Empire (Hardt and Negri book)

Empire is a book by post-Marxist philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Written in the mid-1990s, it was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.[1]

Empire
Cover of the first edition
AuthorsMichael Hardt
Antonio Negri
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsGlobalization
International relations
PublisherHarvard University Press
Publication date
2000
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages478
ISBN0-674-25121-0 (hardcover) ISBN 0-674-00671-2 (paperback)
OCLC41967081
325/.32/09045 21
LC ClassJC359 .H279 2000
Preceded byLabor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form 
Followed byMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 

Summary

In general, Hardt and Negri theorize an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon of imperialism, centered on individual nation-states, to an emergent postmodern construct created among ruling powers which the authors call "Empire" (the capital letter is distinguishing), with different forms of warfare:

...according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist....In the "new order that envelops the entire space of... civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order"[2]).[3]

Hardt and Negri elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions, global war, and class. Hence, the Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various non-government organizations and the United Nations). Part of the book's analysis deals with "imagin[ing] resistance", but "the point of Empire is that it, too, is "total" and that resistance to it can only take the form of negation - "the will to be against".[4] The Empire is total, but economic inequality persists, and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one, the identity of the poor persists.[5]

Publication history

Empire was published by Harvard University Press in 2000 as a 478-page hardcover (ISBN 0-674-25121-0) and paperback (ISBN 0-674-00671-2).

Influences

This description of pyramidal levels is a replica of Polybius' description of Roman government, hence the denomination "Empire". Furthermore, the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire. Hardt and Negri are also heavily indebted to Michel Foucault's analysis of biopolitics[6] and Gilles Deleuze's philosophy. Before Empire, Negri was best known for having written The Savage Anomaly (1981), a milestone book in Spinozism studies which he wrote in prison. Empire is thus, unsurprisingly, also influenced by Spinoza.

The ideas first introduced in Empire (notably the concept of multitude, taken from Spinoza) were further developed in the 2004 books Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire and the 2009 book Commonwealth, which were also written by Hardt and Negri.

Reception

Empire has created important intellectual debates around its arguments. Certain scholars have compared the evolution of the world order with Hardt and Negri's world image in Empire.[7] A number of publications and debates centered on the book.[8][9] Hardt and Negri's theoretical approach has also been compared and contrasted with works of 'the global capitalism school' whose authors have analyzed transnational capitalism and class relations in the global epoch.[10]

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See also

Notes
  1. Ed Vulliamy, "Empire hits back," The Observer (July 15, 2001). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press, 2000), pg 6.
  3. Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history (Princeton University Press, 2004), pg 171-172.
  4. Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history (Princeton University Press, 2004), pg 173.
  5. "The problem, as they see it, is that "postmodernist authors" have neglected the one identity that should matter most to those on the left, the one we have always with us: "The only non-localizable 'common name' of pure difference in all eras is that of the poor" (156)...only the poor, Hardt and Negri say, "live radically the actual and present being" (157)." Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history (Princeton University Press, 2004), pg 179-180.
  6. "Indeed, it is the irrelevance of political beliefs or ideas and their replacement by what (thinking to follow Foucault) Hardt and Negri call the "biopolitical", that mark the special contribution of the discourse of terrorism, which we might more generally call the discourse of globalization." Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history (Princeton University Press, 2004), pg 173.
  7. As a sample of those debates in the academic circles, look at this article: Mehmet Akif Okur, "Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order," Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61-93. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  8. such as in Dean and Passavant edited volume, "Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri," Routledge, 2003.
  9. Elia Zaru's book is an attempt to summarize the academic debate following the release of Empire "La postmodernità di «Empire»," Mimesis Edizioni, 2018.
  10. On this see: Jeb Sprague, "Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri," "Current Perspectives in Social Theory", 2011, Vol. 29. P. 187-207.

References
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