The Production of Living Knowledge: The Crisis of the University and the Transformation of Labor in Europe and North America

Introduction: Living on the Borders

T o open by noting the difficulty of acknowledging all those who contributed to the elaboration of this book is, perhaps, banal. But when the ambition of the work is to speak of the cooperation of living knowledge and the production of the common, the move risks becoming downright embarrassing. Therefore, i will try to discharge at least part of my theoretical and political debt. Certain individuals—morgan adamson, philip G. altbach, sam anderson, stanley aronowitz, marco Bascetta, Franco Bifo Berardi, Guido Borio, maura Brighenti, Federico Chicchi, salvatore Cominu, mariateresa Curcio, elisabetta della Corte, alberto de nicola, silvia Federici, andrea Fumagalli, Gabriela Garcia, andrea Ghelfi, robert Gold, Giorgio Grappi, marco Guarella, Bruno Gullì, mick Gusindeduffy , stefano harney, Tristan hope Kirvin, martina martignoni, randy martin, liz mason-desee, Jason mc Gimsey, miguel mellino, pedro mendes Barbosa, Cristina morini, Gianfranco morosato, loris narda, michael palm, matteo pasquinelli, alexei penzin, Francesca pozzi, nirmal puwar, Giuliano santoro, Jon solomon, and Tiziana Terranova, among many others—deserve acknowledgments that would require a much larger space allotment to be fully realized. Acknowledgments xvi ▪ Acknowledgments i thank edu-factory and Uninomade, two of the political research collectives within which this book became possible. i am grateful to all the interviewees—the references in the notes constitute only a small portion of the people encountered during this research experience. again, i thank mick and also Gary Kramer and Joan vidal of Temple University press, rebecca logan of newgen, and all the staff members of Temple University press and newgen who helped bring the book into print. special thanks go to enda Brophy for his warm patience and intelligent passion (as i strive to illustrate in the text, translation is a field of struggle and organization); to Toni negri, mario Tronti, Christian marazzi, sandro Chignola, michael hardt, and Benedetto vecchi for all i have learned and continue to learn from them; and to Carlo vercellone, Brett neilson, andrew ross, Chandra Talpade mohanty, marc Bousquet, immanuel ness, and George Caffentzis for their invaluable suggestions and availability. and my deep appreciation goes to sandro mezzadra, sine qua non. i owe an eternal debt to the operaisti, for a partisan gaze and global style without which i could neither perceive the world nor act within it. To Gianfranco and enrica, i owe gratitude that i cannot translate into words. First and foremost, i dedicate this book to annetta: i am indebted to her for (among many other things) the pleasure of jointly sowing dragon’s teeth and the capacity for contemptuous smiles even when we harvest fleas. as often happens, the common is produced in rupture and in separation. i also dedicate this book to romano alquati, my maestro, who teaches me to organize what we cannot expect. Finally, i dedicate this book to marta, that she may learn to examine the mysterious curve of lenin’s straight line. The Production of Living Knowledge Introduction Living on the Borders In September 1870, Marx called the insurrection an act of desperate folly. But, when the masses rose, Marx wanted to march with them, to learn with them in the process of the struggle, and not to give them bureaucratic admonitions. He realized that to attempt in advance to calculate the chances with complete accuracy would be quackery or hopeless pedantry. What he valued above everything else was that the working class heroically and selfsacrificingly took the initiative in making world history. Marx regarded world history from the standpoint of those who make it without being in a position to calculate the chances infallibly beforehand, and not from the standpoint of an intellectual philistine who moralizes: “It was easy to foresee. . . . [T]hey should not have taken up. . . .” —vladimir il’ič lenin, Preface to the Russian Translation of Karl Marx’s Letters to Dr. Kugelmann Knowledge is only knowledge. But the control of knowledge—that is politics. —Bruce sterling, Distraction Within the Double Crisis N eoliberalism is finished. This does not mean that the effects of neoliberal politics have disappeared but that they are no longer able to constitute a coherent system. in this context it can be difficult to remember that just twenty years ago the think tanks of global capital had proclaimed the “end of history” or that radical thinkers had declared the passivity of the new subjects of living labor dominated by “monological thought”—that is, by...