Paolo Virno

Paolo Virno is the author of several books, including A Grammar of the Multitude (Semiotext(e), 2002).

wordbecomesflesh

When the Word Becomes Flesh

Language and Human Nature

By Paolo Virno

Translated by Giuseppina Mecchia

Originally published in Italian in 2002, When the Word Becomes Flesh provides a compelling contribution to the understanding of language and its relation to human nature and social relationships. Adopting Aristotle’s definition of the human being as a linguistic and political animal, Paolo Virno frames the act of speech as a foundational philosophical issue—an act that in its purely performative essence ultimately determines our ability to pass from the state of possibility to one of actuality: that is, from the power to act to action itself. As the ultimate public act, speech reveals itself to be an intrinsically political practice mediating between biological invariants and changing historical determinations. In his most complete reflection on the topic to date, Virno shows how language directly expresses the conditions of possibility for our experience, from both a transcendental and a biological point of view.

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Multitude between Innovation and Negation

Paolo Virno

Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson

The publication of Paolo Virno’s first book in English, A Grammar of the Multitude, by Semiotext(e) in 2004 was an event within the field of radical political thought and introduced post-’68 currents in Italy to American readers. Multitude between Innovation and Negativity, written several years later, offers three essays that take the reader on a journey through the political philosophy of language.

Few thinkers take the risks required by innovation. Like a philosophical entrepreneur, Virno is engaged in no less than rewriting the dictionary of political theory, an urgent and ambitious project when language, caught in a permanent state of emergency impossible to sustain, desperately needs to articulate and enact new practices of freedom for the multitude.

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A Grammar of the Multitude

Paolo Virno

Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson

Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as “the people”—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of “multitude,” elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of “people,” favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. “When they rebel against the state,” Hobbes wrote, “the citizens are the multitude against the people.” But the multitude isn’t just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy.

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