La condición intelectual

From the text "The author as producer" by Walter Benjamin, this essay questions the mode of intellectual production, without reducing it to the academy. Reviewing (and maintaining) the distinction between productive and unproductive work in Marx, the author makes a critical reading of cultural work in general, distancing himself from concepts such as cognitive and immaterial work, concepts promoted and defended by Italian operaism. It highlights, however, the joint between hand and intellect. Written in conjunction with a multiplicity of interspersed literary quotations, its commitment is to a writing that makes the form a key element for intellectual production not subject to the code of the paper and the conventional essay: the form as an essay.