JosŽ Manuel Viegas Neves
Lisbon
University
Crossing the analysis and the theories of Antonio Negri and E.P.Thompson, this paper discusses the idea of historical agency. While Negri is mainly concerned, with the reformulation of the possibilities of historical agency in the context of the transition from fordism to post-modernity, Thompson dedicated himself to study the conditions for collective action within the framework of the arise of capitalism in England. However, although the obvious difference between the historical backgrounds of their works, both Thompson and Negri consider historical and social agency inside a plan of absolute immanence. Although the outside of their ideas may show a gap between the romantic filiations of ThompsonÕs british marxism and the post-structuralist communism of Negri, we can approach ThompsonÕs legacy taking in consideration the concepts of the autonomist tradition. We can namely see that Òself-valorizationsÓ and Òclass compositionÓ establish an affinity with the Òmaking ofÓ the working-class; the moral economy of Thompson, as it re-opens the synthetic time of order and development and returns to the antagonistic time of crisis and to the notion of class struggle without class, introduces a critical perspective similar to the negrian approach to the foucauldian concept of biopolitic; we can even find a link considering the perception of space and time that is instituted by anticapitalist agency, with Thompson invoking the universality of the Òpre-modernÓ ÒriotÓ and Negri saying that the Empire is tangible from any point of the Empire. Therefore, with this paper we intend to show that ThompsonÕs historiographic methodology and NegriÕs philosophical work operate the same intellectual perspective, a perspective that suppresses the chronologic and territorial limits that confine either ThompsonÕs historiographical rupture to a ÒbackwardÓ Òpre-modernÓ era that already would be surpassed either NegriÕs philosophy to a post-modernity era still to be achieved.