The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics »

A fresh take on this critical philosopher.

In this essential rereading of Spinoza's (1632-1677) philosophical and political writings, Negri positions this thinker within the historical context of the development of the modern state and its attendant political economy. Through a close examination of Spinoza, Negri reveals him as unique among his contemporaries for his nondialectical approach to social organization in a bourgeois age.

A re-reading of Spinoza's philosophical and political writings within the historical context of the development of the modern state and its attendant political economy.

Spinoza is the anomaly. In the century that saw the birth of bourgeois ideology and the bourgeois State, Spinoza discovered an alternative mode of thought and practice, a nondialectical path to social organization and liberation. Spinoza's work illuminates an alternative to the bourgeois arc of Modern thought that extends from Hobbes to Rousseau and Hegel. Spinozian ontology presents an absolutely positive and univocal conception of being, founded on the material power of its own constitutive force. It is a "savage" conception in that it rejects any preformed model of order, any external organization, any hierarchy, and insists instead on being continually remade through a constitutive process on the immanent field of forces. This "savage" metaphysics prepares the terrain for a radically democratic vision in which social order is constituted exclusively by the collective practices and desires of the multitude. Negri brings this Spinozian anomaly alive in the context of some of the most lively contemporary debates: on the desire at the heart of power, on the imagination central to rationality, on the formation of democracy. In the seventeenth century Spinoza was indeed a savage anomaly; today Negri shows us that history has caught up with his untimely, democratic vision.

After living in exile in France for nearly fourteen years, Antonio Negri is currently serving a jail sentence in Italy, his home country, for his political activism in the 1970s. His conviction, which was based on the substance of his writings, led Michel Foucault to ask, "Isn't he in prison simply for being an intellectual?" Negri's works in English include Insurgencies (1999) and, with Michael Hardt, Labor of Dionysus (1994), both published by Minnesota.

"Negri's book on Spinoza, written in prison, is a great book that renews our understanding of Spinoza in many regards. Negri is authentically and profoundly Spinozian." Gilles Deleuze
After living in exile in France for nearly fourteen years, Antonio Negri is currently serving a jail sentence in Italy, his home country, for his political activism in the 1970s. His conviction, which was based on the substance of his writings, led Michel Foucault to ask, "Isn't he in prison simply for being an intellectual?" Negri's works in English include Insurgencies (1999) and, with Michael Hardt, Labor of Dionysus (1994), both published by Minnesota.

Booknews

For Negri, who wrote this book in prison, Spinoza is the anomaly, one who in the century that saw the birth of bourgeois ideology and the bourgeois state, discovered an alternative mode of thought and practice--a nondialectical path to social organization and liberation. Negri applies the Spinozian anomaly to contemporary debates on the desire at the heart of power, on the imagination central to rationality, and on the formation of democracy. Translated from the Italian edition of 1981. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)