Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

in these subversive strategies. The constituent power of the
common is thus closely interwoven with the themes of
constituent power—adopting new media (cellular technologies,
Twitter, Facebook, and more generally the Internet) as vehicles
of experimentation with democratic and multitudinary
governance.
Issues of communication are immediately intertwined with
those of knowiedge, today more than ever. We live in a society in
which capital functions increasingly by exploiting the production
and expression of knowiedge, a society of cognitive capitalism.
Knowiedge ever more constitutes the heart of social relations, in
terms of both capitalist control and the resistance of living labor.
It is thus no coincidence that, in the current cycle of struggles, a
large portion of the activists are students, intellectual workers,
and those working in urban service jobs—what some call the
cognitive precariat. They mediate on their own skin the activity of
communication, intellectual labor, and the efforts required to
study. For the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts as much as for
those in Spain, Greece, Israel, and the United States, and for
those characterized primarily by the call for freedom as much as
for those centered on poverty' or financial exploitation, this is one
solid basis they all share. The proliferation of struggles and their
performative character are grounded in the new nature of labor
power. As the centrality of cognitive labor becomes hegemonic, it
permeates and is crystallized in these forms of struggle. In the
passage of these movements from protest to constituent process,
then, the demand for the publicity and transparency of power
becomes central.
Any effort to discipline or repress the curiosity, vitality, or
desire for knowiedge of cognitive workers reduces their
productivity. These qualities are essential to contemporary'
economic production, but they also open new contradictions
regarding the exercise of power and the legitimacy of
representation. In fact, curiosity, vitality, and desire for
knowiedge demand that the opacity and secrecy of power be
destroyed. The figure of the "statesman" itself is under attack and
is coming to be considered an indignity. Every form of expertise
must be reorganized in the context of plural, widespread political
action such that every transcendence of knowiedge, just as every