Empire Book

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.