Empire - Softcover

Michael Hardt; Antonio Negri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674006712 ISBN 13: 9780674006713

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers. Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society-to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order. More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm-the basis for a truly democratic global society.

About this title

Review:

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire has already caused quite a storm. After "anti-capitalist" demonstrations and books such as Naomi Klein's No Logo and George Monbiot's Captive State, a vacuum seemed to exist for an extensive, coherent philosophical take on where our world is going. Empire seeks to fill that gap by asking where globalisation comes from, what it means and whether or not it is a good or bad thing.

Negri, a Marxist imprisoned for his beliefs and his involvement with the Italian hard-left, and Michael Hardt, an English literature professor who had previously acted as Negri's translator (and the translator of an important, though philosophically more arcane, precursor to Empire, Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community) have produced a key post-Marxist text (which builds on many of the arguments in Nick Dyer-Witheford's excellent Cyber-Marx) that views its world through lenses bequeathed to it by the best of the French post-structuralists. Negri and Hardt's accomplishment has been to apply the sometimes difficult work of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (especially A Thousand Plateaus) and Jacques Derrida to describe a world that has undergone a paradigm switch to a new Empire (in a way not dissimilarly than Thomas Keenan does particularly in his chapter on Marx's rhetoric in the much undervalued Fables of Responsibility). According to Negri and Hardt, this new Empire is the result of the transformation of modern capitalism into a set of power relationships we endlessly replicate that transcend the nation state (so anti-imperialism is out as a progressive politics). Vitally, the authors argue that the multitude, through their many struggles, pushed the world to this point and it is the multitude who can push through to a much better world on the other side of globalisation.

This is an optimistic, wide-ranging, defiant challenge of a book and Negri and Hardt should be commended on their erudition as much as their vision. While questions undoubtedly remain after reading the text, these should not stop the interested reader in coming to, and learning from, this profound piece of work. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

Michael Hardt and Tony Negri have given us an original, suggestive and provocative assessment of the international economic and political moment we have entered. Abandoning many of the propositions of conventional Marxism such as imperialism, the centrality of the national contexts of social struggle and a cardboard notion of the working class, the authors nonetheless show the salience of the Marxist framework as a tool of explanation. This book is bound to stimulate a new debate about globalization and the possibilities for social transformation in the 21st century.--Stanley Aronowitz, author of False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness

Empire...is a bold move away from established doctrine. Hardt and Negri's insistence that there really is a new world is promulgated with energy and conviction. Especially striking is their renunciation of the tendency of many writers on globalization to focus exclusively on the top, leaving the impression that what happens down below, to ordinary people, follows automatically from what the great powers do.--Stanley Aronowitz "The Nation "

An extraordinary book, with enormous intellectual depth and a keen sense of the history-making transformation that is beginning to take shape--a new system of rule Hardt and Negri name Empire imperialism.--Saskia Sassen, author of Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization

By way of Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Marx, the Vietnam War, and even Bill Gates, Empire offers an irresistible, iconoclastic analysis of the 'globalized' world. Revolutionary, even visionary, Empire identifies the imminent new power of the multitude to free themselves from capitalist bondage.--Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Almanac of the Dead

Empire is one of the most brilliant, erudite, and yet incisively political interpretations available to date of the phenomenon called 'globalization.' Engaging critically with postcolonial and postmodern theories, and mindful throughout of the plural histories of modernity and capitalism, Hardt and Negri rework Marxism to develop a vision of politics that is both original and timely. This very impressive book will be debated and discussed for a long time.--Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe

How often can it happen that a book is swept off the shelves until you can't find a copy in New York for love nor money? ...Empire is a sweeping history of humanist philosophy, Marxism and modernity that propels itself to a grand political conclusion: that we are a creative and enlightened species, and that our history is that of humanity's progress towards the seizure of power from those who exploit it.--Ed Vulliamy"The Observer" (07/15/2001)

Hailed as the new Communist Manifesto on its dust jacket, this hefty tome may be worthy of such distinction... Hardt and Negri analyze the multiple processes of globalization...and argue that the new sovereign, the new order of the globalized world, is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule... Though Empire ties together diverse strands of often opaque structuralist and poststructuralist theory...the writing is surprisingly clear, accessible, and engaging... Hardt and Negri write to communicate beyond the claustrophobic redoubts of the academy... In short, Empire is a comprehensive and exciting analysis of the now reified concept of globalization, offering a lucid understanding of the political-economic quagmire of our present and a glimpse into the possible worlds beyond it.--Tom Roach "Cultural Critique "

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... Hardt and Negri open their case by arguing that, although nation-state-based systems of power are rapidly unraveling in the force-fields of world capitalism, globalization cannot be understood as a simple process of deregulating markets. Far from withering away, regulations today proliferate and interlock to form an acephelous supranational order which the authors choose to call 'Empire' ...Empire bravely upholds the possibility of a utopian manifesto for these times, in which the desire for another world buried or scattered in social experience could find an authentic language and point of concentration.--Gopal Balakrishnan "New Left Review "

Empire is a stunningly original attempt to come to grips with the cultural, political, and economic transformations of the contemporary world. While refusing to ignore history, Hardt and Negri question the adequacy of existing theoretical categories, and offer new concepts for approaching the practices and regimes of power of the emergent world order. Whether one agrees with it or not, it is an all too rare effort to engage with the most basic and pressing questions facing political intellectuals today.--Lawrence Grossberg, author of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture

After reading Empire, one cannot escape the impression that if this book were not written, it would have to be invented. What Hardt and Negri offer is nothing less than a rewriting of The Communist Manifesto for our time: Empire conclusively demonstrates how global capitalism generates antagonisms that will finally explode its form. This book rings the death-bell not only for the complacent liberal advocates of the 'end of history, ' but also for pseudo-radical Cultural Studies which avoid the full confrontation with today's capitalism.--Slavoj Zizek, author of The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0674006712
• ISBN 13: 9780674006713
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496