Autonomia, new edition

Most of the writers who contributed to the issue were locked up at the time inItalian jails.... I was trying to draw the attention of the American Left, which still believed inEurocommunism, to the fate of Autonomia. The survival of the last politically creative movement inthe West was at stake, but no one in the United States seemed to realize that, or be willing tolisten. Put together as events in Italy were unfolding, the Autonomia issue--which has no equivalentin Italy, or anywhere for that matter--arrived too late, but it remains an energizing account of amovement that disappeared without bearing a trace, but with a big future still ahead of it.--SylvereLotringerSemiotext(e) is reissuing in book form its legendary magazine issue Italy: Autonomia:Post-Political Politics, originally published in New York in 1980. Edited by Sylvere Lotringer andChristian Marazzi with the direct participation of the main leaders and theorists of the Autonomistmovement (including Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone, Paolo Virno,Sergio Bologna, and Franco Berardi), this volume is the only first-hand document and contemporaneousanalysis that exists of the most innovative post-'68 radical movement in the West. The movementitself was broken when Autonomia members were falsely accused of (and prosecuted for) being theintellectual masterminds of the Red Brigades; but even after the end of Autonomia, this book remainsa crucial testimony of the way this creative, futuristic, neo-anarchistic, postideological, andnonrepresentative political movement of young workers and intellectuals anticipated issues that arenow confronting us in the wake of Empire. In the next two years, Semiotext(e) will publish eightbooks by such Italian "Post-Fordist" intellectuals as Antonio Negri, Christian Marazzi,Paolo Virno, and Bifo, as they update the theories of Autonomia for the new century.SylvereLotringer, general editor of Semiotext(e), lives in New York and Baja California. He is the authorof Overexposed: Perverting Perversions (Semiotext(e), 2007). Christian Marazzi, an Italianeconomist, lives in Switzerland. He is the author of Capital and Language: From the New Economy tothe War Economy and Sock's Place, both forthcoming from Semiotext(e).

Christian Marazzi is Professor and Director of Socio-Economic Research at the Scuola Universitaria della Svizzera Italiana. He is the author of Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy (Semiotext(e), 2008).