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This interview with Italian philosopher Antonio Negri was conducted in Rome in July 2003. The central theme is the condition of exile understood in the interstitial, postmodern sense of the nomadism and métissage of the third millennium as well as the mutations of cosmopolitanism. On the basis of Negri's interpretation of the Spinozist concept of productive imagination, exile (exilium: outside this place) is discussed as a liberating journey, implying the nonplace to come, the possibility of ethical action and the conditions of Utopia. Tradition is also an important theme of discussion, specifically relating to Italian ideas and movements in the twentieth century.
Key Words: Antonio Negri, Exile, Spinoza, Multitude
Translated by Carin McLain
Cadet: The central theme of our discussion is the condition of exile: not exile in the sense of the linear trajectories of political exile of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rather, exile understood in the interstitial, postmodern sense of the nomadism and métissage of the third millennium. I would like to begin our dialogue by reading some words of the Czech-Bohemian writer and poet, Vera Linhartova (2003).
[F]or the one who has departed with no regrets and no desire to retrace his steps, the place he has just left has little importance in comparison with the place where he is going. He will no longer live "outside of that place," but rather, he will set out on the path to a "nonplace," toward that elsewhere that always remains unanticipated. Like the nomad, he will be at home [chez soi] wherever he goes.
Negri: I think it is correct to look at exile outside the linear terms of the political exile of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was in reality a question of moving oneself elsewhere but always feeling foreign in the place in which one ended up-stepping outside in order to return or, in the best case, in order to elaborate a plan of revolution. If you look at the great revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, from Marx to Mazzini, to take two classic examples, you find a leave-taking-from Germany, for Marx, and from Italy, for Mazzini-and the invention of an international project. This internationality maintains the individuality, the specificity of the countries in which these revolutionaries settled, and...