Antonio Negri

Antonio Negri was born in Padua in 1933. He became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua. From the late 1960s, he was a leading figure in the Workers' Power and Workers' Autonomy movements and one of the most renowned theorists of the Autonomy movement. In 1979, he was arrested and charged, without sufficient evidence, with terrorist activities—even as the mastermind behind the Red Brigades—and was ultimately sentenced to 30 years in prison for involvement in two murders. In 1983, he fled to France, where, protected from the threat of deportation thanks to the "Mitterrand doctrine," he taught at the University of Paris VIII and the Collège International de Philosophie, alongside Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze. In 1997, following an agreement that reduced his sentence to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the remainder of his sentence. Many of his most significant works were written in prison. After his release in 2003, he has lived in Venice and Paris with the French philosopher Judith Revel. His extensive body of work, a significant portion of which was written in prison, includes the books: "Stato e diritto nel giovane Hegel" (1958), "Stato e politica" (1970), "Proletari e stato: per una discussione su autonomia operaia e compromesso storico" (1976), "Il dominio e il sabotaggio: sul metodo marxista della trasformazione sociale" (1978), "Marx oltre Marx: quaderno di lavoro sui Grundrisse" (1978), "Dall'operaio massa all'operaio sociale: intervista sull'operaismo" (1979), "Il comunismo e la guerra" (1980), "L'anomalia selvaggia: saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza" (1981), "Diario di un'evasione" (1985), "Il potere costituente: saggio sulle alternative del moderno" (1992), "Kairοs, alma venus, multitudo" (2001), "Il ritorno: quasi un'autobiografia" (2003).