Paolo Virno (2008) _Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation_, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andre Casson, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents. 

Paolo Virno's interest is in the ability of the human species to execute 'innovative actions' capable of modifying 'consolidated norms' (2008: 20). A key reference underpinning this is Noam Chomsky's description of the apparatus of power as inhibiting the innate creativity of verbal language (2008: 13). Language is clearly violent at a symbolic level, and Virno confirms how language radicalises 'aggression beyond measure' (2008: 19). He is also drawing upon Aristotle's description of contingency at the heart of our use of language (in _Ethics_); although clearly, when referring to the human animal specifically, the idea supports various prejudices against other humans and animals. Against Carl Schmitt's view of state sovereignty, Virno's concern is to develop a non-dialectical understanding of negation - through ambivalence, oscillation and perturbing - to outline a critique of 'hostile radicalism towards the State' and capitalistic production. He tries to identify institutions that 'metabolize ambivalence and oscillation, rather than postulating their unilateral resolution' (2008: 44). Of course, to Virno this involves 'not-yet public forms of government' (2008: 24). Acknowledged by Virno, 'negation of negation' is the dialectical way out of this paradox, and 'keeps in check the possibility of a reciprocal _non_recognition, thus constituting the implicit presupposition of rhetorical persuasion and, in general, of the permanence of a public sphere' (2008: 63).

The ability of language is part of this in as much as it involves relations between a 'mass of speakers', necessarily shared and collective - and constituting a 'pure institution', and the matrix of all institutions to Virno (2008: 46). Language underwrites all other institutions. Quoting from de Saussure, he emphasises that the 'language system is a social fact' wherein the human animal is 'ready made for language, but not actually in possession of it' until entering into interactions in the social realm (2008: 47). This is part of early development but also remains evident in every utterance made - confirming to Virno the biopolitical dimension of the human animal in the world, and that language is 'more natural' and 'more historical' than other institutions (2008: 47, 49). In relation to negation, the system of language both 'does' negation (by identifying what something is not), and 'is' negation (in as much as it can only signify something): 'The negation, or something that language _does_, is understood, above all, as something that language _is_.' (2008: 50) He is speculating here on a nonrepresentational form of politics, and despite recognising the sovereign forces that restrain such abilities (such as 'ritual' and 'katechon'), concludes that: 
'Whether the self-government of the multitude can adapt itself directly to the linguistic aspect of the human species, to the disturbing ambivalence that characterizes the linguistic aspect, will have to remain an open problem.' (2008: 50)

Underpinning political possibilities, for Virno, is the simple fact that the human animal is capable of modifying its forms of life (2008: 69). This is what makes for creativity, in the general sense that newly invented forms might diverge from established rules and perceived norms - based on the Chomskian innate creativity previously referred to. But creativity is too ambiguous for Virno (and unexpected), so this is what is meant in the realm of human praxis as 'innovative action'. 

To Virno, jokes represent an example of how humans diverge from norms, how 'linguistic animals give evidence of an unexpected derivation from their normal praxis' (2008: 72). I think we might look to something similar in the way fun is had in software - through jokes that exemplify the innovative action of code and coders ("have you heard the one about software?"). The emphasis of Virno is useful too in drawing attention to the function of jokes to innovative action in the public sphere (not as Freudian clue to the workings of the unconscious). In this way, to Virno, jokes are an example of a linguistic game that demonstrates innovative techniques and possibilities for transforming all linguistic games ('the logic of change'). This happens in two main ways: firstly by demonstrating how divergences in following rules often result in changing the rule itself (put differently the application of the norm also contains surprises and a 'state of exception'); and secondly, through the incorrect use of semantic ambiguity, an 'error' or glitch (2008: 73, 74). Rules are not only there to be broken, but applied differently, adapted and modified, transformed and even abolished. Virno refers to this sense of linguistic innovation as: 'how to do new things with words' (after Austin), in which the 'doing' relies on public action (2008: 82). Jokes only operate as 'praxis' in these terms, and praxis 'always presupposes and revives a public space' (2008: 83). So to Virno, witty utterances are similar to the performative utterances that Austin described (in 'how to do things with words'), where words constitute an action in and of themselves (2008: 85).           

But the point for Virno is not the content of jokes, ie. that might poke fun at social norms, hierarchies or the ruling order, for such jokes tend to obscure what is important: the apparatus or the '_logicolinguistic resources_ that jokes utilize' (2008: 165; in other words, not jokes about politics but the politics of jokes  to borrow a dialectical formulation). The argument is that innovative action also uses these resources like a toolbox. In doing so it produces ambivalences: oscillating between the empirical and the grammatical as well as between the 'determined _rule_ and the _regularity_ of species-specific forms of conduct' (2008: 166). Such contradictory factors characterise the social mind of the human species, its creative force and its repression by power structures. (Note: Virno also explores 'intersubjectivity' to emphasise the social dimension of subjectivity; making reference to Winnicott and 'not-me', turning it into a 'we-centered space'). 
'For political anticapitalist and antistate action there is no positive presupposition to be vindicated. Its eminent duty is to experiment with new and more effective ways of negating negation, of placing "not" in front of "not human".' (2008: 190)