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| Maurizio Lazzarato | |
|---|---|
| Name | Maurizio Lazzarato |
| Birth date | 1955 |
| Birth place | Italy |
| Occupation | Philosopher, Sociologist, Political Theorist |
| Notable works | Debt: The First 5,000 Years; Affect; Signs and Machines |
Maurizio Lazzarato is an Italian philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist known for contributions to theories of immaterial labor, debt, and biopolitics. He has held positions at institutions such as the Université Paris VIII, engaged with networks like the Autonomia Operaia movement, and collaborated with thinkers from the Frankfurt School to Post-Structuralism. His work intersects debates in contemporary Marxism, Postmodernism, and Critical Theory.
Born in Italy in 1955, he came of age during the period of the Years of Lead (Italy) and the rise of Autonomia Operaia, influencing his early political engagement with groups like Potere Operaio and Lotta Continua. He studied and trained in disciplines associated with Italian academic institutions and later relocated to France, affiliating with universities including Université Paris VIII and engaging with Parisian intellectual circles around venues such as the Centre Pompidou and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. His formative encounters included exposure to texts from Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze.
Lazzarato has held academic posts and research positions across European institutions including Université Paris VIII, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and research centers tied to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has lectured at universities such as Columbia University, University of California, Los Angeles, Goldsmiths, University of London, and University of Amsterdam, participating in conferences organized by entities like the European Graduate School and institutions linked to the Institut d'études politiques de Paris. His professional trajectory connects activist networks from Autonomia Operaia to editorial collaborations with journals like Multitudes and academic presses including Verso Books, Semiotext(e), and MIT Press.
Lazzarato’s corpus includes books and essays addressing immaterial labor, social production, debt, and affect. Key publications include translations and editions published by Semiotext(e), Verso Books, and Pluto Press, notably "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" in dialogue with the scholarship of David Graeber and the critiques of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Polanyi. He elaborated the concept of immaterial labor drawing on precedents from Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and debates in Autonomist Marxism. In "Affect" and "Signs and Machines" he engages with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sigmund Freud, and Wilhelm Reich to theorize subjectivation, indebtedness, and forms of governance associated with biopolitics as theorized by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben.
He has collaborated with figures such as Antonio Negri, co-editors and contributors to journals like New Formations and Multitudes, and has intersected with scholars including Hardt and Negri, Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jean-François Lyotard. His intellectual debt includes dialogues with Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Luigi Fabbri, and contemporary theorists like Slavoj Žižek, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Judith Butler, and Nancy Fraser. He has engaged in projects and panels with cultural institutions such as Documenta and has influenced activists connected to movements like Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and various European precarious labor collectives.
Lazzarato’s work has provoked debate across disciplines including Political Science, Sociology, and Philosophy, generating responses from scholars affiliated with the Frankfurt School, proponents of Analytical Marxism, and critics associated with Neoliberalism debates. His ideas on debt have been cited in policy discussions in contexts involving International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and debates around sovereign debt crises in countries such as Greece during the Greek government-debt crisis. Scholars including David Harvey, Wendy Brown, Pankaj Mishra, Susan Sontag, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Noam Chomsky have engaged with or critiqued themes resonant in his work. His concepts influenced activist strategies in movements like Occupy Wall Street and scholarship on precarity discussed by researchers at institutions like Goldsmiths, University of London and centers such as the Institute for Public Knowledge.
- "Signs and Machines" (essay collection; dialogues with Deleuze and Guattari) — publishers including Semiotext(e) and MIT Press. - "Affect" — editions in French and English with publishers such as Verso Books. - "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" — engaged with work by David Graeber, published in multiple languages by presses like Melville House and Pluto Press. - Essays in journals: Multitudes, New Formations, Rethinking Marxism, and edited volumes by Verso Books and Routledge.
Category:Italian philosophers Category:Living people