Gilles Deleuze: Open Letter to Negri´s Judges

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(La Repubblica, May 1979)

One is rapidly gaining the impression from the judicial proceedings that there is nothing, literally nothing, in the dossiers of the prosecution to back up the committal to prison and further detainment of Professor Negri and his colleagues and comrades.

The voice on the telephone in the call to the Moro family is suddenly being played down; the places where Negri was supposed to have been are somehow disappearing from the case; and his writings, so far from being "strategic resolutions of the Red Brigades," turn out to be texts which express clear opposition to the positions of the Red Brigades. The prosecuting judges, throughout the committal proceedings, have continuously put off presenting their legal evidence -- we are told to "have patience." And meanwhile the committal proceedings have taken the form of an ideological debate on Negri's writings, in a spectacle worthy of the Inquisition. True, the judges have time on their side: the Reale Law (1975) allows them to keep those charged in custody for up to 4 years before they come to trial.

Two principles are at stake in this case, two principles that vitally concern all responsible democrats.

Firstly, justice must conform to a principle that the content of the charge must have a certain identity. Not only must the accused be identified precisely, but so must the substance of the charge. It must have a precise identity and must be non-contradictory. If other, differing, elements of accusation emerge later, then this involves a new case. In short, the charge brought must contain in its substance a minimum of identifiable consistency. Unless such a precise identification exists as to the charges laid against the accused, as long as the accusations remain general and unspecified, the legal defense cannot operate.

This principle has been violated, for example, in the committal warrant issued from Rome. This starts by recapitulating the Moro kidnapping of March 1978 (as if Negri is accused of having been present). It then goes on to invoke his writings and ideas (so that even if he was not directly involved, he was nonetheless "responsible" for this event). Here we have a "catch-all" formula, not a legally consistent charge; it leaps from action to instigation to pure thought, from ideas to whatever events suit the prosecution case. Such a charge, so diversified and indeterminate, lacks the most elementary juridical identity: "You will be made guilty in any event...."

Secondly, the committal hearings must conform to a certain principle of disjunction and exclusion. Either A is the case, or B; if B, then it is not A, etc. Yet in the Negri case it appears that the judges are intent on "keeping their opinions open," so that opposed facts are no longer alternatives which mutually exclude each other. If Negri was not in Rome, the telephone call to Moro's family is still kept as an incriminating lead, by switching its caller to Paris (or vice versa). If Negri was not directly involved in the Moro kidnapping, then at any rate he inspired it, or "thought" it and that is tantamount to having carried it out. If Negri in his texts and statements has clearly opposed the Red Brigades, this was only a smart "cover" proving even more conclusively that he was in secret agreement with them and was their hidden leader. And so on. Contradictory elements in the charges do not cancel each other out. Rather, in this case, they become cumulative.

As Franco Piperno, one of the accused "in hiding"<1>, has pointed out, this implies an extremely curious way of evaluating the significance of political and theoretical texts. Those bringing the accusations against Negri are so used to the belief that in a political discourse it is possible to say anything, since overt "politics" is always a cover, that they simply cannot conceive of the situation of a revolutionary intellectual who has no possibility of writing anything but what he really thinks. Andreotti, Berlinguer and their likes<2> can always hide what they really think, because in such political discourse everything is calculated opportunism. Such can certainly be said (to cite one notable example of another revolutionary intellectual) in the case of Gramsci. In short, far from proceeding through the exclusion of alternatives, the committal hearings of Negri and the others accused in this case have been based on a principle of inclusion, the adding together of contradictory elements.

We must now ask how and why such negations of justice become possible. It is here, I believe, that the role of the Press and media has exerted, with few exceptions, and continues to exert, a crucial influence in the Negri case. Not for the first time, of course, but perhaps for the first time in such a systematic and organized way, the Press has pre-empted and prepared the ground by a sensational "pre-trial" (and the French Press has been no less willing to join in this campaign of defamation and calumny). The judicial system would never have been able to abandon the principle of specific identity in the accusations; the hearings would never have been conducted on the basis of inclusion, if the Press and media had not prepared the ground, offered the means, whereby these rules could be flagrantly abandoned and forgotten without public outcry.

In fact the media, for their part, operate according to another, specific principle. Whether in the case of daily or weekly papers, or radio and TV, the media are governed by a principle of accumulation. So that there can be "news" to report each day, and since repudiations or contradictions from the previous day have no influence whatever on the "news" of the following day, the Press and media can operate an accumulation of everything that is said from one day to the next without fearing any contradiction. The use of the "conditional tense'' allows all possibilities to be multiplied and to coexist. Thus it is "possible" to present Negri as being in Rome, Paris or Milan on the same day! The three "possibilities" are simply accumulated. He is presented at one point as an "active member" of the Red Brigades, or their "hidden leader", and at another as representative of a totally opposed tendency and tactics. No matter. . . the differing versions are again accumulated.

If we are to believe one French paper (Le Nouvel Observateur), we get the following result: even if Negri were not in the Red Brigades, he is an Autonomist, and "we all know who the left Autonomists in Italy are". Whatever the facts, the treatment of Negri becomes justified.

The Press has abandoned itself in this affair to a fantastic accumulation of make-believe, which has not followed after, in the wake of, the judiciary, but by their "pre-trial", has actively prepared the way for the judiciary and the police to conceal their total lack of evidence or substance to the charges. The new space for judicial and police repression in Europe today can only function through a crucial preparatory role of the Press and media. All organs of the media, from Left to far Right, have in this case, "made up for", made acceptable this gross breach of justice and due process. It seems that the time has come in Europe, when the old reproach that the Press should "keep a certain distance", should represent a certain resistance to "official slogans", will soon no longer apply.

Given the alleged international ramifications of this conspiracy, as reported in the Press ("the French Connection", the "Parisian HQ of the Red Brigades", etc.), let it not be thought on this occasion that my letter is a "meddling in Italian affairs of which we are ignorant"<3>. Negri is a political scientist, an intellectual of high standing, in France as well as Italy. Italians and French today have the same problems in facing escalating violence, but also in confronting an escalation of repression that no longer even feels the need to be juridically legitimated -- since its legitimation is carried out in advance by the Press, the media, the "organs of public opinion".

What we are witnessing here is an authentic judicial slaughter, by the modalities of the media, of men and women who have been interned, indefinitely, on the basis of legal "evidence" of which the least one can say is that it is as unsubstantial and vague as the accusations. Meanwhile, the long-awaited "proofs" are constantly put off until tomorrow. We do not in fact believe in these "proofs" that have so often been promised. We would like more information, instead, on the conditions of those being detained, and the solitary confinement to which they have been subjected. Perhaps we are to await another "prison catastrophe", which would no doubt give the Press their chance to find that elusive "definite proof" of Negri's guilt?

<1> Piperno was arrested in Paris on September 18. The Italian authorities have asked for his extradition under the charge of armed insurrection against the State."

<2> Giuglio Andreotti: a leader of the Christian Democrats; he often headed up the Italian government. Enrico Berlinguer: General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party. He was instrumental in implementing the Historical Compromise.

<3> This reproach was made by Italian politicians of both Left and Right, following the "Protest by French Intellectuals against Repression in Italy" in 1977.