Diary of an Escape

by Antonio Negri

  No, my dear Scalfaro, unfortunately you are not right – what you say is that they may all be a parcel of rogues, but here we have sovereignty and legitimacy of power. But your view is simply stupid. Here the rustle and the murmurings drown everything – every now and then a Radical shouts something, like the sound of a motor scooter stuck in sand. In the evening I dine with old friends, in Trastevere. God, how wonderful Rome would be without Rebibbia and without Montecitorio. (Rome – 12 July)

  Folio 61

  Obviously I should not allow myself to be carried away by these initial sensations. It is certainly the case that they emerge from a theoretical terrain that I have been cultivating for the past twenty years – but what do they mean? I could be wrong. I am aware of at least two elements which need to qualify my feelings. The first is self-critical. Basically I would never have ended up in Parliament, were it not for the fact that the mechanism of needs–organization–struggles–counter-power – on which, in linear fashion and incorrectly, we organized for many years – has functioned. The second element is simply theoretical: the function of representation which Parliament embodies has always been an abstraction, but now it is very much strengthened, in postmodernity, by the circularity of the world of information and by the importance of the symbolic. Certainly Parliament no longer ‘represents’ anything in the proper sense of the word, but it is a fundamental component in the structure of the politically symbolic. In Parliament you represent nobody – but you have the kind of power that used to accrue in the ancien régime from the fact of having married into the royal family. An insertion into the medium of the age. That antechamber, that rustling – and the end of representation and the hegemony of the symbolic – carry you directly to the images and the reality of absolutism. This is how I see things: I have comrades whom I must get out of prison, so I have to do everything that can be done, for as long as it remains possible – or rather for the very short time that is left to me – in order to deal with the problem of getting them free. I have to play this new symbolic game of palace politics. The only way they – my comrades – are going to get out will be through lettres de cachet, like the aristocrats of olden times. Is that really the depth to which politics has sunk? I would say so. From what I read in the Mémoires of Saint-Simon, the political life conducted through the bedrooms and antechambers of the King of France was far more rich, important, creative and efficacious than that produced by the bedrooms and antechambers of our present rulers. So I have to play to its limit the symbolic breakpoint that my election represents, not so much because it is a real break-point as because it is an efficacious kind of symbolism. I have to accept the games of the press and media – knowing their poverty and detesting the vulgarity of their operators. Interviews, interviews, interviews … It feels like Liza Minelli’s ‘money, money, money …’: I enter into this whole dirty market, voluntarily taking on the function of symbol – and also all the effort and work this involves. I am well aware that this is likely to destroy me, but I have very little time – after that I shall have to leave – who knows where and for how long. Without any nostalgia for this Parliament – but with a huge nostalgia for my comrades. And with how much anger. So let us pay it all – entirely and immediately – the price of this market. And so saying I put myself in the hands of the journalists. Who are they? Some of them are sympathetic scroungers, others are police spies, the scum of the OVRA, representatives of Santiapichi on a mission, Montanelli’s rats … The few good and brave journalists find it hard to get out of the shadows. Anyway, I put myself into their hands, because the world of the media is stronger than their imbecility. ‘Cheese, cheese …’ Smile, my old carcase. (Rome – 13–14 July)

