.jpg) Cover of the first edition | |
| Authors | Michael Hardt Antonio Negri |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subjects | Globalization International relations |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | 2000 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover andpaperback) |
| Pages | 478 |
| ISBN | 0-674-25121-0 (hardcover)ISBN 0-674-00671-2 (paperback) |
| OCLC | 41967081 |
| 325/.32/09045 21 | |
| LC Class | JC359 .H279 2000 |
| Preceded by | Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form |
| Followed by | Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire |
Empire is a book bypost-Marxist philosophersMichael Hardt andAntonio Negri. Written in the mid-1990s, it was published in 2000 and quickly sold beyond its expectations as an academic work.[1]
It is part of a trilogy which includesMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) andCommonwealth (2009).
In general, Hardt and Negri theorize an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon ofimperialism, centered on individualnation-states, to an emergentpostmodern 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'sEmpire, 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]: 6 [3]: 171–172
Hardt and Negri elaborate a variety of ideas surroundingconstitutions,global war, andclass. Hence, the Empire is constituted by amonarchy (the United States and theG8, andinternational organizations such asNATO, theInternational Monetary Fund or theWorld Trade Organization), anoligarchy (themultinational corporations and other nation-states) and ademocracy (the variousnon-government organizations and theUnited 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'.[3]: 173 The Empire is total, buteconomic inequality persists, and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one, the identity of the poor persists.[4]
Empire was published byHarvard University Press in 2000 as a 478-page hardcover (ISBN 0-674-25121-0) and paperback (ISBN 0-674-00671-2).
The book's description of pyramidal levels is a replica ofPolybius' description of Roman government, hence the Empire denomination. Furthermore, the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire.
Hardt and Negri are heavily indebted toMichel Foucault's analysis ofbiopolitics,[5] as well as the work ofGilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari, especially their bookA Thousand Plateaus. A number of concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari – such as multiplicity, deterritorialization, nomads, and control – are central toEmpire's claims. BeforeEmpire, Negri was best known for having writtenThe Savage Anomaly (1981), a milestone book inSpinozism studies which he wrote in prison.Empire is thus, unsurprisingly, also influenced bySpinoza. It is also influenced by the work ofCarl Schmitt, in particular his theory of sovereignty, as well asNiccolò Machiavelli.
The ideas first introduced inEmpire (notably the concept ofmultitude, taken from Spinoza) were further developed in the booksMultitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004),Commonwealth (2009), andAssembly (2017), which were also written by Hardt and Negri.
Empire has been described by theLondon Review of Books as "the most successful work of political theory to come from the Left for a generation."[6] The book has been highly influential on numerous debates within the left, and has even been called "a bible of the anti-globalisation movement" by one critic and "the most influential book in recent decades on a classic sociological theme".[7][8] In a review of the book,Slavoj Žižek stated that the book "sets as its goal, writing theCommunist Manifesto for the twenty-first century."[9]
Gopal Balakrishnan, reviewing the book for theNew Left Review, wrote that when compared with influential conservative books such asFrancis Fukuyama'sThe End of History and the Last Man, "Comparable totalizations from the Left have been few and far between; diagnoses of the present more uniformly bleak. At best, the alternative to surrender or self-delusion has seemed to be a combative but clear-eyed pessimism, orienting the mind for a Long March against the new scheme of things. In this landscape, the appearance of Empire represents a spectacular break. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri defiantly overturn the verdict that the last two decades have been a time of punitive defeats for the Left."[10]
Empire has created intellectual debates around its arguments. Certain scholars have compared the evolution of the world order with Hardt and Negri's world image inEmpire. A number of publications and debates centered on the book, both positively and negatively.[11][12] 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.[13]
Hardt and Negri published an essay titled "'Empire' 20 Years On" in the November/December 2019 edition ofNew Left Review, in which they provide a critical analysis of the book's legacy and their perspective on it looking back.[14]
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)."
Indeed, it is the irrelevance of political beliefs or ideas and their replacement by what (thinking to follow Foucault) Hardt and Negri call the ìbiopoliticalì, that mark the special contribution of the discourse of terrorism, which we might more generally call the discourse of globalization.
Quotations related toMichael Hardt and Antonio Negri at Wikiquote