From the Back Cover
In this essential rereading of Spinoza's (1632-1677) philosophical and political writings, Negri positions this thinker within the historical context of the development of the modern state and its attendant political economy. Through a close examination of Spinoza, Negri reveals him as unique among his contemporaries for his nondialectical approach to social organization in a bourgeois age.
"Negri's book on Spinoza, written in prison, is a great book that renews our understanding of Spinoza in many regards. Negri is authentically and profoundly Spinozian." Gilles Deleuze
"In Michael Hardt's excellent translation of Antonio Negri's The Savage Anomaly, American readers finally have access to one of the most important pieces of 'prison writing' to come out of Europe since Gramsci." Radical Philosophy Review of Books
After living in exile in France for nearly fourteen years, Antonio Negri is currently serving a jail sentence in Italy, his home country, for his political activism in the 1970s. His conviction, which was based on the substance of his writings, led Michel Foucault to ask, "Isn't he in prison simply for being an intellectual?" Negri's works in English include Insurgencies (1999) and, with Michael Hardt, Labor of Dionysus (1994) (both published by Minnesota) and Empire.
