Antonio Negri on art: the aesthetic potential of the multitude

Gonan, Lina. (2016). Antonio Negri on art: the aesthetic potential of the multitude. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Philosophy. [mentor Čačinovič, Nadežda].

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Abstract

A radical transformation of labour processes, consuming habits, geopolitical configurations, and state practices and powers, took place in the mid seventies of the 20th century. The transformation of labour meant its singularization, which is manifested through the phenomenon of non-material, intellectual and affective labor. There was also present a need to increase state control and regulation of the economy with corporate strategies, which, at times, included different strategies of suppression of the aspirations of the social and working class movements. The reflex of these events, in the Italian cultural scene, is that the postmodern art practices and the philosophy of the so-called 'weak thought' started to become dominant at the end of the seventies. This philosophy perceived that time as a world of totally mediated experience in which we can not be sure what is real anymore. They suggested the aesthetic experience as the de-foundation of the world, in which there will be space to create new events, as a solution. Besides the postmodern theorists, who needed anti-foundationalism and non-essentialism of the weak ontology as the posibility for emancipation, in Italy, in those years, a Marxist group of thinkers was active, which, by contrast, wanted to propose a new utopian narrative. Antonio Negri, one of their most prominent representatives, defined the aesthetic life as a common struggle for transformation, and for finding a collective dimension of production of beauty and the common. Art, as being the production of surplus of being, in the world of market economy and exchange value, loses its meaning. Negri presents a more adequate strategy of artistic production for the present day, in three steps. The first phase is critical, and it starts the deconstruction of reality. The second phase is reflexive and represents a moment of recognizeing the common, and also the moment of transformation of art into a form of life. In the third phase, this art form should be embodied by a collective decision. Then, beauty becomes located in the self-construction of an ethical-political community.

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