It is difficult, I think, to read a work considered “new” and/or “groundbreaking” in the very recent past after the ideas it contains have become pervasive- and not necessarily because the work ‘broke the story’ about them- and are still very active in society. Due to the many years of debate on an issue afterwards, reading the original argument can end up, through a kind of auditory dissonance, being aligned with the naïfs of the present or, even worse, the apocalyptic extremes that some people have ultimately carried the original ideas to. Empire contains a number of ideas of this ilk. The idea of a world centered on communications industries that consciously and constantly “create” the world we live in so that everything is “produced” and nothing is true, and do it for their own profit was already such a mainstream idea by 1997 that there was a Bond movie made about it in which the major villain was a man who wanted to “create” news. Scarcely a day goes by that some talking head is not speaking about it on television (though perhaps this would not be so pervasive were it not for the fact that the media’s love of navel gazing fills so many hours on a the hungry beast of the 24-hour news channels). It was very tempting, therefore, to dismiss a great deal of this book as a glorified neo-Marxist conspiracy theory whose subject not only could not be proved or seen, but also was ultimately no-one and could be found nowhere. However, despite my doubts as to the ultimate conclusion, I felt that the authors’ discussions of individual topics within their theory to be often quite nuanced and deft in deploying their clearly deep knowledge of the ideas of many thinkers in combination, which often not only lead to wonderfully interesting ways of articulating ‘old’ problems, but also even to some very shrewd political observations. For example, the authors declared that “we should be done once and for all with the search for an outside, a standpoint that imagines a purity for our politics. It is better both theoretically and practically to enter the terrain of Empire and confront its homogenizing flows in all their complexity” (46). This seems such an accurate way of diagnosing the kinds of “rebellion” that present day activism is involved in, and is a diagnosis that could apply to many fields. For example, I recently read The Last Utopia in which Moyn posits that the idea of “human rights” is of very recent origin, and more to the point talks about how it was the “last utopia” standing after the disillusionment with ideologies that sought to change society as a whole because it was seen to be so de-politicized and “universally” right, and a way of doing good without causing damage. This certainly seems to be a search for an “outside” (perhaps to match the widespread relief at Fukuyama’s idea of the “End of History”). But the many writings on humanitarian aid and human rights advocacy has made it clear, as Hardt and Negri would agree, that there is no “outside” when working with a crisis (another idea which the humanitarian field seems to support with its “permanent emergency” rhetoric- ie, calling the Palestinian situation an ‘emergency’ sixty years later), and not only that but the “de-politicization” of problems leaves many foundational issues intact and creates a whole new set of problems. This applies to the modern American political landscape as well- it seems to me that diffusing the reforming impulse into many “single issue groups” rather than a generalized movement which can bring much more political force to bear seems to practically ensure that those with strong reformist ideas will never be in power, and thus that “opting out” will seem the best form of protest rather than confronting “on the terrain” of Empire. Another major theme that I followed through the book was the authors’ treatment of space. The idea of the “deterrorialization” and “rebordering” of the world is certainly found throughout academic discourse, as well as public discourse, especially in an era of globalization where migration and diaspora have become such urgent political discussions. However, I thought that Hardt and Negri went beyond these ideas to apply the importance of the idea of space in many other arguments where I had not seen it deployed so effectively before. The authors simple use of spatial language to articulate their ideas illuminated many arguments much more clearly for me- as with their above discussion of confronting empire by putting it in the context of an argument about “inside” and “outside” and the “terrain” of Empire, which imagery showed me the ultimate importance of place in peoples’ perception of their own political positions. I also appreciated their sensible and nuanced treatment of the “localization” (or the “I would prefer not to” movement) and the realization that erecting barriers to the rest of the world without changing the way that the world works will not do anything but politically and economically disadvantage the people living within such barriers and moreover, will activate the impulse to break them down that is now so celebrated and encouraged as perhaps the highest value of culture in the modern “Empire” the authors describe. (Indeed, I sometimes wonder if my own brain is “mapped” this way and accounts for my implacable dislike of theoretical models that claim to definitively- a word I respond to like “biologically”- answer how the world works.) At the time I read this book I was working on a large project about the intellectual and political history of the idea of the “Mediterranean” in European thought and examining its relationship to changing conversations about the meaning of concepts like ‘community’ and ‘unity’. Of course the sections about role of “desertion” as a form of rebellion against the system and the role of the migration and the reformation of borders were highly and directly pertinent, however it was the authors’ discussion of the works of the postmodern theorists that I found the most directly helpful. As with how all generals are “always fighting the last war,” they posited that the problems that the postmodernists and postcolonialists are trying to solve are already in the past, and the system is essentially already behind their quest, my preliminary reading for my thesis seems to continually lead me to the idea that the European Union is dispensing ideas about space and about problem-solving formed in a “modern” era in a place that has many “post-modern” (post-post-modern?) problems, and thus the solution never quite heals anything. The European Union is seen by many at high levels who are enthusiastic about the Mediterranean as a “normative” model of how to stop conflict (form an identity and a forum in which to address problems and things will not lead to war), and one that could be perhaps duplicated there as a “mirror,” an idea that seems to have continuously and repeatedly failed. However, and as Hardt and Negri also seem to agree, there does not seem to be many strong ideas yet on which to base ‘supranational’ identity that does not come from the national and essentially replicate its impulses.