  Folio 62

  During these days I have been in Milan. It is very hot. That fine heat of Milan – in the evening it feels good, and life is a joy. I rediscover easy friendships and deep affections. I spend a day at Radio Popolare, doing a phone-in that seems to go on for ever. Another day I spend at Rete Cinque in Segrate, being interviewed by Bocca, whom finally I get to meet, and who strikes me as a bit dull. These are hard days. Interviews and yet more interviews. Hard days. Maybe it would make sense for me to start thinking about myself, rather than being simply an extension of prison. My personal discourse, constructed during my years of imprisonment, I find it hard to get it out into the open. I don’t have the time. On the other hand, this week I have been seeing my children again, and I try to understand the differences produced by the years of separation – I find again an enthusiasm for getting to know them. And I find new attachments – a web spun by myself, it’s true – but also a web of great love, of desires fed during what has been a very long dream. What will be the passage from this wretched reality of mine to the dimensions of a dream that will be real and solid and productive? Where will such a passage be possible, in the con fusion and tumult of feelings that the separation – this too long separation – has brought about? Every decision I take in this tangled web can cause unhappiness to someone. Move carefully, Toni, carefully. But when time is short, prudence is like homeopathic medicine – it will do the patient good, but it won’t produce quick results. It is true, however, that I have to find an equilibrium in this bordello that I’m having to endure. I’ve not even been out all week, and all my personal problems – of getting back in touch with the world in terms of emotions (at the level of life) and in terms of knowledge (at the level of politics) are not only unresolved, but are not even classified. My life is political, of that I have little doubt. However, I fear the suppression of life in favour of politics as if it were a sin against the Holy Ghost. That’s what prison is, and the division is imposed by the bosses. Is it maybe the case that, at a certain point, in this moment, I am reproducing, masochistically, the same indifference to values, albeit in the opposite sense to that of the bosses? There is no doubt that my life is political, but the problem of politics in my life remains unresolved. By accepting to move within the spaces of the symbolic, I am destroying many possibilities of praxis. Politics is human only when it is rooted and when it grows with passion. There is no Beruf without passion, and there is no vocation without a unity of being. I pose this problem to the comrades whom I see. Embarrassedly they reply that having posed themselves these questions has meant withdrawing from politics into the personal. They are alarmed, to tell the truth, to see me moving – almost participating – in this world-withoutsoul which I now inhabit. They ask me if I want to continue being a Member of Parliament. I tell them yes, for as long as I am allowed – but maybe in a month, or even less, I shall be obliged to escape. Then I add that this is not the problem – whether I stay or whether I have to leave. The problem is that of rebuilding the relationship between politcs and life. The problem is how to demolish the truth of the pentiti and of the people who have withdrawn from politics, for whom life is betrayal – or rather it is a programme of eradication of the political, of the collective, of the common. The fact remains that my problem – that of life and of its full and creative coherence with politics – is completely open. Within this loneliness, within this invading desperation of mine, only the thought of my comrades and the recent experience of prison create a continuity between life and politics. But in a little while Rebibbia will remain a transcendence, an indisputable value of suffering, something to kneel to in the absence of a political dialogue. Outside they offer you nothing. Nothing. It is easy to recognize it – but, for a person coming out after more than four years of prison, it is tragic. Literally. I have to throw myself into the symbolic – its efficacy is no smaller than its precariousness. In the evening Piazza Vetra is very pleasant. I walk, I walk a lot. (By the way, I have a sizeable escort. They have provided this for my own protection, they say – but from whom and from what? In my opinion they are doing it in order to prevent my escape. The escort is beginning to annoy me.) This condition of liberation, and the work I have to do, and the frantic activism that all this requires, certainly do not help me to resolve my personal problem
s. OK. I shall address them after I have emerged from this brothel, from this condition of being an active extension of prison. In effect I am only out on licence – I must never forget that. People outside, in the streets, greet me and kiss me. And, just as I accept this immediacy of affection, the question of what my life is today imposes itself on me afresh: the fact that this work I am doing may not be determined by duty, but rather a projection of the pleasure of liberty, of the rediscovery of life! I shall give my all. But I am sure of not being able to resolve the problem. Then there’s the question of flight … of escaping … and then … and then … (Milan – 15–18 July)

