Language, individuation and performativity in Paolo Virno

Abstract

This paper aims at articulating Paolo Virno’s theorization about language as capacity, a natural potentiality of the species, and the linguistic dimension of labor under the regime of the immaterial. Like Negri, Lazzarato, Gorz and other authors who could be placed in the theoretical and philosophical field of Immaterial Labor, Virno postulates a new kind of labor, which is above all biopolitical; we can identify, however, a bifurcation between Negri’s and Virno’s theories; while Negri, on the one hand, criticizes the naturalistic discourse of capacities and prefers to adopt an ontology of production instead, keeping at its core the categories of living labor, subject/class of production – the multitude – and antagonism, on the other hand, the hypothesis sustained by Virno of the embodied language, the becoming flesh of language, seen as a biological capacity which distinguishes human beings as species, does not eliminate the political and historical dimensions of language. Indeed, it is a faculty immanent to life, which is constantly recreating and constituting itself. In addition, according to Virno, language and politics cannot be separated: the being of language is always a political being.