Trilogie de la difference

Trilogie de la différence, which represents philosopher Antonio Negri's theatrical work to-date, includes Essaim, L'Homme plié and Cithéron.
The first play, Essaim, 2004 - a didactic model for the militant - questions the tradition of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller's theatre. It unravels in four sequences and twelve tableaux, and is performed by a man and a chorus. At the beginning of the play, an indignant Man chooses violence. His choice is echoed by the chorus in an exchange that moves from confrontation and intercession to a common discourse. Thanks to this dialogue, the man frees himself from hopeless affects and envisages new modes of resistance.
The second play, L'Homme plié, 2005 - a didactic model for the rebel - takes place in Italy during the first days of the war, and ends in the spring of 1945. A man stoops in front of those 'recurrent fascistic forces' but only so as not to be broken down. The most joyous of passions will be born out of his resistance. The context and the environment are for ever modified through his action.
Finally, Cithéron, 2006, a tragedy - a didactic model of exodus - is a free interpretation of Euripides' Bacchae. Here, hope is swallowed into tragedy and the didactic model focuses on three figures of the human condition: kairòs (for Dionysos), tempestus (for Agave), and typhon (for Pentheus). Three words to designate, in different times and languages, a theoretical decision, an ethical drama and political madness, three concepts that haunt the heart of the man who has chosen to be an exile.
In the Trilogie de la différence theatre and philosophy are woven together not through the marshalling of arguments, but through language and its metamorphosis. Language, time, resistance and creation: words become embodied - a way to express a sense of collective experience.
A public reading of the Trilogie was performed at the Théâtre national de la Colline in October 2007, to be followed by similar events in Berlin and Rome. The text is being translated in English.
Trilogie de la difference is also part of the University of the Sorbonne's 2008/2009 syllabus in literature and theater.
Here, Negri's complex thought finds a lively, fluid expression that renders it accessible to all.

Antonio Negri, is a philosopher and essayist, and a former activist in the political struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. He taught political sciences and wrote numerous works on the subject, including Marx au-delà de Marx, L'Anomalie sauvage. Puissance et pouvoir chez Spinoza and Fabrique de porcelaine (Stock, 2006).