  Folio 63

  The problem of my re-imprisonment has come to the fore again. So let us examine the situation. I have returned to Rome, to this world of rustling parliamentary robes and murmuring corporative noises. They want to put me back into prison. Fine, let’s get it over with quickly. I have no chance to think about life, or to study and work on the new movement, on its powerful and destructive revival. And yet all the preconditions are there. There’s no time – I have to hurry. The only thing I can do is to play my new role – this strange ‘medium’ that I represent, which has no need to be performed, since it is immediate. To put irreversibly onto the agenda the urgency of breaking with the laws imposed during the Years of Lead – the urgency of putting an end to the state of emergency. To play the conditions for a revival. Two possibilities immediately strike me – the first is that of the prison movement. I go to G12 in Rebibbiba, to say hello to the comrades, and then, most particularly, to G11, to judge the will for struggle and transformation that these tremendous comrades, the ordinary prisoners, are expressing. I have the impression that a very strong movement is in the making – a movement which has learned from the past experiences of defeat and can now express itself with great political lucidity. Then I go to Rebibbia’s women’s wing. I see Fiora, with the incredible emotion of a brother – and then the comrades of the ‘homogeneous zone’, with the affection of a father. Forza! I feel that we can do it. The disaster of the non-negotiability of the armed struggle is now behind us. Without provocations, without hysteria, we can now begin the big struggle of all the prisoners – from within prisons, with strength. The second possibility derives from the fact of being present in that zone where the institutional panorama is in crisis. I go to Naples. A formidable group of comrades. They have understood everything, with the alertness of people who grew up in the midst of a problem so radical as to become unsolvable, and in a highly dramatic social situation. Their alertness is the tense expectation, almost atmospheric, of somebody living on the edge of a volcano. Here, at this level, within these ‘enclaves’ of the political and social crisis, the irreversibility of the courses taken by the struggle and by the needs that the struggle has consolidated can be built and imposed upon the institutional forces themselves. They tell me: in no sense are we willing to pay for a deepening of the crisis, or for its solution in static terms. We are willing to take part, with our struggles, in the selection of the values of a new development of liberty. It is incredible how close these proletarians of the crisis are, in my view, to the movement in the prisons. Prison is a social paradigm of repression in the crisis: a paradigm which has to be destroyed. They tell me about the latest police blitz in Naples – hundreds of people arrested – and about the insane mistakes made by the magistrates, and the dozens of mistaken-identity arrests. They describe the brutality of the police … These comrades need to express themselves at the national level. Now, and quickly. However, the only thing which is moving forward quickly is the question of my re-imprisonment. The media are pushing for it relentlessly. Everyone I meet – friends, new friends, complete strangers – tell me ‘Escape, Toni, get away at once’. Then they fall silent. I have to work fast, really fast. I am tired. But never mind. Must hurry. One single objective is to be achieved: to render irreversible the launching of a solution for the Years of Lead and for the problem of preventive imprisonment. It is little, very little – but even if only one comrade was able to get out of prison, out of this whole business and all this work, I would be satisfied. The rest comes later, when I’ll have done my get-away. Today, in this month that remains, it is not possible to do more. (Rome/Naples – 19–21 July)

  Folio 64

  Padova – it’s three in the morning. I think I started my phone-in at Radio Gamma at about ten last night. It has continued until now. I am very tired. Not so much because of the phone-in as because of the charge of love and affection that I have felt among people, among friends and comrades. A love which, for me, means responsibility, and which overloads me. A joining together of affection and joy which could become new movement – but there is no time. Let us consolidate immediately what is irreversible. And yet I am slightly frightened about this project. Precisely this evening, in the discussion on the phone-in, I had a clear sensation that an irreversibility of behaviours, if it is not conjoined with an articulated strategic discourse, can become an ossified fetish. The resistance also accumulates negative stuff: bad feelings, lack of imagination, repetition – a kind of obligation towards repetition, forced on us by the memory of a movement which was great, yes, but has now become rigid. This reactionary phenomenon shows itself in stereotypical language and in a poverty of analytical reference points. So what we are getting is a kind of second-hand heroism – the heroism of solidarity pure and simple. I find it hard to see the strength of this continuism – and anyway, if it has strength, it is only a bureaucratic strength; within itself it shows definite symptoms of cancellation of potential and progressive exhaustion. A stunting of growth. If things were indeed this way, it would be a disaster. I try to widen the discussion, to advance provocative suggestions and proposals for the building of a new movement – one capable of recalibrating its forces in the light of the changed conditions. My impression is that people understand what I am saying – but they are dominated by a fear of not being able to control consequences – almost an expectation of counter-productive side-effects. If state repression has been successful in bringing about such a deep and negative expectation, we have to admit that they have done well. We need to break this condition of substantial passivity. How? What is the radical political change that will make this possible? (Padova – 22 July)

