A Distinct Multitude Different Pueblo Globalizations Revised 1 March (original) (raw)

The concept of pueblo (“people”) in Enrique Dussel and the concept of “multitude” in Hardt and Negri are both connected in important ways to the concept of “living labor” in Marx. Pueblo is not an essentialist concept, says Dussel but comprises within it diversity, multiplicity and distinctness. This distinctness is covered up in fetishized constructions of political and economic power. Multitude is not a diffuse and inarticulate concept, say Hardt and Negri, but rather encompasses irreducible singularities that produce a common that may be “corralled” by capital or the state, but the biopolitical creativity of which threatens to break away from the constraints of biopower. Despite the significant conceptual differences between multitude and pueblo, living labor’s ethical content and its self-productive praxis become a common and fruitful ground for the two categories.