Empire (Hardt and Negri book)
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 |
Part of a series about |
Imperialism studies |
---|
Empire is a book by
Summary
In general, Hardt and Negri theorize an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon of
... 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]: 6 [3]: 171–172
Hardt and Negri elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding
Publication history
Empire was published by
Influences
The book's description of pyramidal levels is a replica of Polybius' description of Roman government, hence the Empire denomination. Furthermore, the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire.
Hardt and Negri are heavily indebted to
The ideas first introduced in Empire (notably the concept of
Reception and legacy
Empire has been described by the London 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 the Communist Manifesto for the twenty-first century."[9]
Gopal Balakrishnan, reviewing the book for the New Left Review, wrote that when compared with influential conservative books such as Francis Fukuyama's The 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 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.[11] A number of publications and debates centered on the book, both positively and negatively.[12][13] 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.[14]
Hardt and Negri published an essay titled "'Empire' 20 Years On" in the November/December 2019 edition of New Left Review, in which they provide a critical analysis of the book's legacy and their perspective on it looking back.[15]
See also
- Autonomous Marxism
- Anti-globalization movement
- Tiqqun
References
- ^ Vulliamy, Ed (July 15, 2001). "Empire hits back". The Observer. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
- ^ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press.
- ^ a b Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press. pp. 179–180.
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)."
- ^ Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton University Press. p. 173.
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.
- ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
- S2CID 56380189.
- ISSN 0002-9602.
- S2CID 140777766.
- ^ Balakrishnan, Gopal (September–October 2000). "Hardt and Negri's Empire". New Left Review. II (5). New Left Review.
- ^ 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," Archived 2013-03-10 at the Wayback Machine Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61-93. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- ISBN 9781135950903.
- ^ Elia Zaru's book is an attempt to summarize the academic debate following the release of Empire "La postmodernità di «Empire»," Mimesis Edizioni, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-85724-821-3.
- ^ Hardt, Michael. "Empire, Twenty Years On". New Left Review (120). Retrieved November 1, 2022.
Further reading
- Balakrishnan, Gopal (September–October 2000). "Hardt and Negri's Empire". New Left Review. II (5). New Left Review. (review)
- Bull, Malcolm (4 October 2001). "You can't build a new society with a Stanley knife," London Review of Books, Vol. 23, No. 19, pages 3–7. Review. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Hardt, Michael; Negri, Tony. Empire, Twenty Years On. New Left Review, Vol. 120 (2019).
- Žižek, Slavoj (2011). "Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist manifesto for the Twenty-First Century?," Rethinking Marxism, No. 3/4 (2001). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Fotopoulos, Takis; Gezerlis, Alexandros (2002). "Hardt and Negri's Empire: a new Communist Manifesto or a reformist welcome to neoliberal globalisation?," Democracy & Nature: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 2 (July 2002). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Di Nardo, Pietro (2003). "The Empire does not exist: a critique of Toni Negri's ideas," In Defence of Marxism (15 January 2003). A Marxist critique of the book. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Turchetto, Maria (2003). "The Empire Strikes Back: On Hardt and Negri," Archived February 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine Historical Materialism, volume 11:1 (2003), p. 23–36. A marxist critique of Empire. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Dean, Jodi; Passavant, Paul (2011). "Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri," Routledge.
- Okur, Mehmet Akif (2007). "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.
- Sprague, Jeb (2011). "Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri," "Current Perspectives in Social Theory", 2011, Vol. 29. P. 187–207.
External links
Quotations related to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri at Wikiquote