  Folio 65

  This morning I went on a parliamentary visit to the Due Palazzi prison in Padova. They didn’t want to let me in – I had to wait outside for an hour, with the other visitors, under a ferocious sun. This pointless cruelty is run-of-the-mill normality for the prisoners’ families when they visit – and it’s such an offence to them, and to the prisoners, and to good sense. The prison is modern, a bit like Rebibbia. I see a lot of comrades, and particularly the ones whom I had already seen before in prison: Achille, Augusto, Marzio – and then Ettore, Libero and so on. The latest blitzes have resulted in new and old comrades being locked up, in this absurd witch hunt, which is continually fed by the fanatical repressive passion of Calogero. Fanaticism … It’s really not worth framing it in terms of higher values of political and moral rhetoric – that way you’d end up giving value to the personality of this fanatic, giving him a kind of dark grandeur. No – let us look at this fanaticism from the viewpoint of the disasters it has provoked and of the suffering it continues to generate – then there really are no excuses. I feel powerfully the offence that has been dealt to these imprisoned comrades. May your soul finish in hell, you madman Calogero! I go to see the ordinary prisoners. Here too I have a clear sensation of a deep and wise desire for struggle and transformation. The prison movement is picking up again, with force. I propose to the comrades that it needs to be supported and fed with political purposiveness and with a sense of impending deadline – against preventive detention and for a way out of the Years of Lead. Living and visiting prisons, I come to believe increasingly that prison now represents a slice of society, and that this slice of society gathers articulated signs of the great transformations that are under way: the crim
inality of the administration indicates the end of political representation and the triumph of corporatism; the crimes of violence show the decline of solidarity which accompanies this process; and the many economic crimes should probably be related to the imbalance between the chaotic and diffuse desire to produce, and the command and productive hierarchy of a capitalism which is now both mature and atrophied. Today prison gathers only autonomy – political autonomy, and autonomy of appropriation and demanding, and finally the new entrepreneurial autonomy. In the chaos of our society, the violence of the institution has now become a form of repression against social innovation. Repression is blind: and this blindness criminalizes everything that is innovative and new. What is offered to us is an extreme limit – the institutional perversion and its stupidity are horrible to behold. I ask myself how we are going to be able to get out of all this. The pain that I find in the prisons is tangible, and the solidarity of the comrades contains a symbolism of rebirth, rebellion and transformation which is offered to you openhandedly. How can we get out of all this? I think I know the answer. But I cannot do it – I know that this general meaningfulness of prison should be developed in society as a whole, and the revolt against prison should be understood as an element of social reorganization. However, I cannot move on this terrain because I have no time. In a little while either I shall have to leave or I shall return to prison. I would feel re-imprisonment as a mockery – but what would it be to leave the country? All my family, and the comrades in Due Palazzi, political and ordinary prisoners alike, are asking me apprehensively whether I plan to go or stay. ‘Vattene, Toni, vattene.’ ‘Leave, Toni, go …!’ My unease is related to the absurd alternatives which are being offered to me – the diabolical mechanism of the ‘either–or’. If you go back to prison you can do politics; but, if you choose exile (because obviously this is what we are talking about), you won’t do politics any more. The comrades exclude this alternative. I am uneasy about it – I don’t understand the basis of it – or rather I am beginning to think that its bases are only in the nature of a blackmail. So then what? I have to move with caution, trying by every means possible to remain in Italy. Then, if they don’t want me, I shall leave. But before accepting this unanimous advice to leave immediately – which is coming from family members, from the prisons, from all those who love me (and it is singularly expressed in different forms, from the loving ‘vattene’ of people who no longer want to endure the experience of prison, to the political ‘vattene’ of people who know that the development of political initiative cannot be shaped and calibrated on the day-to-day requirements of defending ourselves in the trial) … Anyway, before accepting this unanimous advice, I have to do everything possible, and above all measure myself against the world of prison. ‘Escape,’ they’re telling me, ‘escape.’ The individualism which sometimes underlies this prompting is infinitely more important than the moralism which underlies the suggestion that I should accept judgement and sentence. Why? Perhaps the times really have changed, and the richness and liberty of the individual person, creating spaces among the ideological illusions, are once again gaining a potency in the communist project. ‘Escape, escape,’ the comrades in Due Palazzi keep telling me, almost to the point of tedium. (Padova – 23 July)