Toni Negri "The Art of Governing Constitutional Imbalance" philosophy seminar

Welcome to the 5th session of our "Force and Interest" seminar series in Political Philosophy

Toni Negri will speak (in French) on:

Constitutional balance can be considered in spatial and in temporal terms. Are new instruments required to determine this balance or is Montesquieu still enough? In my eyes the classic tools appear to have become insufficient and so the question must be reopened, starting with constitutional balance in time – ‘internal’ or ‘external’? Ackerman, for instance, introduces the study of ‘internal’ instruments of constitutional modification. But the more interesting problem appears to be that of ‘external’ instruments: Harrington, Condorcet and Jefferson identified the essential instrument for the renovation and reconstruction of constitutional balance in the renovation of ‘constituent power’. Today, the crises in those constitutions that emerged after the second world war open up the question in a still more intense manner. Are there new figures of constituent power that can respond to this problem, by tackling it in terms of  ‘temporality’? Moreover, with regard to the ‘space’ of constitutional balance, how can it be henceforth defined? What does ‘post-sovereign space’ mean?

Antonio Negri is a philosopher and teacher born on August 1st, 1933 in Padua, Italy. His most famous work, at least abroad, is Empire, which he co-wrote with Michael Hardt. In 1969 Negri was a founding member of the Potere Operaio group (Workers Power) and he was also an active member of the influential group Autonomia Operaia. Info: www.ciph.org

Collège Internationale de Philosophie
American University of Paris