rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    non sort: A
    title: grammar of the multitude
    sub title: for an analysis of contemporary forms of life
  title info:
    title: Grammatica della moltitudine. English
  name:
    name part: Virno, Paolo
    name part: 1952-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: cau
    date issued: 2025
    edition: [New edition].
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  language:
    language term: ita
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: 194 pages ; 18 cm.
  abstract: Paolo Virno on the rich concept of the “multitude” as crucial to understanding contemporary life. Paolo Virno’s A Grammar of the Multitude became the Italian theorist’s best-known work in English, influencing a generation of activists and performance artists, when it was first published by Semiotext(e) in 2004. Two decades later, this new edition proves Virno’s conception of contemporary life, as a cartography of virtualities made possible by post-Fordism, to have been strikingly prescient. At the start of the twenty-first century, globalization forced a rethinking of some of the categories, such as “the people,” that had been traditionally associated with the now-eroding state. 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. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, “not-feeling-at-home-anywhere,” is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the 1980s and 1990s precipitated a paradoxical “Communism of the Capital.”
  note: Paolo Virno ; foreword by Sylvère Lotriger ; translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson.
  note: Previous edition: 2003.
  note: Translated from Italian.
  note: Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-194).
  subject:
    geographic code: e-it---
  subject:
    topic: Labor movement
    geographic: Italy
  subject:
    topic: Political science
    topic: Philosophy
  subject:
    topic: Labor
    topic: Philosophy
  subject:
    topic: Work
    topic: Philosophy
  subject:
    topic: State, The
  classification: HD4904 .V57 2025
  classification: 320.011
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Semiotext(e) intervention series ; 37
  identifier: 9781635902204
  identifier: 1635902207
  record info:
    record content source: YDX
    record creation date: 250109
    record change date: 20260216204644.7
    record identifier: in00005667851