“We Make Ourselves Different in the Struggle” - The Subversive Seventies with Michael Hardt

This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation on Michael Hardt’s recent book The Subversive Seventies. 

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. 

A couple of things I need to say up front. This conversation was recorded in September and initially would have been released in October, but obviously our programming took a quick turn to solidarity work on the Palestinian struggle in light of those events. As I mentioned in the intro to our most recent episode we will continue to do that solidarity work primarily though not exclusively through our YouTube page for a while just so that we can get some of these other conversations out on the podcast feed.

Nonetheless, this conversation and the book and the problems it poses I think are as interesting and relevant today as they were in September. I mostly note it's recording date for two reasons, one it will be glaring that we don’t talk at all about events in Palestine in the conversation. The second reason I mention the date is that in the intervening months Michael Hardt’s long-time collaborator Antonio Negri passed away. Negri was of course a very serious and renowned political philosopher, militant organizer, and a political prisoner, coming out of some of the very movements that Michael Hardt discusses in this book. May he rest in peace and our condolences to Michael for the loss of his friend and collaborator.

This discussion is about Michael Hardt’s book The Subversive Seventies which was one of the more interesting books we read last year on the podcast. And we would definitely recommend it both for its value as a historical text as well as for the theoretical work Hardt is engaged in in the text. As is laid out quite well I think on the publisher’s website, it is a book that attempts to reconstruct the history of revolutionary politics in the 1970’s, to systematically approach political movements of the seventies within a global framework of analysis, and to bring together a wide range of political movements from the decade highlighting the ways movements in different countries resonated with and were inspired by one another.

Part 2 of the conversation will be released this coming week. 

I would also be remiss if I didn’t say rest in power to Sekou Odinga who passed away earlier this week. We hope to be able to do more in honor of him and as a tribute to his legacy in the coming weeks and years. 

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