Edited by Timothy S. Murphy
Translated by Arianna Bove, Ed Emery, Timothy S. Murphy and Francesco Novello

Subversive political writings by the acclaimed author of Empire

Long before Antonio Negri became famous around the world for his groundbreaking volume Empire, he was infamous across Europe for the incendiary writings contained in this book. Books for Burning consists of five pamphlets that Negri wrote between 1971 and 1977, which attempt to identify and draw lessons from new conditions of class struggle that emerged in the course of the 1970s.

Conceived as organizational hypotheses intended for debate among the members of the political movements Workers’ Power (Potere operaio) and Organized Autonomy (Autonomia organizzata), these texts were later misread and misrepresented by the Italian state in its attempt to frame Negri as responsible for the assassination of former Italian president Aldo Moro, as the leader of the Red Brigades, and as the mastermind of an armed insurrection against the state. In the more than twenty-five years since their first publication, these texts have lost none of their originality, relevance or power to shock.

In a new preface, Negri demonstrates how his controversial work on empire, biopolitics and immaterial labor developed out of concepts and strategies first outlined in this book, and an editorial introduction analyzes the role these texts played in Negri’s trial and in the criminalization of the Italian radical workers’ movement.

Praise for Multitude
“Far left thinking with clarity, measured reasoning and humor, major accomplishments in and of themselves.” — Publishers Weekly

Praise for Empire
“Empire is a bold move away from established doctrine.” — Stanley Aronowitz, The Nation

“[This] book is full of bravura passages . . . [F]or the moment, Empire is filling a void in the humanities.” — Emily Eakin, New York Times

“Globalization’s positive side is, intriguingly, a message of a hot new book.” Michael Elliott, Time

“Empire presents a philosophical vision that some have greeted as the “next big thing” in the field of the humanities.” — Sunday Times

Antonio Negri has taught philosophy and political science at the Universities of Padua and Paris; he has also been a political prisoner in Italy and a political refugee in France. He is the author of over thirty books, including Marx Beyond Marx, The Savage Anomaly, The Politics of Subversion, Insurgencies, Subversive Spinoza, and Time for Revolution, and, in collaboration with Michael Hardt, Labor of Dionysus, Empire and Multitude. His Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project is also available from Verso. He currently lives in Paris and Venice.

Timothy S. Murphy is associate professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. He is the translator of Antonio Negri’s Subversive Spinoza and co-editor of Resistance in Practice: The Philosophy of Antonio Negri.

Publication
Paper: Sept. 2005

336 pages

Paper
1 84467 034 1
£16 / US$25 / CAN$35

Now On Film

Antonio Negri
A Revolt That Never Ends

Directed by
Alexandra Weltz & Andreas Pichler / Produced by Eva Rink