Como cualquier libro de autores marxistas contemporáneos, tiene una literatura complicada, muy académica, llena de constantes citas y retruécanos incomprensibles; no es un libro para pasar el rato, sino más bien para leerlo poco a poco, embeberse de lo que dice y luego intentar digerirlo si no habías llegado tú previamente a la misma conclusión.Porque yo sí lo había hecho. Los autores nos conducen apresuradamente (lo cual no es malo dadas las circunstancias) a través de la Historia moderna desde los primeros capitalismos, los imperialismos y alguna otra cosa más hasta el Imperio actual, es decir, la sociedad global en todos sus planos. Estudian factores puramente políticos (cómo la ONU está llamada a convertirse paulatinamente en el Gobierno mundial), económicos (el mundo del trabajo, su mecanización e informatización, los nuevos paradigmas) y sociales (los nuevos actores, la caída de partidos y sindicatos, el ascenso de las ONG) hasta hacer una semblanza de algo completamente actual, la situación socioeconómica y política que vivimos en toda su amplitud.¿Entonces cuál es su valor si ya sabemos casi todo lo que cuentan? Que se escribió hace casi 20 años, es decir, una generación, cuando aún no teníamos móviles ni Internet ni una cultura del ocio tan diversificada como la actual y, sin embargo, ellos lo clavan punto a punto. Predicen bastante bien cómo van a ser las revueltas futuras (ahora ya pasadas), qué va a pasar con las organizaciones liberales clásicas, cómo va a cambiar el panorama mundial debido a los flujos migratorios por causas laborales, cómo los estados van a tender a desaparecer a manos de las estructuras económicas supranacionales y las megacorporaciones... A pesar de la ingenuidad con la que ahora leemos citas de Bill Gates hablando sobre el desarrollo futuro del Capitalismo, aciertan en la mayoría de sus predicciones.Mi preferida de todas ellas, a pesar de la oscuridad (en casi todas sus acepciones) con la que pueden llegar a abordar los diferentes asuntos, es su idea de que este Imperio global en el que vivimos, lejos de ser una cosa mala en todas sus facetas, es la solución a todos los problemas que devienen de la concepción de estados estancos y cerrados de fronteras inmutables, proteccionismos sociales y otros asuntos más propios del siglo XVIII que aún siguen dándose en esta Tierra. Proponen una mayoría de edad del ciudadano, una emancipación de casi todas las líneas rectoras obsoletas, y una trascendencia que roza en lo Cyberpunk y en el advenimiento de la Singularidad hasta el punto de que he llegado a sentir mis vellos erizándonse con algunos de sus vaticinios.Si alguna vez hubo una profecía global que me gustase es esta que ellos preconizan, y ello a pesar de la pesadez con la que abordan algunos asuntos con su aborrecible uso de los polisílabos sobreesdrújulos.
What do You think about Empire (2001)?
With respect to the authors of this strange, postmodern Marx-masturbation fest, I felt my intelligence insulted on "many levels of consciousness" and, even more strangely, given the ostensibly anti-transcendent intent of this book, condescended to from an altogether transcendent plane of existence. I shall not feign an understanding of this book in order to review it; I simply shall say I read it and felt at times rather intensely stimulated in a subjective way. But when the sun sets upon the corpses daily produced by global power structures, I should think there is something more urgent than that I should have a personal realization of something vague and impossible to articulate except with pseudo-intellectual phrases and name-dropping of every philosopher that's ever lived.
—Jesse
Empire is a colossal disappointment, moving as it does from an excellent problem statement concerning the state of Marxist intellectualism in the face of a changing formation of capital, then to Foucault's notion of biopower, then to an apologia for the arguments the authors have already called deprecated. But the borrowing from Foucault is an intellectual red herring. In no sense are Negri and Hardt following Foucault's notions of history, but rather wrapping themselves in his intellectual earnesty in the hopes of disguising the religious faith they've put in their presuppositions. They take Weberian scattershot tours of history, cherry picking this or that event to support an ever-weakening argument. They take pit stops in Baudrillard's way stations with spastic commentary verging on the nonsensical, but end up not at some new formulation, but back at square one: disguising Left Hegelianism as postmodernism.Once you've read past the first couple of chapters, Empire is just endless recitation of others' ideas recontextualized like a four hundred page undergraduate term paper. On the bright side, you can find it for free at the Continental Philosophy website.
—Eric
I have the same issue with this book as I do most books of the genre, and it is a money making genre btw. My problem is lack of realistic resolution or proposal for solution. The critique, as is the case in most of these types of books was pretty accurate. Of course there was the overgeneralization us v. them archetype, but it is necessary to make the story compelling. Also, at the end of the day this is a narrative not a history. The critique which is essentially Marxism applied to modern globalization with a twist of Debord was done with moderate success. A willing suspension of disbelief was necessary to accept the narrative as it progressed. At times the book was very complicated for no other reason than being complicated. The writing style might have been attempting to model the nuances that are central to the authors arguments, but it just ended up being long. Most of the arguments that were being laid out are not new and really do not require the amount of pages "dead trees" to be explained. This gave the book an elitist appeal I suppose. The message is essentially what Chomsky says about global markets in an hour lecture or what adbusters fills their 5000 word blogs with.The problem with this book, and the entire genre, is that at some point it goes from critique to comic book. There is always the tipping point from fair analysis to the evil people v. good people. The good people are always under dogs being oppressed. The reading is guided to empathize with the oppressed underdogs and led to the conclusion that the evil people cannot be changed. These people who cannot be changed also happen to be in power. Follow the logic and you end with the conclusion that modern power "governments, private institutions" are evil, cannot be changed and so the only answer must be.... well, we don't know, but it involves some kind of protest probably ending in revolution. If the book even addresses the post protest point it usually just sinks into anarcho-syndicalism or non-statist communism without explicitly saying so. All very nice ideas that will do very little to actually help the current global economy which does exploit most people involved in one way or another. I enjoy these books because I view them as mind games or rhetorical discussions. They are activities to get you to think outside of your normal boundaries. The problem is other people take them seriously. It isn't as if those people are an actual threat, they are just annoying.
—Robert
