificial conditions for what may have already be in the past. I guess on some level >> another artificial intelligence.

[01:30:46]>> Yes.

[01:30:49]M.

[01:30:50]>> So now I think that the the analysis of the labor force of Vno is very relevant today precisely because he emphasizes the the the concept of force, the concept of potentiality that is the kern of the cap capitalization and it is precisely what happened today and there is um contradictory um contradictory attention about this in Verno. I think that is from one side he have the temptation of the exile of go out. No, the exile of all of these. But the other in on the other side, he emphasized the potentiality of the labor force as such in term of potentiality of changes within also uh again within the the the the kernel of the oarism.

[01:32:08]And this is um this aspect is uh co is is present.

[01:32:16]Th this both aspect are present I think in in Vno perspective in Vno analysis and maybe also the exile is not really an a go uh out for ever and this uh this negation this conflict that is within in uh the capital precisely because the the possibility the the force is the power uh that is within this capitalization at that could be reappropriate uh is I think a very important aspect in in Berno.

[01:33:15]Thank you, Alleta. Uh, Adana, did you want to add anything?

[01:33:31]Yeah, I I I did not detect in um in VMO um unlike other generations um from France and Italy were working on the changes and posters in the um labor process.

[01:33:53]Uh never quite detected the sociological slant to his uh contributions. So uh while I understand your point about things having changed from that perspective and having acquired a a a different significance in terms of uh just the sheer occupation of uh space and of the environment.

[01:34:21]Uh I would actually think that um I mean in a sense the analysis of language is so uh central to uh the appreciation of us as human animals. um that kind of uh bypasses uh a sociological configuration that can be identified as this category of work under this stage of capitalism. So um yeah so in a way while everyone's describing a process of colorization that can take different forms and different shapes uh the fundamental um reality of of language and uh uh is something irrespective of that in a way uh that that is important to consider and in fact reading the books Um now I think uh what struck me was how true really it is that while there can be a kind of um uh almost pre-linguistic certainly pre-individual um we centric u presence of um the ability for beings to have empathy to um um in the activity of neuron neurons that he he engages with. Um the entry of language and into subjectivity is uh almost um uh a form of aggression and a form of aggressivity. And in a way, if anything now, we are experiencing that at uh quite in a quite a forceful way, I think. Um and so, uh yes, I mean, uh that's probably what I would I would say. Um and refraining if you can participate to discussion and refrain to comment on AI. Um but I would try.

[01:36:40]Um and uh yeah, it's um it's definitely an interesting time. Uh but I don't know if um we can really see as kind of a a paradigm shift to be honest.

[01:36:58]Uh even within um a more heterodox marum understanding of uh uh of capitalism personally.

[01:37:14]So that's that's probably well thought.

[01:37:18]>> Great. Uh well, thank you so much uh for that, Alana. And I think um Oh, there's Phillip. Uh so I think we've come to our uh our natural historical end. And uh >> that is not an end.

[01:37:37]>> That is not an end. That is not an end.

[01:37:39]Uh >> no, I think you've started a million discussions here. When I was sitting listening uh to Electra, I just ran over to the bookshelf and grabbed a grabbed a copy of Dja Vu, which I hadn't read. I I had a number of years and started to page through it sort of absently in the pauses and I got so sucked in.

[01:38:00]>> It's a wonderful book.

[01:38:01]>> It really is.

[01:38:03]>> And sorry, I I don't want I don't remember that was translated. Sorry.

[01:38:11]Again, again, I think in part because it it it deserves a lot more of a of a discussion or an engagement than than than it got. So, there isn't, you know, the aside from the people in this call, there hasn't been that much uh uh writing about the material, but hopefully uh that will change.

[01:38:32]>> Right. Well, thanks everybody. Uh this is >> Thank you for hosting, Phil.

[01:38:39]>> Yeah, thank you. Uh uh let us all spend 30 seconds thinking of of the man who produced all this wonderful stuff that's inspiring our discussions today and further we'll remember uh Paulo Vera even though the notion of memory as I find at the beginning of deja vu is quite complicated uh and so uh everybody uh quickly I'm I'm just going to uh put you clue you into things that are happening.

[01:39:12]I mentioned them in the beginning, 2 o'clock tomorrow, uh Carl Mars in America, a discussion of Andrew Hardman's book. Uh 6:30 at night in Seattle, uh if you happen to be there at the Hood Famous Bakery in the International District, uh Scott Korigi will discuss his new book on Asian-American racism.

[01:39:33]uh or Asian anti-Asian racism in America, not Asian racism. And then uh on uh Friday, uh critical theory and social forum uh with Chris Ocaine and friends. Uh that's at 11:00 a.m. So uh join us for this last big week of Red May. And thanks for coming. Thank you.

[01:39:57]Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.